GreenBe – a system to capture and visualize users’ energy-related activities for facilitating greener energy behavior

Abstract

Although technological advancements can help us to live with a lower environmental impact, it is a critical need to embrace sustainability as a lifestyle for humanity to survive in the long term. In this thesis work, we proposed and developed an approach for facilitating greener energy behavior by raising people’s awareness of their own behavior and its impact on energy consumption, then motivating and aiding them to change their energy-related practices. Our Greener Energy Behavior (GreenBe) system is developed to capture human activities at homes and offices in a non-intrusive manner by utilizing building automation infrastructure, and to find out their suboptimal habits in using energy. Out of the collected data, users’ behavioral patterns in relation to energy usage are extracted, and visualized to them. In its demonstration, the system successfully highlighted the potential of energy savings which users could gain by simply changing their behavior. Users who experienced the system found it helpful in aiding them to change their energy-related practices. Better energy savings and sustainability could be achieved even without any automation solutions by directly raising sustainable behavior.