Achieving behavioural change and increasing energy efficiency through innovative IT solutions

On October 28, from 9 to 12 CET, four EU-funded projects will lead an interactive session to investigate results and challenges when developing smart tools and solutions to improve users’ energy habits.

In the framework of the Sustainable Places conference, taking place from the 27th to 30th of October, four EU-funded projects organise the virtual interactive session Behavioural change towards energy efficiency by utilizing ICT tools. The workshop aims at informing the audience about daily energy habits and how technology can help us dealing with energy waste.

Do we really pay attention to how we use energy? Do you know that improving your energy behaviour would help you to save money and to avoid energy losses? As the energy consumption habits of end-users have been identified as one of the parameters influencing building performance the most, a behavioural change towards more energy-efficient activities and lifestyles promises a significant potential for energy savings.

eTEACHER together with FEEdBACk, InBetween, and UtilitEE, help you in this challenge. The projects develop innovative ICT tools aiming at raising awareness towards energy efficiency, motivating end-users to adapt more sustainable routines, helping them identify energy waste and fostering the transition to overall more efficient behaviours.

The developed solutions are designed to achieve a change in user mentality and establish more efficient usage habits through triggering mechanisms, informative feedback, gamification, and automation services within a human-centric and context aware framework.

The event is divided into 4 sessions:

• “Proposed methodologies for enhancement of end-user engagement”, dedicated to the different approaches adopted within the 4 projects towards achieving maximum user acceptance and optimising impact through interactive services

• “Validation and Impact assessment methodologies”, to investigate the design of effective methodologies for the evaluation of the results expected from the different ICT solutions presented, and the assessment of their impact to the consumption behaviour of the end-users, their comfort, their acceptance etc

• “Technical and legal challenges”, to discuss the different challenges identified during the development phase of the five projects. Such challenges include monitoring technology implementation, data quality, personal data protection, system interoperability, data analysis, application and gamification development issues, etc.

• “Preliminary results presentation”, where projects will present their preliminary results concerning energy change as well as their conclusions as to best practices and lessons learnt.