Application of a clustering framework to UK domestic electricity data

Abstract—The UK electricity industry will shortly have available a massively increased amount of data from domestic households and this paper is a step towards deriving useful information from non intrusive household level monitoring of electricity. The paper takes an approach to clustering domestic load profiles that has been successfully used in Portugal and applies it to UK data. It is found that the preferred technique in the Portuguese work (a process combining Self Organised Maps and Kmeans) is not appropriate for the UK data. The workuses data collected in Milton Keynes around 1990 and shows that clusters of households can be identified demonstrating the appropriateness of defining more stereotypical electricity usagepatterns than the two load profiles currently published by the electricity industry. The work is part of a wider project to successfully apply demand side management techniques to gain benefits across the whole electricity network

An approach for assessing clustering of households by electricity usage

How a household varies their regular usage of electricity is useful information for organisations to allow accurate targeting of behaviour modification initiatives with the aim of improving the overall efficiency of the electricity network. The variability of regular activities in a household is one possible indication of that household’s willingness to accept incentives to change their behaviour. An approach is presented for identifying a way of representing the variability of a household’s behaviour and developing an efficient way of clustering the households, using these measures of variability, into a few, usable groupings. To evaluate the effectiveness of the variability measures, a number of cluster validity indexes are explored with regard to how the indexes vary with the number of clusters, the number of attributes, and the quality of the attributes. The Cluster Dispersion Indicator (CDI) and the Davies-Boulden Indicator(DBI) are selected for future work developing various indicators of household behaviour variability. The approach is tested using data from 180 UK households monitored for over a year at a sampling interval of 5 minutes.Data is taken from the evening peak electricity usage period of 4pm to 8pm

Designing touch screen user interfaces for future flight deck operations

Many interactional issues with Flight Management Systems (FMS) in modern flight decks have been reported. Avionics designers are seeking for ways to reduce cognitive load of pilots with the aim to reduce the potential for human error. Academic research showed that touch screen interfaces reduce cognitive effort and provide an intuitive way of interaction. A new way of interaction to manipulate radio frequencies of avionics systems is presented in this paper. A usability experiment simulating departures and approaches to airports was used to evaluate the interface and compare it with the current system (FMS). In addition, interviews with pilots were conducted to find out their personal impressions and to reveal problem areas of the interface. Analyses of task completion time and error rates showed that the touch interface is significantly faster and less prone to user input errors than the conventional input method (via physical or virtual keypad). Potential problem areas were identified and an improved interface is suggested

Target size guidelines for interactive displays on the flight deck

The avionics industry is seeking to understand the challenges and benefits of touchscreens on flight decks. This paper presents an investigation of interactive displays on the flight deck focusing on the impact of target size, placement and vibration on performance. A study was undertaken with search and rescue (SAR) crew members in an operational setting in helicopters. Results are essential to understand how to design effective touchscreen interfaces for the flight deck. Results show that device placement, vibration and target size have significant effects on targeting accuracy. However, increasing target size eliminates the negative effects of placement and vibration in most cases. The findings suggest that 15 mm targets are sufficiently large for non-safety critical Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) applications. For interaction with fixed displays where pilots have to extend their arms, and for safety critical tasks it is recommended to use interactive elements of about 20 mm size

Application of a clustering framework to UK domestic electricity data

Abstract—The UK electricity industry will shortly have available a massively increased amount of data from domestic households and this paper is a step towards deriving useful information from non intrusive household level monitoring of electricity. The paper takes an approach to clustering domestic load profiles that has been successfully used in Portugal and applies it to UK data. It is found that the preferred technique in the Portuguese work (a process combining Self Organised Maps and Kmeans) is not appropriate for the UK data. The workuses data collected in Milton Keynes around 1990 and shows that clusters of households can be identified demonstrating the appropriateness of defining more stereotypical electricity usagepatterns than the two load profiles currently published by the electricity industry. The work is part of a wider project to successfully apply demand side management techniques to gain benefits across the whole electricity network

Open CSCW systems: will ODP help?

This paper is concerned with the role of Open Distributed Processing systems within the development of cooperative systems. In particular, we focus on the need to provide Open CSCW systems and their impact on distributed systems. The work currently being undertaken in Open Distributed Systems (ODP) is used to highlight signifcant trends for future open CSCW systems. It will be shown that the CSCW and ODP community share mutual interests and have complementary aims and goals developed from different perspectives. The paper introduces CSCW highlighting the requirements CSCW places on distributed systems. The development of an environment to support open CSCW systems is introduced and briefly described. Finally, the relationships between requirements and models for Open CSCW systems and the Basic Reference Model of ODP are discussed.Peer Reviewe

Mixed method approach in designing flight decks with touch screens: a framework

Touch screen technology’s first public appearance was in the early 2000s. Touch screens became a part of the daily life with the invention of smartphones and tablets. Now, this technology has the potential to be the next big change in flight deck design. To date, mobile devices are deployed by several air carriers to perform a host of non-safety critical pre-flight and in-flight tasks. Due to high safety requirements requested by authorities, new technologies cannot be adopted as fast as in other settings. Flight deck evolution, which is briefly presented in this paper, is reflecting this natural time delay. Avionics manufacturers are exploring and working on future concepts with touch screen displays. This paper investigates the potential benefits and challenges of touch screen technology on flight decks by means of a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods (mixed method approach). On the basis of this, a framework was constructed showing the relation between various aspects that could impact the usability of touch screens on the flight deck. This paper concludes with a preliminary questionnaire that can help avionic designers to evaluate whether a touch screen is an appropriate user interface for their system

Towards open CSCW systems

Applications designed to support the work of groups will becoming increasingly important to future distributed systems. This paper considers the role of distributed systems within the development of cooperative systems. In particular, we focus on the need to provide Open CSCW systems and their impact on distributed systems. The work currently being undertoken in Open Distributed Systems (ODP) is used to highlight significant trends for future open CSCW systems. It will be shown that the CSCW and ODP community share mutual interests and have complementary aims and goals developed from different perspectives. Within the paper we provide a brief introduction to CSCW highlighting the requirements CSCW places on distributed systems. The development of an environment to support open CSCW systems is introduced and briefly described. Finally, the relationships between requirements and models for Open CSCW systems and the Basic Reference Model of ODP are discussed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version