The impact of energy consumption and carbon emission in the UK poses a grave challenge. This challenge is particularly high amongst residents of university campuses, where usage of electricity and carbon emission remain invisible to the students. In student residential accommodation, personal choices and social influences affect electricity consumption and ultimately the resultant reduction in carbon emissions. Therefore, innovative solutions are required to change students’ energy consumption behavior, and one promising part of the solution is to present real-time electricity consumption data to students in real-time via a dedicated web platform, while, at the same time, appointing an energy delegate in each hall to induce motivation among the students. The results of some interventions show that immediate energy feedback from smart meters or display devices can provide savings of 5%–15%. However, the situation is different; with the complexity in behavior of our target groups “the students who are living in the halls of residence”, there are economical and environmental aspects to be addressed in these issues, in the campus halls of residence. Therefore, we propose a system to address this issue, by applying smart sensors (real-time electricity data capture), integration of dedicated visual web interface (real-time electricity feedback display) and an appointed energy delegate in each hall (a motivator). It is expected that this will motivate students living in the halls of residence to reduce their electricity wastage and, therefore, control the energy cost and also reduce the carbon emissions released into the environment. In the present research, we focus on the University of Kent, Canterbury campus to study energy conservation and carbon emission reduction strategies
Hospitals represent a busy environment with the majority of the medical operations relying on electricity, for example lighting and medical equipment. Hence, it is important to conserve it to ensure high quality of services, improve patients' wellbeing as well as to the reduction of the hospitals' carbon footprint and the impacts on the environment. The studies carried out in hospitals considered the use of renewable energy or the use of power efficient equipment to tackle the energy problem. The challenge remains open in how to tackle the energy problem in a hospital through behavioural change. This study represents a step into reducing electricity costs of Medway NHS Foundation Trust (MNFT) in the UK. The proposed idea is to use technology to persuade MNFT staff to monitor their behaviour and with the right motive, from selected and appointed energy delegates, sustain a pro-environmental behaviour. This paper describes the methodology and system proposed to reduce electricity costs in MNFT by inducing pro-environmental behaviour with the aid of technology. This involves a smart electricity metering system to collect and communicate energy data to a centralised server that pushes the data onto a dedicated web interface. Furthermore, addressing the psychological factors by appointing energy delegates to monitor the consumption, in selected areas, as well as motivate the staff members. In addition, monitoring human dynamics and analysing it against energy data to identify a relation between occupancy and electricity consumption trends in hospital wards.
It has come to our attention that our paper "Challenges in Improving Energy Efficiency in a University Campus through the Application of Persuasive Technology and Smart Sensors" [1] contains some minor errors. Based on that we have done some minor corrections as stated below.The affiliation information has been changed to: School of Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NT, UK.In the abstract, we changed the word "grave" to "serious". We also removed the following sentences from the abstract: "However, the situation is different", "with the complexity in behaviour of our target groups", "the students who are living in the halls of residence", "there are economical and environmental aspects to be addressed in these issues, in the campus halls of residence".In Section 3, the proposed system architecture description, we would like to remove the following sentence: "Due to the Hawthorns effects, the other previous interventions suffer from the lack of maintaining a constant and sustainable behaviour change in students. Based on these findings".In Section 3.3 the following sentences were removed: "This is the reason why we proposed the combination of real-time energy feedback and appointed energy delegate so as to induce behaviour change on the students living in the halls of residences", "This is also where the effectiveness of appointing an energy delegate is lacking. Providing energy feedback is a critical foundation for any attempt to reduce energy consumption, and the feedback itself will likely curb energy usage to some extent. However, Sarah Darby points out that while feedback is critical for energy conservation behaviour, feedback alone is not always enough [14]. Other factors that lead to higher rates of energy OPEN ACCESS
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