Explaining smart heating systems to discourage fiddling with optimized behavior

Our work focuses on textual and graphical explanations for smart heating systems. We have started to investigate the opportunities for when to provide explanations, how we can design these explanations, and we have started to evaluate these explanations. We argue that explanations need to be carefully crafted to fit with their desired aim, in our case to encourage users' trust and reliance while minimizing user interactions

When Mental Models Grow (C)old : A Cognitive Perspective on Home Heating Automation

Have you ever tried to speed up a revolving door by pushing the panel in front of you, only to trigger its security mechanism and make it stop? If so, it is a simple example of a situation in which your mental representation of a system (door) and its actual functioning did not align. In other words, you applied an incorrect mental model. Understanding mental models can be important in a variety of contexts, including smart homes, where they impact next-generation heating control

Horses for courses: Making the case for persuasive engagement in smart systems

Current thrusts in explainable AI (XAI) have focused on using interpretability or explanatory debugging as frameworks for developing explanations. We argue that for some systems a different paradigm – persuasive engagement – needs to be adopted, in order to affect trust and user satisfaction. In this paper, we will briefly provide an overview of the current approaches to explain smart systems and their scope of application. We then introduce the theoretical basis for persuasive engagement, and show through a use case how explanations might be generated. We then discuss future work that might shed more light on how to best explain different kinds of smart systems

Incorporating social mechanisms in energy decarbonisation modelling

The achievement of national pledges that are compatible with the Paris Agreements warming limit of 1.5C is a massive challenge, as it requires not only an acceleration of technological innovation, but also a socio-economic and cultural transformation. Reducing uncertainties demands a better integration of behavioural evolutions in models exploring future energy pathways, including non-monetary barriers and drivers to technology diffusion. This study provides suggestions on incorporating social mechanisms of change such as resistance to change and the diffusion of environmental values into a UK-focused probabilistic energy system model, with a focus on people's attitudes towards residential heating technologies. We also offer a comprehensive literature review on interdisciplinary energy transitions modelling and exploratory scenarios embedding climate risks perceptions. We argue that efficient policy-making to meeting net-zero emissions targets must fully embrace whole-system approaches, support the more constrained segments of society, and account for interconnected socio-political factors

Ten years of sustainable energy planning and management

With this volume 40 the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management can celebrate its 10 years anniversary. In this editorial we take a closer look at the journals impact over its first 10 years of existence and highlight the articles that have made the largest impacts in the scientific community from a citation perspective. The topic of the journal – sustainable energy planning and management – has not decreased in importance over the first ten years of the journal’s existence – and fortunately the results published in the journal has garnered interest and the impact of the journal has significantly increased. In terms of citation, the journals 275 published articles, has received 1484 citations as per March 2024 and nine articles have 40 or more citations in Scopus. CiteScore ranks the journal in the top 10% out of 700+ journals within the topic of Geography, Planning and Development

Creative User-Centered Visualization Design for Energy Analysts and Modelers

We enhance a user-centered design process with techniques that deliberately promote creativity to identify opportunities for the visualization of data generated by a major energy supplier. Visualization prototypes developed in this way prove effective in a situation whereby data sets are largely unknown and requirements open – enabling successful exploration of possibilities for visualization in Smart Home data analysis. The process gives rise to novel designs and design metaphors including data sculpting. It suggests: that the deliberate use of creativity techniques with data stakeholders is likely to contribute to successful, novel and effective solutions; that being explicit about creativity may contribute to designers developing creative solutions; that using creativity techniques early in the design process may result in a creative approach persisting throughout the process. The work constitutes the first systematic visualization design for a data rich source that will be increasingly important to energy suppliers and consumers as Smart Meter technology is widely deployed. It is novel in explicitly employing creativity techniques at the requirements stage of visualization design and development, paving the way for further use and study of creativity methods in visualization design

Methods to Obtain the Occupant Perspective

This chapter summarizes the most important methods for actively engaging occupants in the processes of designing buildings. Each stage in the building life cycle places different demands on the professional-to-occupant relationship. Both objective and subjective data are important in this relationship and raises key epistemological questions about factors that cannot be directly observed—e.g., how do we know what we know about occupant behavior? The chapter guides the reader through this intellectually dangerous terrain by suggesting that the best way to find out what people think is to ask them. Some methods discussed here are familiar to practitioners, including interviews, surveys, focus groups, and direct observation. Others are just entering widespread practice, including virtual reality simulations, ubiquitous sensors and monitoring systems, and momentary ecological assessments. Each method has strengths, weaknesses, and appropriateness for use during certain stages of the building life cycle. The key takeaways from this chapter are that (1) building designers and operators can learn much value from occupants and (2) the new skills needed to engage successfully can be quickly learned. Occupant-centric design approaches that employ these methods improve the likelihood of successful building, interface design, and occupant outcomes