'Inside the box': a cooperative game for co-creating energy efficient retail spaces

Although sustainability is one of the drivers of change in the retail sector, employees still treat energy management as a lower priority compared with other operational tasks. As digital technologies are flourishing, gamification is an emerging method of raising energy awareness, with most examples however targeting individuals, and therefore not supporting teamworking approaches to handling end user building energy demand. As such, combining behavioural incentivisation and technological development is a critical socio-technical challenge within the retail environments. The development of a new cooperative role-playing game that harnesses the participatory character of game theory to boost collegiality and encourage the energy-conscious behaviour of staff in a supermarket located in the UK, is described. By feeding the game with energy simulation results, this can be regarded as a novel synergy between behavioural science and game theory within the field of building energy. Future research will focus on testing the real-world potential of the game to engage retail staff in co-creating energy efficient stores

Development of a dynamic analytical model for estimating waste heat from domestic hot water systems

Domestic Hot Water (DHW) production accounts on average between fourteen and thirty percent of the residential energy consumption worldwide. In UK dewllings, a quarter of the energy is consumed to produce hot water and this proportion is likely to increase as the energy required for space heating reduces over time in order to achieve demand reduction targets. As the margins for improving the performance of heating system technologies increase, the need for improving modelling accuracy and precision increases as well. Although studies have considered DHW use in buildings, there is a lack of reflection on the energy loss and performance of systems in contemporary dwellings. Current simulation tools with simplified assumptions and limited capabilities (due to a lack of considered variables and details of calculation algorithms) might lead to unreliable results in terms of the estimated heat losses. In this research, an analytical dynamic model has been developed to estimate heat loss from a domestic hot water system based on high resolution monitored data for a set of dwellings in the UK. The model estimated heat losses during flowing and non-flowing (cooling down) conditions in the distribution system as well as heat losses from the storage tank. It was found that apart from the significant heat loss from the storage tank, short draw-offs are particularly influential in determining the amount of heat wasted. Considerable savings might be achieved ”avoiding” short draw-offs through a better control of the system and/or changes in the user behaviour. Insulating and reducing the effective length of the distribution pipe network through better design of the system similarly predict significant reductions in heat losses

'Inside the box': a cooperative game for co-creating energy efficient retail spaces

Although sustainability is one of the drivers of change in the retail sector, employees still treat energy management as a lower priority compared with other operational tasks. As digital technologies are flourishing, gamification is an emerging method of raising energy awareness, with most examples however targeting individuals, and therefore not supporting teamworking approaches to handling end user building energy demand. As such, combining behavioural incentivisation and technological development is a critical socio-technical challenge within the retail environments. The development of a new cooperative role-playing game that harnesses the participatory character of game theory to boost collegiality and encourage the energy-conscious behaviour of staff in a supermarket located in the UK, is described. By feeding the game with energy simulation results, this can be regarded as a novel synergy between behavioural science and game theory within the field of building energy. Future research will focus on testing the real-world potential of the game to engage retail staff in co-creating energy efficient stores