Conserving energy amenable to the activities of occupants in public buildings is a particularly challenging objective that includes associating energy consumption to particular individuals and providing them with incentives to alter their behavior. This paper describes a gamification framework that aims to facilitate achieving greater energy conservation in public buildings. The framework leverages IoT-enabled low-cost devices, to improve energy disaggregation mechanisms that provide energy use and—consequently—wastage information at the device, area and end-user level. The identified wastages are concurrently targeted by a gamified application that motivates respective behavioral changes combining team competition, virtual rewards and life simulation. Our solution is being developed iteratively with the end-users’ engagement during the analysis, design, development and validation phases in public buildings located in three different countries: Luxembourg (Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art), Spain (EcoUrbanBuilding, Institut Català d’Energia headquarters, Barcelona) and Greece (General Secretariat of the Municipality of Athens).

Source anisotropy is a very important factor in the brachytherapy quality assurance of high-dose rate (HDR) 192Ir afterloading stepping sources. If anisotropy is not taken into account then doses received by a brachytherapy patient in certain directions can be in error by a clinically significant amount. Experimental measurements of anisotropy are very labour intensive. We have shown that within acceptable limits of accuracy, Monte Carlo integration (MCI) of a modified Sievert integral (3D generalization) can provide the necessary data within a much shorter time scale than can experiments. Hence MCI can be used for routine quality assurance schedules whenever a new design of HDR or PDR 192Ir is used for brachytherapy afterloading. Our MCI calculation results are compared with published experimental data and Monte Carlo simulation data for microSelectron and VariSource 192Ir sources. We have shown not only that MCI offers advantages over alternative numerical integration methods, but also that treating filtration coefficients as radial distance-dependent functions improves Sievert integral accuracy at low energies. This paper also provides anisotropy data for three new 192Ir sources, one for the microSelectron-HDR and two for the microSelectron-PDR, for which data are currently not available. The information we have obtained in this study can be incorporated into clinical practice.

BENEFFICE designed (eco-)system aims to reduce wasted electricity by incentivizing long-term consumption savings. It leverages Internet of Things enabled, low cost devices, which capture electricity use patterns at the level of clusters of devices and of each individual consumer. An energy behavior model correlates these patterns with optimal, personalized comfort levels and geographic and energy use contexts to determine optimal energy use behavior to reduce wastage of energy and to increase the use of renewable resources. Personalised, real-time motivational paths and challenges are contributing to deliver sustainable reductions of electricity consumption. Voluntarily engagement is achieved by the provision of monetary rewards -CO2 credits-in return of electricity savings and successful challenges. A novel ecosystem of like-minded actors of businesses who pay in CO2 credits and consumers who act for earning them is established.

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