A decision support system for fostering smart energy efficient districts

The role of ICT is becoming prominent in tackling some of the urban societal challenges such as energy wastage and increasing carbon emissions. In this context, the concept of DAREED aims to deliver an integrated decision support system (DSS) to drive energy efficiency and low carbon activities at both a building and district level. The main aim of this paper is to present the technical concept of the Best Practices recommendation component of the DAREED system. This component seeks to compare and identify existing best practices to recommend practical actions to various stakeholders (e.g. building managers, citizens) in order to improve energy performance considering the global needs of a building. This paper also discusses the context of the three field trial sites (based in UK, Spain and Italy) in which the DAREED platform along with the best practices tool is to be tested and validated.This work evolved in the context of the project DAREED (Decision support Advisor for innovative business models and useR engagement for smart Energy Efficient Districts), www.dareed.eu, a project cofunded by the EC within FP7, Grant agreement no: 609082

Design Ltd.: Renovated Myths for the Development of Socially Embedded Technologies

This paper argues that traditional and mainstream mythologies, which have been continually told within the Information Technology domain among designers and advocators of conceptual modelling since the 1960s in different fields of computing sciences, could now be renovated or substituted in the mould of more recent discourses about performativity, complexity and end-user creativity that have been constructed across different fields in the meanwhile. In the paper, it is submitted that these discourses could motivate IT professionals in undertaking alternative approaches toward the co-construction of socio-technical systems, i.e., social settings where humans cooperate to reach common goals by means of mediating computational tools. The authors advocate further discussion about and consolidation of some concepts in design research, design practice and more generally Information Technology (IT) development, like those of: task-artifact entanglement, universatility (sic) of End-User Development (EUD) environments, bricolant/bricoleur end-user, logic of bricolage, maieuta-designers (sic), and laissez-faire method to socio-technical construction. Points backing these and similar concepts are made to promote further discussion on the need to rethink the main assumptions underlying IT design and development some fifty years later the coming of age of software and modern IT in the organizational domain.Comment: This is the peer-unreviewed of a manuscript that is to appear in D. Randall, K. Schmidt, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Designing Socially Embedded Technologies: A European Challenge (2013, forthcoming) with the title "Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications on Design" within an EUSSET editorial initiative (www.eusset.eu/

Evolutionary Service Composition and Personalization Ecosystem for Elderly Care

Current demographic trends suggest that people are living longer, while the ageing process entails many necessities, calling for care services tailored to the individual senior’s needs and life style. Personalized provision of care services usually involves a number of stakeholders, including relatives, friends, caregivers, professional assistance organizations, enterprises, and other support entities. Traditional Information and Communication Technology based care and assistance services for the elderly have been mainly focused on the development of isolated and generic services, considering a single service provider, and excessively featuring a techno-centric approach. In contrast, advances on collaborative networks for elderly care suggest the integration of services from multiple providers, encouraging collaboration as a way to provide better personalized services. This approach requires a support system to manage the personalization process and allow ranking the {service, provider} pairs. An additional issue is the problem of service evolution, as individual’s care needs are not static over time. Consequently, the care services need to evolve accordingly to keep the elderly’s requirements satisfied. In accordance with these requirements, an Elderly Care Ecosystem (ECE) framework, a Service Composition and Personalization Environment (SCoPE), and a Service Evolution Environment (SEvol) are proposed. The ECE framework provides the context for the personalization and evolution methods. The SCoPE method is based on the match between the customer´s profile and the available {service, provider} pairs to identify suitable services and corresponding providers to attend the needs. SEvol is a method to build an adaptive and evolutionary system based on the MAPE-K methodology supporting the solution evolution to cope with the elderly's new life stages. To demonstrate the feasibility, utility and applicability of SCoPE and SEvol, a number of methods and algorithms are presented, and illustrative scenarios are introduced in which {service, provider} pairs are ranked based on a multidimensional assessment method. Composition strategies are based on customer’s profile and requirements, and the evolutionary solution is determined considering customer’s inputs and evolution plans. For the ECE evaluation process the following steps are adopted: (i) feature selection and software prototype development; (ii) detailing the ECE framework validation based on applicability and utility parameters; (iii) development of a case study illustrating a typical scenario involving an elderly and her care needs; and (iv) performing a survey based on a modified version of the technology acceptance model (TAM), considering three contexts: Technological, Organizational and Collaborative environment

Social Cloud-based Cognitive Reasoning for Task-oriented Recommendation

The Social Internet of Things (SIoT) is recently being promoted in literature for enabling the integration of devices into users’ daily life. This integration can be achieved by taking advantage of the inter-connectivity and the user-friendliness offered by Social Network Services (SNS). The novel SIoT paradigm opens the door for studying the intelligence mechanisms required to enhance services adaptability. We study the integration of cognitive reasoning into SIoT for providing recommendation of quotidian tasks in smart homes. In order to achieve situation characterization, reasoning about physical as well as social aspects of context is required. Thus, as a service built on top of Social Cloud (SoC), we propose an intelligent recommendation (InRe) framework. This framework applies the reasoning mechanism on context elements which are represented using ontologies. ThigsChat is provided as a proof-of-concept prototype. Initial experiments indicate a considerable improvement in adaptability of recommendation results to users’ situations

Supporting social innovation through visualisations of community interactions

Online communities that form through the introduction of sociotechnical platforms require significant effort to cultivate and sustain. Providing open, transparent information on community behaviour can motivate participation from community members themselves, while also providing platform administrators with detailed interaction dynamics. However, challenges arise in both understanding what information is conducive to engagement and sustainability, and then how best to represent this information to platform stakeholders. Towards a better understanding of these challenges, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a set of simple visualisations integrated into a Collective Awareness Platform for Social Innovation platform titled commonfare.net. We discuss the promise and challenge of bringing social innovation into the digital age, in terms of supporting sustained platform use and collective action, and how the introduction of community visualisations has been directed towards achieving this goal