The vision of the ENTROPY project modeling and Analysis and Recommendtion and Gamification eras. Internet of Things technologies are exploited for the proper and energy efficient interconnection of a heterogeneous set of sensor nodes (e.g. smart energy meters, sensors interacting with microgeneration infrastructure, sensors in smart phones), the collection of data based on Mobile Crowd Sensing Mechanisms exploiting the power of the collection of data from a critical mass of interested people and the application of proper communication networking schemes with regards to data collection. Advanced Data Modeling and Analysis techniques are applied for the modelling of the collected data –both from sensor networks as well as directly from end users- and the extraction of advanced knowledge by exploiting the power of Semantic Web techniques, Linked Data and Data Analytics. Focus is given on the development of personalised mobile applications and games targeted at providing energy related information to end users, triggering interaction with relevant users in social networks (e.g. users in a specific area within a city), increasing their awareness with regards to ways to achieve energy consumption savings in their daily activities and adopt energy efficient lifestyles based on a set of recommendations and motives targeted to their culture. The engagement and direct inclusion of end users within the diverse components of the provided IT ecosystem is going to be strongly supported.
We argue that recent innovations in
- the Internet of Things (IoT) research and Sensor Networks technologies, enhanced by state-of-the-art Opportunistic and Autonomous Computing principles towards the realization of smart, reliable, energy efficient and self-aware Internet-of-Things infrastructures, can support the development and deployment of an extensible, scalable architecture that will facilitate the real-time or almost real-time monitoring of the energy consumption, the environmental impact and footprint of the daily activities of citizens and the overall footprint of buildings;
- the evolvement of Mobile Crowd Sensing mechanisms for soliciting feedback from a large group of people, acquiring knowledge from a set of devices and social networks feeds, permit to involve citizens to both participate and use the mobile crowd sensing applications;
- the big and sensor data streams aggregation and analytics technologies, empowered by Linked Data technologies and lightweight semantic models, can enable the typical representation and integration of energy consumption data and their environmental impact parameters along the daily activities of citizens and in correlation with their behavioural profile and lifestyle;
- the design of Lifestyle Recommenders for generating and providing suggestions for energy efficient lifestyles, can support gradual behavioural changes of citizens and their engagement on every-day environmental friendly activities;
- the Gamification techniques for describing the process and outcome where the fundamental building blocks of games are introduced in situations (and contexts), permit their transformation into game-like experiences for the citizens;
- the development of Serious Games that combine the digital and the physical worlds, stimulate in this way collaboration and enforce the achievement of sustainable results through the direct engagement of citizens; and
- the design of Cleanweb solutions by exploiting the revolutionary growth in mobile, social, sensors, processing power, big data analytics, and other information technologies is creating powerful new opportunities to address the world's critical resource challenges, leading to more efficient energy use, accelerating the adoption of clean technologies and spreading more sustainable behaviours globally.
