Computer Laboratory

Introduction

Building Monitoring

Carbon Commute

Documentation Wiki

Introduction

With the provision of smart buildings and location awareness, energy use in buildings and in transport systems is rapidly becoming part of our lifelong contextual footprint - the idea that each of us, throughout our lifetimes, will lay down a digital trail that reflects our patterns of interaction with services, the contexts within which we choose to use them, and ultimately our reactions to them.

C-AWARE aims to build services to improve users' awareness of their personal energy consumption, and modify their energy demand. We do this via:

  • Modest monitoring technology in the home, along with tracking user location via mobile devices.
  • Local analysis of a user's data, along with privacy-sensitive centralised data mining for broader trend analysis.
  • Gauging the impact of various feedback channels on actual user behaviour.

The key challenge is the creation of new energy services and corresponding business models based on emerging sensor fusion techniques and opportunistic networking. The services must be compelling both to the individual user and to the user collective based on social perceptions of energy reduction need. They must also provide viable revenue streams for mobile operators and end application service providers.

Status

Currently we have created monitoring hardware and software, and deployed it within the Computer Laboratory building as a test bed. We have also added infrastructure to this as the project progressed, to capture personal location data, for use with estimating carbon footprints to a users' way to work.

People