Closing the Loop - From Citizen Sensing to Citizen Actuation

Copyright 2011 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie

Enabling Networked Knowledge

Closing the Loop-From Citizen Sensing to Citizen

ActuationDavid Crowley, Edward Curry, John

Breslin





Citizen Sensors

“…humans as citizens on the ubiquitous Web, acting as sensors and sharing their observations and views…”

Sheth, A. (2009). Citizen sensing, social signals, and enriching human experience. Internet Computing, IEEE, 13(4), 87-92.



Citizen Actuators

Citizen actuation - the activation of a human being as the mechanism by which a control system acts upon the environment.



Sensing/Actuation

Citizen Sensing

Citizen Actuation



Buildings account for 40% of the energy usage in the EU And approximately 35% of the Carbon Dioxide emissions

Building Management Systems (BMS) high cost to retrofit

BMS – can remove humans from the loop Pushing automation too far

Problem



New Smart Building

Cost - € 40,000,000

How Smart is it?



Legacy Building

DERI Building No BMS or BEMS 160 person Office

space Café Data centre 3 Kitchens 80 person Conference

room 4 Meeting rooms Computing museum Sensor Lab



Sensors

9 of 26



Key Challenges

Technology and Data Interoperability Data scattered among different systems Multiple incompatible technologies make it difficult to use

Interpreting Dynamic and Static Data Sensors, ERP, BMS, assets databases, … Need to proactively identify efficiency opportunities

Empowering Actions and Including Users in the Loop Understanding of direct and indirect impacts of activities Embedding impacts within business processes Engaging Users

10



Technology and Data Interoperability

Linked Data Principles

1. Use URIs to identify the “things” in your data

2. Use HTTP URIs so people (and machines) can look them up on the Web

3. When a URI is looked up, return a description of the thing in a structured format (RDF)

4. Include links to related things to provide context

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html





Key Challenges

How can Cyber Physical Social Systems (CPSS) aid in Energy Management? Need to proactively identify efficiency opportunities

Empowering Actions and Including Users in the Loop Understanding of direct and indirect impacts of activities Embedding impacts within business processes Engaging Users



Experiment

Data collection from Experiment Area

14 control weeks (70 days) 4 experiment weeks (20 days) 15 participants

8 actuation requests were sent (to 7 randomly chosen participants)



Experiment Area



Meeting Room B

Meeting Room A

Conference Room



Experiment

Step 1: Detect patterns of high or unusual energy usage

Light turned on in rooms at night High energy use in meeting rooms without booking



Experiment

Step 2: Tweet building occupants to check situation and take action

Turn off lights, heat, devices, etc

“Hi @username could you check if lights/air-con were left on in the 1st Floor North Wing please? And turn them off if possible. Thanks”





ResultsEnergy Usage Comparison



Results (Actuation Time)



Results (Weekly Averages)



Results (Daily Averages)

23.86% Difference



Open Issues

Emerging Web trends (linked data, web of things and social media) may provide the foundations for a lightweight approach to Cyber-Physical Social Systems

Research Challenges Investigating approach to complement existing CPSS Applicability on critical infrastructure Human Task Management for Energy Action Privacy Applicability in a more generic set-up



Future Work

Help people to understand their energy usage

Feedback/Visualisation To easily allow users to see abnormal energy usage

Gamification Addition of game elements to add extrinsic motivation

Smart Cities From micro to macro use cases