Social networks gamification for sustainability recommendation systems

10th International Symposium on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence (DCAI), Spain, Salamanca, 22 - 24 May 2013Intelligent environments and ambient intelligence provide means to monitor physical environments and to learn from users, generating data that can be used to promote sustainability. With communities of intelligent environments, it is possible to obtain information about environment and user behaviors which can be computed and ranked. Such rankings are bound to be dynamic as users and environments exchange interactions on a daily basis. This work aims to use knowledge from communities of intelligent environments to their own benefit. The approach presented in this work uses information from each environment, ranking them according to their sustainability assessment. Recommendations are then computed using similarity and clustering functions ranking users and environments, updating their previous records and launching new recommendations in the process

Gamification, social networks and sustainable environments

Intelligent environments and ambient intelligence enabled systems provide means to gather rich information from both environments and its users. With the help of such systems, it is possible to foster communities of ambient intelligence systems with community driven knowledge, which is created by individual actions and setups in each of the environments. Such arrangements provides the potential to build systems that promote better practices and more efficient and sustainable environments by promoting the community best examples and engaging users to adopt and develop proactive behaviors to improve their standings in the community. This work aims to use knowledge from communities of intelligent environments to their own benefit. The approach presented in this work uses information from different environments, ranking them according to their sustainability assessment. Recommendations are then computed using similarity and clustering functions ranking users and environments, updating their previous records and launching new recommendations in the process. Gamification concepts are used in order to keep users motivation and engage them actively to produce better results in terms of sustainability

Gamification, Social Networks and Sustainable Environments

Intelligent environments and ambient intelligence enabled systems provide means to gather rich information from both environments and its users. With the help of such systems, it is possible to foster communities of ambient intelligence systems with community driven knowledge, which is created by individual actions and setups in each of the environments. Such arrangements provides the potential to build systems that promote better practices and more efficient and sustainable environments by promoting the community best examples and engaging users to adopt and develop proactive behaviors to improve their standings in the community. This work aims to use knowledge from communities of intelligent environments to their own benefit. The approach presented in this work uses information from different environments, ranking them according to their sustainability assessment. Recommendations are then computed using similarity and clustering functions ranking users and environments, updating their previous records and launching new recommendations in the process. Gamification concepts are used in order to keep users motivation and engage them actively to produce better results in terms of sustainabilit

Scenarios for Educational and Game Activities using Internet of Things Data

Raising awareness among young people and changing their behavior and habits concerning energy usage and the environment is key to achieving a sustainable planet. The goal to address the global climate problem requires informing the population on their roles in mitigation actions and adaptation of sustainable behaviors. Addressing climate change and achieve ambitious energy and climate targets requires a change in citizen behavior and consumption practices. IoT sensing and related scenario and practices, which address school children via discovery, gamification, and educational activities, are examined in this paper. Use of seawater sensors in STEM education, that has not previously been addressed, is included in these educational scenaria

Sustainable business models: integrating employees, customers and technology

This Special Issue of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing has the same title as the 23rd International Conference CBIM 2018 (June 18-20, 2018, Madrid, Spain) “Sustainable Business Models: Integrating Employees, Customers and Technology”. In this edition of International Conference, following a competitive blind review process, papers from 126 authors and 25 countries were ultimately accepted. The best papers of the Conference were invited to submit to this Special Issue and we were also open to direct submissions from other authors. We present here the 17 accepted papers for publication in this Special Issue

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

Gamification in Ecology-Oriented Mobile Applications-Typologies and Purposes

Mobile applications viewed as digital social change tools are focused on sustainable development, particularly in topics that address ecology and the environment. In this research, the aim is to systematize a review of the 10 most downloaded mobile applications in this context, but deepening on those that use game elements in their interface, organizing them according to components, mechanics and playful dynamics. Findings demonstrate the role of levels and achievements as more repeated dynamics, and challenges and feedback as more relevant elements in gameplay, and finally, emotions and narratives as components of the gamified experience. The incorporation of these elements in mobile games shows that digital gamification in the environmental context is organized from an alternative perspective, where argumentation, the succession of events, the progressive incorporation of difficulty and the interaction with the computerized system modify the traditional view that sees gamification as a superficial system of points

An IoT-based solution for monitoring a fleet of educational buildings focusing on energy efficiency

Raising awareness among young people and changing their behaviour and habits concerning energy usage iskey to achieving sustained energy saving. Additionally, young people are very sensitive to environmental protection so raising awareness among children is much easier than with any other group of citizens. This work examinesways to create an innovative Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) ecosystem (including web-based, mobile, social and sensing elements) tailored specifically for school environments, taking into account both theusers (faculty, staff, students, parents) and school buildings, thus motivating and supporting young citizenś behavioural change to achieve greater energy efficiency. A mixture of open-source IoT hardware and proprietary platforms on the infrastructure level, are currently being utilized for monitoring a fleet of 18 educational buildings across 3 countries, comprising over 700 IoT monitoring points. Hereon presented is the system's high-level architecture, as well as several aspects of its implementation, related to the application domain of educational building monitoring and energy efficiency. The system is developed based on open-source technologies andservices in order to make it capable of providing open IT-infrastructure and support from different commercial hardware/sensor vendors as well as open-source solutions. The system presented can be used to develop and offer newapp-based solutions that can be used either for educational purposes or for managing the energy efficiency ofthebuilding. The system is replicable and adaptable to settings that may be different than the scenarios envisionedhere (e.g., targeting different climate zones), different IT infrastructures and can be easily extended to accommodate integration with other systems. The overall performance of the system is evaluated in real-world environment in terms of scalability, responsiveness and simplicity