A Decision Support System for Photovoltaic Potential Estimation

With knowledge on the photovoltaic potential of individual residential buildings, solar companies, energy service providers and electric utilities can identify suitable customers for new PV installations and directly address them in renewable energy rollout and maintenance campaigns. However, many currently used solutions for the simulation of energy generation require detailed information about houses (roof tilt, shading, etc.) that is usually not available at scale. On the other hand, the methodologies enabling extraction of such details require costly remote-sensing data from three-dimensional (3D) laser scanners or aerial images. To bridge this gap, we present a decision support system (DSS) that estimates the potential amount of electric energy that could be generated at a given location if a photovoltaic system would be installed. The DSS automatically generates insights about photovoltaic yields of individual roofs by analyzing freely available data sources, including the crowdsourced volunteered geospatial information systems OpenStreetMap and climate databases. The resulting estimates pose a valuable foundation for selecting the most prospective households (e.g., for personal visit and screening by an expert) and targeted solar panel kit offerings, ultimately leading to significant reduction of manual human efforts, and to cost-effective personalized renewables adoption

How the AIS can Improve its Contributions to the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals: Towards A Framework for Scaling Collaborations and Evaluating Impact

In June, 2019, the Association for Information Systems (AIS) adopted a new approach to addressing global sustainability issues by establishing the AIS Sustainability Task Force (AIS STF). This initiative focuses on building on the outcomes from the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDG, 2000-2015) and applying them to address the challenges associated with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG, 2016-2030). In this paper, we review the challenges and outcomes from the UN sustainability programs with their potential relevance to IS in general and the AIS in particular to inform and assist increased efforts to achieve the global sustainability goals. The initial event, the AIS Sustainability Summit held at ICIS 2019, provided a forum for AIS groups and communities to share their current interests, plans, activities, and experiences relevant to the MDG and SDG. The event primarily focused on facilitating opportunities to scale the AIS’s sustainability activities through multi-disciplinary collaboration across the AIS and its communities. Members from four AIS special interest groups and the STF’s Education Workgroup presented exemplary projects at the summit that demonstrated how one can apply applied IS and research capabilities to address sustainability challenges. The sustainability summit’s also explored opportunities to achieve positive impact in addressing the SDG’s global challenges through applying AIS members’ knowledge, skills, and capabilities in relevant ways in collaboration with suitable organizations outside the AIS. Potential organizations include business, government, societal groups, and UN bodies. We presented and discussed the AIS STF’s aims, plans, outcomes, and impact. By analyzing details and options for cross-organizational collaboration, the representatives of organizations at the sustainability summit developed a proposed framework for scaling contributions and evaluating impact. Finally, they drew conclusions about the proposed activities, approaches, and framework for the AIS to improve the scope and scale of its contributions in addressing the SDG. Critically, the AIS needs to ensure that its proposed activities, contributions, and impact are examined by an internationally recognized independent process. We propose a model for the AIS to realize this requirement for evaluation in 2021

EyeDuino project: a study of community-engaged automated gardening systems powered by renewable energy

This study aims to address the digital divide amongst particular communities in Dublin through an innovative assemblage of gardening, renewable energy and bespoke automation systems. Through the combination of gardening (as a social and cultural activity undertaken in specific communities), automation, digital technologies, and networked practices (including a bespoke phone app), this project investigates the social outcomes and attitudes emerging from the gardening system developed for the project and the issues it raises in relation to digital literacy, sustainability and community empowerment. The number of technologies being embedded into the fabric of our society is ever increasing. However, the exposure level to such innovative solutions is not evenly spread across the population. Various determinants ranging from financial to cultural factors shape the process of engagement and adoption of technology, which in turn shapes the population's attitude towards innovations as Hill (1988) and Winner (1989) observed. This uneven diffusion of technologies uptake may result in a potential decrease in people acquiring new skills and knowledge, leading to an increase of the digital divide(N. Taylor et al., 2018). To this end, the author designed six automated gardening systems and deployed them at six community gardens located in Dublin, Republic of Ireland with the intention of discovering the actors that influence the stakeholders' adoption of innovative technologies and reveal the 'accidents' (Virilio & Lotringer, 1983) that happened following this engagement process. Moreover, as these experimental installations are powered by renewable energy produced by photovoltaic solar panels, the participants' sustainability awareness and acceptance are imparted and discussed. The niche innovative gardening systems assisted the participants with their tasks around their garden, while trying to fill the 'attitude-behaviour gap' (Claudy et al., 2012; Ozaki, 2011; Peattie, 2001) regarding adoption of renewable energy sources. Apart from aspects of social, financial and education attainment nature, this study confirms that the 'labor illusion' (Buell & Norton, 2011), a concept providing that people expect to see that the technologies are 'working hard', plays a critical role in stakeholders' willingness to learn new skills related to using those technologies. The participants did not assign a financial value to the gardening automation systems, which were offered to them as a 'gift'. However, they used the systems to advertise their higher affluence within their community, and as an opportunity to show-off their new acquired skills. This played a major role in their engagement with the artefact. Furthermore, the younger participants who are still living with their parents proved that niche innovations may act to breaking the cultural barriers regarding a set of mutually accepted cultural rules within their communities regarding engaging in tasks which are not necessarily perceived as socially acceptable, such as gardening in this instance. The bespoke artefact designed specifically for this project allows the author to reveal and discuss the factors that influenced the participants' attitude related to renewable energy sources. Also, determinants acting as barriers/incentives towards participants from Dublin, Republic of Ireland in engaging with innovations and the resulting outcomes following this interaction are examined