Towards an holistic view of the energy and environmental impacts of domestic media and IT

To date, research in sustainable HCI has dealt with eco-feedback, usage and recycling of appliances within the home, and longevity of portable electronics such as mobile phones. However, there seems to be less awareness of the energy and greenhouse emissions impacts of domestic consumer electronics and information technology. Such awareness is needed to inform HCI sustainability researchers on how best to prioritise efforts around digital media and IT. Grounded in inventories, interview and plug energy data from 33 undergraduate student participants, our findings provide the context for assessing approaches to reducing the energy and carbon emissions of media and IT in the home. In the paper, we use the findings to discuss and inform more fruitful directions that sustainable HCI research might take, and we quantify how various strategies might have modified the energy and emissions impacts for our participants

Beyond data in the smart city:learning from a case study of re-purposing existing campus IoT

In this article we present a case study of our experiences of using existing IoT infrastructure to create a campus scale “living laboratory” for promoting energy savings and environmental sustainability. As a series of lessons for others creating IoT systems from existing city infrastructures we offer the challenges we have experienced through our attempt to join up and re-purpose existing energy monitoring and building management systems as an IoT infrastructure for a “smart campus”. We highlight the limitations of particular views of a campus from a purely data-driven perspective, advocating data- aware over data-driven approaches that engage with a wide variety of stakeholders. Finally, we reflect on the inclusion of people’s practices in understanding and designing smart cities, repurposing existing IoT, more careful consideration of ethics and domestication when co-creating smart campuses and the importance of challenging the existing rhetoric around energy waste in Smart Cities and Smart buildings research

Itzï (version 17.1):an open-source, distributed GIS model for dynamic flood simulation

Worldwide, floods are acknowledged as one of the most destructive hazards. In human-dominated environments, their negative impacts are ascribed not only to the increase in frequency and intensity of floods but also to a strong feedback between the hydrological cycle and anthropogenic development. In order to advance a more comprehensive understanding of this complex interaction, this paper presents the development of a new open-source tool named <q>Itzï</q> that enables the 2-D numerical modelling of rainfall–runoff processes and surface flows integrated with the open-source geographic information system (GIS) software known as GRASS. Therefore, it takes advantage of the ability given by GIS environments to handle datasets with variations in both temporal and spatial resolutions. Furthermore, the presented numerical tool can handle datasets from different sources with varied spatial resolutions, facilitating the preparation and management of input and forcing data. This ability reduces the preprocessing time usually required by other models. Itzï uses a simplified form of the shallow water equations, the damped partial inertia equation, for the resolution of surface flows, and the Green–Ampt model for the infiltration. The source code is now publicly available online, along with complete documentation. The numerical model is verified against three different tests cases: firstly, a comparison with an analytic solution of the shallow water equations is introduced; secondly, a hypothetical flooding event in an urban area is implemented, where results are compared to those from an established model using a similar approach; and lastly, the reproduction of a real inundation event that occurred in the city of Kingston upon Hull, UK, in June 2007, is presented. The numerical approach proved its ability at reproducing the analytic and synthetic test cases. Moreover, simulation results of the real flood event showed its suitability at identifying areas affected by flooding, which were verified against those recorded after the event by local authorities

Itzï (version 17.1):an open-source, distributed GIS model for dynamic flood simulation

Worldwide, floods are acknowledged as one of the most destructive hazards. In human-dominated environments, their negative impacts are ascribed not only to the increase in frequency and intensity of floods but also to a strong feedback between the hydrological cycle and anthropogenic development. In order to advance a more comprehensive understanding of this complex interaction, this paper presents the development of a new open-source tool named <q>Itzï</q> that enables the 2-D numerical modelling of rainfall–runoff processes and surface flows integrated with the open-source geographic information system (GIS) software known as GRASS. Therefore, it takes advantage of the ability given by GIS environments to handle datasets with variations in both temporal and spatial resolutions. Furthermore, the presented numerical tool can handle datasets from different sources with varied spatial resolutions, facilitating the preparation and management of input and forcing data. This ability reduces the preprocessing time usually required by other models. Itzï uses a simplified form of the shallow water equations, the damped partial inertia equation, for the resolution of surface flows, and the Green–Ampt model for the infiltration. The source code is now publicly available online, along with complete documentation. The numerical model is verified against three different tests cases: firstly, a comparison with an analytic solution of the shallow water equations is introduced; secondly, a hypothetical flooding event in an urban area is implemented, where results are compared to those from an established model using a similar approach; and lastly, the reproduction of a real inundation event that occurred in the city of Kingston upon Hull, UK, in June 2007, is presented. The numerical approach proved its ability at reproducing the analytic and synthetic test cases. Moreover, simulation results of the real flood event showed its suitability at identifying areas affected by flooding, which were verified against those recorded after the event by local authorities

Exploring (un)sustainable growth of digital technologies in the home

HCI and Ubicomp research often centres around the support of humans interacting with digital technology. Despite this obvious focus, there seems to be less work on understanding how these digital technologies can lead to growth in use, dependence, and influence practices in everyday life. In this paper we discuss how digital technologies have been, and continue to be, adopted in domestic practices—and how the growth of interactions with various ecologies of digital technologies can lead to growth in use and energy consumption. We further the discussion within ICT4S and sustainable HCI on how to promote research that encourages sustainability as a core concern—socially, economically, and ecologically—emphasising that defining limits to growth are important when trying to affect change in sustainable directions. We echo calls for more significant sustainability research from HCI, and set out some avenues of design for moving in this direction

Demand in my pocket:mobile devices and the data connectivity marshalled in support of everyday practice

This paper empirically explores the role that mobile devices have come to play in everyday practice, and how this links to demand for network connectivity and online services. After a preliminary device-logging period, thirteen participants were interviewed about how they use their iPhones or iPads. Our findings build a picture of how, through use of such devices, a variety of daily practices have come to depend upon a working data connection, which sometimes surges, but is at least always a trickle. This aims to inform the sustainable design of applications, services and infrastructures for smartphones and tablets. By focusing our analysis in this way, we highlight a little-explored challenge for sustainable HCI and discuss ideas for (re)designing around the principle of 'light-weight' data 'needs'

Are people the key to enabling collaborative smart logistics?

The number of parcels delivered is growing annually, with a 15.7% increase to 1 billion parcel deliveries in the UK in 2015. We introduce Freight Traffic Control 2050 which is exploring how to transform last-mile urban freight through “collaborative logistics”. Based on our ethnographic fieldwork, we introduce the context and challenges in this domain. We highlight the value of experience and tacit knowledge, and the importance of approaching this domain from a socio-technical perspective. We offer a selection of early challenges identified as a starting point for discussion within the HCI community

Smile from the Past: A general option pricing framework with multiple volatility and leverage components

In the current literature, the analytical tractability of discrete time option pricing models is guarantee only for rather specific type of models and pricing kernels. We propose a very general and fully analytical option pricing framework encompassing a wide class of discrete time models featuring multiple components structure in both volatility and leverage and a flexible pricing kernel with multiple risk premia. Although the proposed framework is general enough to include either GARCH-type volatility, Realized Volatility or a combination of the two, in this paper we focus on realized volatility option pricing models by extending the Heterogeneous Autoregressive Gamma (HARG) model of Corsi et al. (2012) to incorporate heterogeneous leverage structures with multiple components, while preserving closed-form solutions for option prices. Applying our analytically tractable asymmetric HARG model to a large sample of S&P 500 index options, we evidence its superior ability to price out-of-the-money options compared to existing benchmarks

Poster: Understanding Mobile User Interactions with the IoT

The increasing reach of the Internet of Things (IoT) is leading to a world rich in sensors [3] that can be used to support physical analytics -- analogous to web analytics but targeted at user interactions with physical devices in the real-world (e.g. [2]). In contrast to web analytics, physical analytics systems typically only provide data relating to sensors and objects without consideration of individual users. This is mainly a consequence of an inability to track individual mobile user interactions across multiple physical objects (or across sessions of interaction with a single object) using, for example, an analogue of a web cookie. Indeed, such a "physical analytics cookie" could raise significant privacy concerns. However, in many cases a more "human-centric" approach to analytics would enable us to provide new and interesting insights into interactions between mobile users and the physical world [1]. In our work we endeavour to leverage synthetic user traces of human mobility, and data from real IoT systems, to provide such insights

Are there limits to growth in data traffic?:on time use, data generation and speed

This discussion paper considers the nature of growth in data traffic across the Internet, as a basis for asking whether and how such growth might slow down or otherwise be limited. Over the last decade, data growth has been dramatic, and forecasts predict a similar ongoing pattern. Since this is associated with increasing electricity consumption, such a trend is significant to global efforts to reduce carbon emis- sions. In this paper, we selectively explore aspects of data growth that are linked to everyday practices and the way they draw upon and generate Internet data. We suggest that such growth does have some conceivable limits. However, the nature of ‘Internet use’ is changing and forms of growth are emerging that are more disconnected from human ac- tivity and time-use. This suggests that although there may well be limits, in principle, to some forms of growth, total data traffic seems likely to continue growing. This calls for careful attention to the nature of the trends involved, as a basis for intentionally building limits into this system be- fore levels of Internet electricity demand becomes directly and more explicitly problematic