From building control to eco-feedback: opportunities and challenge

In recent years a number of organizations have experimented control systems for monitoring the environmental parameters of complex buildings, with the goal of improving well-being and optimizing management costs. These solutions are often characterized by sophisticated and costly technologies that allow to monitor the situation even from remote desks and take proper actions whenever any parameter fails to comply with management constraints. Unfortunately in many cases the availability of these control infrastructures doesn’t allow people inhabiting buildings to gain awareness about the environmental parameters or the consumption issues related to these spaces. Eco-feedback techniques, which can lead to significant savings through the feedback given to users, can’t be properly applied. The control systems often lack functionalities for communicating with users and creating a social awareness related to energy consumption issues. This paper analyzes one of these systems, designed for a modern University campus, with the goal of understanding its points of strength and weaknesses. The paper describes also how the results of this analysis have been used for the design of a pilot eco-feedback system, that features a context- aware mobile app for creating a bi-directional communication between users and backend.