The Gorilla in the Library: lessons in using ICT to engage building users in energy reduction

This paper is concerned with the role of the digital economy as an enabler of behaviour change in the built environment. The Greenview research project at De Montfort University (DMU), funded by JISC’s Greening ICT fund , has undertaken innovative work to explore novel and interesting ways to engage building users in energy reduction. Findings are presented around both the methodological challenges of capturing and presenting live electrical data for iPhone applications and the wider opportunities and barriers to ICT enabled behaviour change. From a technical perspective Greenview has shown the need to conduct detailed and thorough technical work to ensure the visualisations correlate to actual building performance and from the behaviour change perspective both Greenview and its predecessor (DUALL ) have explored moving beyond quantitative approaches to presenting information on energy and sustainability that is fun, creative and [hopefully] engaging. Finally, it is clear that without senior commitment and sincere staff engagement and collaboration mere information provision in the form of dashboards are impotent

Are people the problem or the solution? A critical look at the rise of the smart/intelligent building and the role of ICT enabled engagement

Almost 20 % of the UK’s energy consumption and CO2 emissions arise from non-domestic buildings. Behaviour change initiatives could have a significant impact given current estimates that around 30 % of energy in buildings is currently wasted. Most recently, the role of ICT and the digital economy has been championed as offering significant potential to contribute to carbon reduction targets within buildings. The creation of smart or intelligent buildings and increasingly sophisticated (and expensive) building energy management systems (BEMS) are viewed as step forward in cutting energy use by limiting the role of the building user. This paper takes a reflective stance in seeking to question the faith being placed in smart or intelligent buildings through asking, what role then for the building-user? The smart building approach appears to view the behaviour of users as a hurdle to overcome, rather than a resource to be utilized. At times it has had a narrow view of how technology and user-engagement can sit together. This paper suggests lessons can be learnt from other disciplines that champion the role of citizens and the benefits for user-engagement, participation and, increasingly, using digital technologies (such as smartphones and social media) to harness the co-creation of knowledge, collaboration and empowerment. A critical review of recent thinking in this area is presented before discussing the possible options available for organisations seeking to reduce the energy demand. Reflections are offered from a range of academic disciplines that shed light on the wider possibilities and opportunities digital technologies can offer for behaviour change and energy demand reduction in the non-domestic setting. For example, through enabling building users to both understand the environmental impact of their activities and to act in networks through social media applications of the digital technology

Quaternary Deformation Along the Wharekauhau Fault System, North Island, New Zealand: Implications for an Unstable Linkage Between Active Strike-Slip and Thrust Faults

The southern Wairarapa region of the North Island of New Zealand preserves a variably deformed late Quaternary stratigraphic sequence that provides insight into the temporal variability in the partitioning of contraction onto faults in the upper plate of an obliquely convergent margin. Detailed mapping, stratigraphic data, and new radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence ages from Quaternary units reveal the interaction between tectonics and sedimentation from ∼125 ka to(i.e., Wharekauhau fault system) at the southern end of the Wairarapa fault zone, a major oblique-slip fault in the upper plate of the Hikurangi Margin. The Wharekauhau thrust accommodated a minimum of 280 ± 60 m of horizontal shortening from ∼70 to 20 ka. The inferred shortening rate, 3.5–8.4 mm/yr, may have accounted for 11–30% of margin-normal plate motion. By ∼20 ka, the thrust was abandoned. Subsequent deformation at shallow levels occurred on a segmented fault system that accommodated/yr shortening. Active deformation in the region is partitioned between slip on (1) the more western Wairarapa-Mukamuka fault system (dominantly dextral slip but also causing local uplift of the coast); (2) a series of discontinuously expressed strike-slip faults and linking blind oblique-reverse thrusts near the trace of the inactive Wharekauhau thrust; and (3) a blind thrust fault farther to the east. The spatial and temporal complexity of the Wharekauhau fault system and the importance it has had in accommodating upper plate deformation argue for an unsteady linkage between upper plate faults and between these faults and the plate interface

The development of path integration: combining estimations of distance and heading

Efficient daily navigation is underpinned by path integration, the mechanism by which we use self-movement information to update our position in space. This process is well-understood in adulthood, but there has been relatively little study of path integration in childhood, leading to an underrepresentation in accounts of navigational development. Previous research has shown that calculation of distance and heading both tend to be less accurate in children as they are in adults, although there have been no studies of the combined calculation of distance and heading that typifies naturalistic path integration. In the present study 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds took part in a triangle-completion task, where they were required to return to the startpoint of a multi-element path using only idiothetic information. Performance was compared to a sample of adult participants, who were found to be more accurate than children on measures of landing error, heading error, and distance error. 7-year-olds were significantly more accurate than 5-year-olds on measures of landing error and heading error, although the difference between groups was much smaller for distance error. All measures were reliably correlated with age, demonstrating a clear development of path integration abilities within the age range tested. Taken together, these data make a strong case for the inclusion of path integration within developmental models of spatial navigational processing

Size and shape constancy in consumer virtual reality

With the increase in popularity of consumer virtual reality headsets, for research and other applications, it is important to understand the accuracy of 3D perception in VR. We investigated the perceptual accuracy of near-field virtual distances using a size and shape constancy task, in two commercially available devices. Participants wore either the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift and adjusted the size of a virtual stimulus to match the geometric qualities (size and depth) of a physical stimulus they were able to refer to haptically. The judgments participants made allowed for an indirect measure of their perception of the egocentric, virtual distance to the stimuli. The data show under-constancy and are consistent with research from carefully calibrated psychophysical techniques. There was no difference in the degree of constancy found in the two headsets. We conclude that consumer virtual reality headsets provide a sufficiently high degree of accuracy in distance perception, to allow them to be used confidently in future experimental vision science, and other research applications in psychology

The DisHuman child

In this paper we consider the relationship between the human and disability; with specific focus on the lives of disabled children and young people. We begin with an analysis of the close relationship between ‘the disabled’ and ‘the freak’. We demonstrate that the historical markings of disability as object of curiosity and register of fear serve to render disabled children as non-human and monstrous. We then consider how the human has been constituted, particularly in the periods of modernity and the rise of capitalism, reliant upon the naming of disability as antithetical to all that counts as human. In order to find a place for disabled children in a social and cultural context that has historically denied their humanity and cast them as monstrous others, we develop the theoretical notion of the DisHuman: a bifurcated complex that allows us recognise their humanity whilst also celebrating the ways in which disabled children reframe what it means to be human. We suggest that the lives of disabled children and young people demand us to think in ways that affirm the inherent humanness in their lives but also allow us to consider their disruptive potential: this is our DisHuman child. We draw on our research projects to explore three sites where the DisHuman child emerges in moments where sameness and difference, monstrosity/disability and humanity are invoked simultaneously. We explore three locations – (i) DisDevelopment; (ii) DisFamily and (iii) DisSexuality – illuminating the ways in which the DisHuman child seeks nuanced, politicized and complicating forms of humanity

The Underestimation Of Egocentric Distance: Evidence From Frontal Matching Tasks

There is controversy over the existence, nature, and cause of error in egocentric distance judgments. One proposal is that the systematic biases often found in explicit judgments of egocentric distance along the ground may be related to recently observed biases in the perceived declination of gaze (Durgin & Li, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, in press), To measure perceived egocentric distance nonverbally, observers in a field were asked to position themselves so that their distance from one of two experimenters was equal to the frontal distance between the experimenters. Observers placed themselves too far away, consistent with egocentric distance underestimation. A similar experiment was conducted with vertical frontal extents. Both experiments were replicated in panoramic virtual reality. Perceived egocentric distance was quantitatively consistent with angular bias in perceived gaze declination (1.5 gain). Finally, an exocentric distance-matching task was contrasted with a variant of the egocentric matching task. The egocentric matching data approximate a constant compression of perceived egocentric distance with a power function exponent of nearly 1; exocentric matches had an exponent of about 0.67. The divergent pattern between egocentric and exocentric matches suggests that they depend on different visual cues