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Projects

Projects: Projects for Investigator
Reference Number EP/K012509/1
Title Digital Green Doors
Status Completed
Energy Categories Energy Efficiency(Residential and commercial) 80%;
Not Energy Related 20%;
Research Types Basic and strategic applied research 100%
Science and Technology Fields SOCIAL SCIENCES (Economics and Econometrics) 20%;
SOCIAL SCIENCES (Politics and International Studies) 20%;
SOCIAL SCIENCES (Sociology) 20%;
SOCIAL SCIENCES (Education) 20%;
PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Computer Science and Informatics) 20%;
UKERC Cross Cutting Characterisation Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Consumer attitudes and behaviour) 20%;
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Technology acceptance) 20%;
Other (Energy technology information dissemination) 60%;
Principal Investigator Dr C Preist
No email address given
Computer Science
University of Bristol
Award Type Standard
Funding Source EPSRC
Start Date 01 February 2013
End Date 31 March 2015
Duration 26 months
Total Grant Value £235,651
Industrial Sectors Energy
Region South West
Programme Digital Economy : Digital Economy
 
Investigators Principal Investigator Dr C Preist , Computer Science, University of Bristol (99.997%)
  Other Investigator Dr D T Coyle , Computer Science, University of Bristol (0.001%)
Dr KF Cater , Computer Science, University of Bristol (0.001%)
Dr A Birdi , Economics, University of Bristol (0.001%)
  Industrial Collaborator Project Contact , Bristol City Council (0.000%)
Project Contact , IBM United Kingdom Ltd (0.000%)
Project Contact , Forum For The Future (0.000%)
Project Contact , Mobile Pie (0.000%)
Project Contact , Bristol Green Doors (0.000%)
Project Contact , RWE Generation (0.000%)
Web Site
Objectives
Abstract Domestic environmental technologies (DETs) such as solid wall insulation, ground source heat pumps and rainwater harvesting have an important role to play if the UK is to meet its environmental objectives around carbon emissions, water conservation and energy use. Many such technologies are cost effective and simple to install, and schemes such as the forthcoming Green Deal make them financially possible for more people. However, if they are to become widely adopted they must be seen as a 'social norm' within communities. An effective way to do this is to encourage interaction between 'local experts' who have installed such technologies, and their neighbours. In this way, best practice can be spread through a community. Digital technology can be used to promote this, by providing information about local experts, mediating communication, creating enjoyable games through which people interact, and rewarding those who contribute their time. This project will work with Bristol Green Doors, a community interest company which promotes events to support communities in shared learning around DETs, to develop and assess a set of distributed mobile services to inform, entertain and engage local community members in sharing best practice. It will also look at how local business recommendations that emerge from such sharing can be tracked and assessed for effectiveness, and so potentially monetised in an online business model.The project will investigate (i) whether and how digital technology can be used to catalyse the spread of best practice within communities, and (ii) whether and how this results in a demonstrable impact on the local economy which can be digitally tracked. It's four objectives are:A. Understand how best-practice sharing around DETs currently takes place in the community, what barriers there are, and what ideas stakeholders have for improving it.B. Develop in collaboration with the community a set of distributed services to support best-practice sharing and recommendation tracking.C. Assess the effectiveness in spreading best practice, acceptability to the community, and impact on local business of different feature sets and functionality the distributed services provide.D. Assess the project with regard to generality of lessons and insights; identify both general and more situation-specific learnings for use in digital enablement of community best-practice sharing and the stimulation of local business.The resulting services will be deployed in the Bristol area by Bristol Green Doors, resulting in increased engagement with DETs by the community. The service platform will be released open source, for use by other organisations involved in community engagement with DETs, and training will be provided through engagement workshops and documentation. The more general research results will be shared with businesses, policy makers and community organisations interested in the spreading of best practice within communities through workshops and publication in both academic and popular venues
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Added to Database 09/10/12