A privacy-friendly gaming framework in smart electricity and water grids

Serious games can be used to push consumers of common-pool resources toward socially responsible consumption patterns. However, gamified interactions can result in privacy leaks and potential misuses of player-provided data. In the Smart Grid ecosystem, a smart metering framework providing some basic cryptographic primitives can enable the implementation of serious games in a privacy-friendly manner. This paper presents a smart metering architecture in which the users have access to their own high-frequency data and can use them as the input data to a multi-party secure protocol. Authenticity and correctness of the data are guaranteed by the usage of a public blockchain. The framework enables a gaming platform to administer a set of team game activities aimed at promoting a more sustainable usage of energy and water. We discuss and assess the performance of a protocol based on Shamir secret sharing scheme, which enables the members of the teams to calculate their overall consumption and to compare it with those of other teams without disclosing individual energy usage data. Additionally, the protocol impedes that the game platform learns the meter readings of the players (either individual or aggregated) and their challenge objectives

Enabling privacy in a gaming framework for smart electricity and water grids

Serious games are potentially powerful tools to influence users' preferences and attitudes. However, privacy concerns related to the misuse of data gathered from the players may emerge in online-gaming interactions. This work proposes a privacy-friendly framework for a gaming platform aimed at reducing energy and water usage, where players are grouped in teams with the challenge of maintaining the aggregated consumption of its members below a given threshold. We discuss a communication protocol which enables the team members to compute their overall consumption with- out disclosing individual measurements. Moreover, the protocol prevents the gaming platform from learning the consumption data and challenge objectives of the players. Correctness and truthfulness checks are included in the protocol to detect cheaters declaring false consumption data or providing altered game results. The security and performance of the framework are assessed, showing that scalability is ensured thanks to the limited data exchange and lightweight cryptographic operations

Blockchain in the built environment: analysing current applications and developing an emergent framework

Distributed ledger technology (DLT), commonly referred to as ‘blockchain’ and originally invented to create a peer-to-peer digital currency, is rapidly attracting interest in other sectors. The aim in this paper is (1) to investigate the applications of DLT within the built environment, and the challenges and opportunities facing its adoption; and (2) develop a multi-dimensional emergent framework for DLT adoption within the construction sector. Key areas of DLT applications were found in: smart energy; smart cities and the sharing economy; smart government; smart homes; intelligent transport; Building Information Modelling (BIM) and construction management; and business models and organisational structures. The results showed a significant concentration of DLT research on the operation phase of assets. This is expected given the significant resources and lifespan associated with the operation phase of assets and their social, environmental and economic impact. However, more attention is required to address the current gap at the design and construction phases to ensure that these phases are not treated in isolation from the operational phase. An emergent framework combining the political, social and technical dimensions was developed. The framework was overlaid with an extensive set of challenges and opportunities. The structured and inter-connected dimensions provided by the framework can be used by field researchers as a point of departure to investigate a range of research questions from political, social or technical perspectives

Review of Serious Energy Games : Objectives, Approaches, Applications, Data Integration, and Performance Assessment

In recent years, serious energy games (SEGs) garnered increasing attention as an innovative and effective approach to tackling energy-related challenges. This review delves into the multifaceted landscape of SEG, specifically focusing on their wide-ranging applications in various contexts. The study investigates potential enhancements in user engagement achieved through integrating social connections, personalization, and data integration. Among the main challenges identified, previous studies overlooked the full potential of serious games in addressing emerging needs in energy systems, opting for oversimplified approaches. Further, these studies exhibit limited scalability and constrained generalizability, which poses challenges in applying their findings to larger energy systems and diverse scenarios. By incorporating lessons learned from prior experiences, this review aims to propel the development of SEG toward more innovative and impactful directions. It is firmly believed that positive behavior changes among individuals can be effectively encouraged by using SEG

Favouring behavioural change of household’s energy consumption through social media and cooperative play

A change in how individuals consume energy is a key step in fighting climate change since it represents a crucial contribution to a more collective and sustainable lifestyle adoption. To carry out such process, designers and scientists are seeking new ways to increase public discussion and social involvement in energy reduction issues. In relation to this, the emphasis is on raising collective awareness to enable behavioural change and to inspire people in making sustainable decisions on energy consumption. This article draws on techniques and approaches from social science, gameful design and sustainability. It defines and discusses cooperative play as a privileged path for developing energy-related mobile applications. We present here an overview of multiple perspectives, in terms of content and methodology, to contribute to elaborating design methodologies that can favour behavioural change on households’ energy consumption

Draft of innovation and research roadmap

sepponen2014ano abstrac

The Role of Gamification in Privacy Protection and User Engagement

The interaction between users and several technologies has rapidly increased. In people’s daily habits, the use of several applications for different reasons has been introduced. The provision of attractive services is an important aspect that it should be considered during their design. The implementation of gamification supports this, while game elements create a more entertaining and appealing environment. At the same time, due to the collection and record of users’ information within them, security and privacy are needed to be considered as well, in order for these technologies to ensure a minimum level of security and protection of users’ information. Users, on the other hand, should be aware of their security and privacy, so as to recognize how they can be protected, while using gamified services. In this work, the relation between privacy and gamified applications, regarding both the software developers and the users, is discussed, leading to the necessity not only of designing privacy-friendly systems but also of educating users through gamification on privacy issues

Citizens Vote to Act: smart contracts for the management of water resources in smart cities

Smart cities leverage Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to enhance the quality of urban services. However, it is nowadays clear that the success of a smart city largely depends on the level of engagement of its citizens. In this paper we explore to what extent disruptive blockchain technologies can be used to incentivise the democratic participation of citizen. The investigated approach extends the standard IoT cycle 1) sense data, 2) cloudify and elaborate them, and 3) push information to the users. Here, the user takes an active role by means of data-informed votes on policies, therefore influencing behaviours. We illustrate such an approach by means of a proof-of-concept decentralised application (dApp) supporting the negotiation of polices for the management of urban water resources. The dApp consists of a smart contract that manages the execution of other smart contracts (the policies) according to the data-driven choices of the community. This use case demonstrates how suitably blockchain technologies can support fair and safe access to data and user engagement in smart cities

Prosumer behaviour in emerging electricity systems

This dissertation investigates the interface between technology and society in the emerging electricity systems and in particular the role of the energy prosumer in the energy transition. It contributes to the understanding of the role of consumers in emerging electricity systems within the current EU energy policy context where consumer active participation is regarded as "a prerequisite for managing the energy transition successfully and in a cost-effective way". Emerging energy systems are characterized by a high level of complexity, especially for what concerns the behaviour of social actors. Social actors interact through physical and social networks by sharing information and learning from one another through social interactions. These interactions determine self-organization and emergent behaviours in energy consumption patterns and practices. I argue that the best suited tool to study emergent behaviours in energy consumption patterns and practices, and to investigate how consumers' preferences and choices lead to macro behaviours is agent based modelling. To build a sound characterization of the energy prosumer, I review the current social psychology and behavioural theories on sustainable consumption and collect evidence from EU energy prosumers surveys, studies and demand side management pilot projects. I employ these findings to inform the development of an agent based model of the electricity prosumer, Subjective Individual Model of Prosumer – SIMP, and its extended version, SIMP-N, that includes the modelling of the social network. I apply SIMP and SIMP-N models to study the emergence in consumer systems and how values and beliefs at consumer level (as defined by social psychology and behavioural theories and informed by empirical evidence) and social dynamics lead to macro behaviours. More specifically, I explore the diffusion of smart grid technologies enabled services among a population of interacting prosumers and evaluate the impact of such diffusion on individual and societal performance indicators under different policy scenarios and contextual factors. The analysis of the simulation results provides interesting insights on how different psychological characteristics, social dynamics and technological elements can strongly influence consumers' choices and overall system performance. I conclude proposing a framework for an integrated approach to modelling emerging energy systems and markets that extend the SIMP model to also include markets, distribution system operator and the electricity network

SynergyGrids: blockchain-supported distributed microgrid energy trading

Growing intelligent cities is witnessing an increasing amount of local energy generation through renewable energy resources. Energy trade among the local energy generators (aka prosumers) and consumers can reduce the energy consumption cost and also reduce the dependency on conventional energy resources, not to mention the environmental, economic, and societal benefits. However, these local energy sources might not be enough to fulfill energy consumption demands. A hybrid approach, where consumers can buy energy from both prosumers (that generate energy) and also from prosumer of other locations, is essential. A centralized system can be used to manage this energy trading that faces several security issues and increase centralized development cost. In this paper, a hybrid energy trading system coupled with a smart contract named SynergyGrids has been proposed as a solution, that reduces the average cost of energy and load over the utility grids. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first attempt to create a hybrid energy trading platform over the smart contract for energy demand prediction. An hourly energy data set has been utilized for testing and validation purposes. The trading system shows 17.8% decrease in energy cost for consumers and 76.4% decrease in load over utility grids when compared with its counterparts