Monitoring human dynamics in Medway NHS Foundation Trust as part of a persuasive system to induce Pro-Environmental behaviour

The large demand of energy in the building sector is strongly related to how they are used, aside from their physical exterior/interior design [1]. Along these lines, it is valid to assume that the occupant behaviour contributes and is related to the energy consumption of a building. Electricity consumption is directly related to the actions taken by human beings [1]. In a hospital, this could mean usage of equipment, heating, water and so on. This implies that energy consumption in a specific area could be a function of the physical presence of human beings, referred to as occupancy, in this same area. However, not through a linear relationship as a study carried out by [2] has shown that the electricity consumption per person decreases as the occupants in an area increase. Thereby, it is important to consider dragging occupancy as part of an energy management plan carried out in an organisation. The effect of occupancy could be due to, but is not limited to, increased temperature resulting from the number of humans in an area or could mean an increased possibility of equipment usage, whether medical in case of hospitals or general equipment. The National Health Service (NHS) is considered an intense consumer of energy in the UK, if compared to other UK organisations. The NHS spendings on energy, across the UK, exceeds £750 million each year with a significant proportion being wasted, approximately 20% [3]. With hospitals being a busy environment that operate 24 hours on daily basis. It is important to consider efficient and sustainable energy measures to conserve energy and improve the carbon footprint. This paper presents an occupancy monitoring system based on sensor and networking technologies to provide occupancy data on individual selected wards/areas of Medway NHS Foundation Trust. The paper contributes to a research carried out in MNFT of the UK that aims at achieving behavioural change to cut Medway hospital’s electricity costs [4]. This is done through provision of feedback on electricity data through a smart metering system and motivation of staff members through goal-setting and other psychological aspects. Occupancy monitoring plays a crucial role in designing a robust system to induce pro-environmental behaviour among MNFT staff. Occupancy data would be analysed against energy consumption data to draw an understanding of the relation between them. The proposed method to achieve this, as seen in Figure 1, was to use the occupancy monitoring unit to provide occupancy information about different wards/areas of the hospital. This would then be analysed against the energy data provided by the electricity feedback system. The responsibility of the occupancy monitoring unit lies in counting the number of people in a ward/area of the hospital using sensor technology. Moreover, logging the data onto a centralised webserver for analysis against the electricity data. Prior research work introduced various techniques such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) [5, 6], Wi-Fi [7] and sensor networks [1, 8] to monitor occupancy for different applications rather than energy. Figure 1 shows the whole system and how the occupancy monitoring is situated among it. Apart from contributing to the hospital’s carbon footprint, the data collected could be used to support the fire officers during evacuation or for space utilisation and relocation of wards/departments in the hospital

Cloud Service Brokerage: A systematic literature review using a software development lifecycle

Cloud Service Brokerage (CSB) is an emerging technology that has become popular with cloud computing. CSB is a middleman providing value added services, developed using standard software development lifecycle, from cloud providers to consumers. This paper provides a systematic literature review on this topic, covering 41 publications from 2009 to 2015. The paper aims to provide an overview of CSB research status, and give suggestions on how CSB research should proceed. A descriptive analysis reveals a lack of contributions from the Information Systems discipline. A software development lifecycle analysis uncovers a severe imbalance of research contributions across the four stages of software development: design, develop, deploy, and manage. The majority of research contributions are geared toward the design stage with a minimal contribution in the remaining stages. As such, we call for a balanced research endeavor across the cycle given the equal importance of each stage within the CSB paradigm

Reduction of electricity Costs in Medway NHS by inducing pro-environmental behaviour using persuasive technology

Hospitals represent a busy environment with the majority of the medical operations relying on electricity, for example lighting and medical equipment. Hence, it is important to conserve it to ensure high quality of services, improve patients’ wellbeing as well as to the reduction of the hospitals’ carbon footprint and the impacts on the environment. The studies carried out in hospitals considered the use of renewable energy or the use of power efficient equipment to tackle the energy problem. The challenge remains open in how to tackle the energy problem in a hospital through behavioural change. This study represents a step into reducing electricity costs of Medway NHS Foundation Trust (MNFT) in the UK. The proposed idea is to use technology to persuade MNFT staff to monitor their behaviour and with the right motive, from selected and appointed energy delegates, sustain a pro-environmental behaviour. This paper describes the methodology and system proposed to reduce electricity costs in MNFT by inducing pro-environmental behaviour with the aid of technology. This involves a smart electricity metering system to collect and communicate energy data to a centralised server that pushes the data onto a dedicated web interface. Furthermore, addressing the psychological factors by appointing energy delegates to monitor the consumption, in selected areas, as well as motivate the staff members. In addition, monitoring human dynamics and analysing it against energy data to identify a relation between occupancy and electricity consumption trends in hospital wards

Reduction of electricity usage in Medway NHS Foundation Trust using persuasive technology: A review

Controlling energy consumption and carbon emission in the United Kingdom represents an ongoing challenge. The National Health Services’ (NHS), in the UK, annual spendings on energy are massive with a proportion of them being wasted energy. An initiative came aiming at reducing energy costs in Medway NHS Foundation Trust (MNFT) by inducing pro-environmental behaviour in the hospital with the aid of technology. Numerous researchers targeted human behaviour through the provision of feedback to reduce energy costs. This research focuses on electricity consumption in MNFT while considering designing a system that could be transferred to provide savings on other energy sources as well. Moreover, deploying a technology based feedback system that, with proper motivation, can introduce positive changes in MNFT staff pro-environmental behaviour. With hospitals being a good example of a busy environment, a key contribution would be monitoring occupancy and human dynamics in different areas of the hospital and analysing it against energy data. This paper reviews the literature around various motivational techniques for individuals to conserve energy in the building sector. This includes different types of feedback and addressing human psychology through goal setting, social comparison and so on. In conclusion, a hypothesis is set to address the energy problem in MNFT. The hypothesis involves the effect of using feedback technology on human behaviour and its impact on electricity consumption in MNFT

Contemporary analysis and architecture for a generic cloud-based sensor data management platform.

An increasing volume of data is being generated by sensors and smart devices deployed in different areas, often far from computing facilities such as data centres. These data can be difficult to gather and process using local computing infrastructure. This is due to cost and limited resources. Cloud computing provides scalable resources that are capable of addressing such problems. However, platform-independent methods of gathering and transmitting sensor data to Clouds are not widely available. This paper presents a state-of-the-art analysis of Cloud-based sensor monitoring and data gathering platforms. It discusses their strengths and weaknesses and reviews the current trends in this area. Informed by the analysis, the paper further proposes a generic conceptual architecture for achieving a platform-neutral Cloud-based sensor monitoring and data gathering platform. We also discuss the objectives, design decisions and the implementation considerations for the conceptual architecture.IC

Inducing pro-environmental behaviour in National Health Service (NHS) to reduce energy costs using persuasive technology techniques

Hospitals represent a busy environment when considering energy consumption in the building sector. Electricity represents a crucial powering source in hospitals including, but not limited to, lighting, catering and medical equipment. Hence, it is important to conserve it to ensure high quality of services that would enhance the patients’ health. This would also contribute to the reduction of the hospitals’ carbon footprint as well as the harmful impacts on the environment. The studies carried out in hospitals considered the use of renewable energy or the use of more power efficient equipment to tackle the energy problem. The challenge remains open in how to tackle the energy problem in a hospital by influencing pro-environmental behaviour. This study represents a step into reducing electricity costs of Medway NHS Foundation Trust (MNFT) in the UK. The proposed idea is to use technology to persuade MNFT staff to monitor their behaviour and with the right motive, from selected and appointed energy delegates, sustain a pro-environmental behaviour. Through combining technology, in the form of feedback on energy consumption and monitoring occupancy rates, and behavioural factors, represented in motivation from energy delegates and spreading awareness; it is possible to develop and sustain a proenvironmental behaviour among MNFT staff. This paper aims at describing the methodology proposed to reduce energy costs in MNFT by inducing pro-environmental behaviour with the aid of technology. This involves a smart electricity sub-metering system to collect and communicate energy data to a centralised server that pushes the data onto a dedicated web interface. Furthermore, addressing the psychological factors by appointing energy delegates to monitor the consumption, in selected areas, as well as motivate the staff members. In addition, monitoring human dynamics and analysing it against energy data. The study will include a baseline data collection period, for reference, followed by an experimental period to test and evaluate the system

LAYSI: A layered approach for SLA-violation propagation in self-manageable cloud infrastructures

Cloud computing represents a promising comput ing paradigm where computing resources have to be allocated to software for their execution. Self-manageable Cloud in frastructures are required to achieve that level of flexibility on one hand, and to comply to users' requirements speci fied by means of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on the other. Such infrastructures should automatically respond to changing component, workload, and environmental conditions minimizing user interactions with the system and preventing violations of agreed SLAs. However, identification of sources responsible for the possible SLA violation and the decision about the reactive actions necessary to prevent SLA violation is far from trivial. First, in this paper we present a novel approach for mapping low-level resource metrics to SLA parameters necessary for the identification of failure sources. Second, we devise a layered Cloud architecture for the bottom-up propagation of failures to the layer, which can react to sensed SLA violation threats. Moreover, we present a communication model for the propagation of SLA violation threats to the appropriate layer of the Cloud infrastructure, which includes negotiators, brokers, and automatic service deployer. © 2010 IEEE

Building consumer trust in the cloud: an experimental analysis of the cloud trust label approach

The lack of transparency surrounding cloud service provision makes it difficult for consumers to make knowledge based purchasing decisions. As a result, consumer trust has become a major impediment to cloud computing adoption. Cloud Trust Labels represent a means of communicating relevant service and security information to potential customers on the cloud service provided, thereby facilitating informed decision making. This research investigates the potential of a Cloud Trust Label system to overcome the trust barrier. Specifically, it examines the impact of a Cloud Trust Label on consumer perceptions of a service and cloud service provider trustworthiness and trust in the cloud service and cloud service provider. An experimental study was carried out with a sample of 227 business decision makers with data collected before exposure to the label to examine initial perceptions and after exposure to the label to examine any change in perceptions and attitudes. As hypothesised, the results suggest that Cloud Trust Labels that contain positive information can have a positive impact on trust and trustworthiness while Cloud Trust Labels that contain negative information have a negative impact. The practical implications of this new method of communicating trustworthiness online are discussed and recommendations are made for future research

A trust label system for communicating trust in cloud services.

Cloud computing is rapidly changing the digital service landscape. A proliferation of Cloud providers has emerged, increasing the difficulty of consumer decisions. Trust issues have been identified as a factor holding back Cloud adoption. The risks and challenges inherent in the adoption of Cloud services are well recognised in the computing literature. In conjunction with these risks, the relative novelty of the online environment as a context for the provision of business services can increase consumer perceptions of uncertainty. This uncertainty is worsened in a Cloud context due to the lack of transparency, from the consumer perspective, into the service types, operational conditions and the quality of service offered by the diverse providers. Previous approaches failed to provide an appropriate medium for communicating trust and trustworthiness in Clouds. A new strategy is required to improve consumer confidence and trust in Cloud providers. This paper presents the operationalisation of a trust label system designed to communicate trust and trustworthiness in Cloud services. We describe the technical details and implementation of the trust label components. Based on a use case scenario, an initial evaluation was carried out to test its operations and its usefulness for increasing consumer trust in Cloud services.N/

“We aren’t idlers”: Using subjective group dynamics to promote prosocial driver behavior at long‐wait stops

Idling engines are a substantial air pollutant which contribute to many health and environmental problems. In this field experiment (N = 419) we use the subjective group dynamics framework to test ways of motivating car drivers to turn off idle engines at a long wait stop where the majority leave their engines idling. One of three normative messages (descriptive norm, in‐group prescriptive deviance, outgroup prescriptive deviance) was displayed when barriers were down at a busy railway level‐crossing. Compared to the baseline, normative messages increased the proportion of drivers that turned off their engines. Consistent with subjective group dynamics theory, the most effective approach was to highlight instances of in‐group prescriptive deviance (47% stopped idling, compared with 28% in the baseline). Implications for health and environmental outcomes and future research are discussed