CharIoT: Leveraging the Internet of Things to Reduce Fuel Poverty

70d389f8-2e57-4be9-aa23-1589b031ebe7

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EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC

£1,385,335

Sept. 30, 2014

March 31, 2016

The Internet of Things has already started to leave the lab and reach into the world with Internet enabled devices and products making it possible to capture and share our physical activities, our weight, our energy consumption, and our movement habits among many others. To paraphrase William Gibson, the Internet of Things is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed [2], it predominantly resides in the homes of those with sufficient disposable income to purchase new digital gadgets. This "in the wild" project focuses on how the Internet of Things (IoT) might avoid an emphasis on technologies that support a few digitally privileged households to consider how it may be beneficial to all elements of society. We are particularly interested in involving users at the edges of digital society, the low-income vulnerable households that are typically left behind by technological development. To achieve this broad aim we will work with low-income households currently in fuel poverty who are subject to ever increasing energy costs that they feel powerless to mitigate.

Fuel poverty is a key societal concern in the UK, with 4.5 millions of affected households in 2011 [1] exposed to associated financial, physical and emotional effects [3]. In addition to financial support and benefits, a key resource to help people in fuel poverty is energy advice to encourage wise energy use while keeping people warm and healthy. This is often provided by charities over the phone, in community centres and through home visits. The Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE, the "user partner" in this project) is a national charity with over 30 years of experience in providing energy advice to people in fuel poverty. The advisors frequently face challenges involved in assessing the extent and effects of fuel poverty on a case-by-case basis. Many of these challenges arise from a paucity of information about energy use in the households they advise. Brief home visits and incomplete information gleaned through phone interviews often have to suffice to infer the causes of problems of properties often associated with health risks (e.g.damp and mold), to recommend both material and behavioural improvements to the affected, and to liaise with third parties to make the case for adjustments on their client's behalf (e.g. landlords, councils, and power companies). We seek to address these challenges by building applications and services on IoT technologies in support of energy advice by providing a richer picture of use and more evidence to drive change on behalf of these households.

1. Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) (2013): Annual Fuel Poverty Statistics. 2013.
2. Gibson, W. (1999): Interview on NPR's ''Talk of the Nation,'' 30 November
3. Marmot Review Team (2011): The health impacts of cold homes and fuel poverty. Friends of the Earth. Department of Epidemology & Public Health, UCL.

Potential Impact:
Throughout the project we will be working with the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) non-profit organization, to improve the ways in which CSE gives advice to people in fuel poverty. In this way, we aim to support the fuel poor to improve their financial, emotional and physical well-being, as detailed in the Case for Support.

Core engagements
The approach through which the project aims are achieved is an inclusive, user-centred design process, involving both CSE energy advisors and their clients (i.e. people in fuel poverty) at all stages of the design process. This methodology ensures that beneficiaries (advisors and clients) are exposed to the research and potential impact throughout the project; we refer to this pathway to impact as end-users engagement, as described in the following. Furthermore, industry engagement and academic engagement, outlined afterwards, maximise impact in engaging with these stakeholders.

End-users engagement.
Focus groups will take place in month 1 and 2 of the project. These will be led by CSE and involve their fuel-poverty clients; their aim is to elicit client needs, and on that basis develop requirements and identify opportunities for technical interventions. Design workshops are the central method to ensure iterative, participatory and user-centred development of the prototype, through which the same core group of energy advisors are involved in the design process. This extends from initial requirements in month 2, to exploration of seed data in month 7, to refinements of prototype sketches in month 9, to testing and refining the interactive prototype in month 11, to a concluding workshop in month 18. Together with CSE, we will also conduct a community workshop in month 13, in which the prototype will be demonstrated and tested, and volunteers from the community will be recruited to support the energy advisors during the deployment from month 13-17.

Industry engagement.
Industry engagement is undertaken with and through our project partner Horstmann Controls Ltd. (see Letter of Support) as well as by showcasing the project achievements and output, the IoT service delivery kit, at a suitable industry event, e.g., TSB's Innovate conference, Sustainability Live, or The Energy Event in 2015. Once developed, the kit may further be demonstrated via a series of industry-directed workshops run by CSE as follow-on activities to this project. All events and exhibitions will record numbers of visitors, will be diarised by attending researchers. Throughout the project, horizon scanning will assess new and emerging forums for dissemination in what is a fast-moving field, ensuring that the project is represented at key events and exhibitions.

Academic engagement.
Academic engagement such as through conferences are sought out to present the research outputs of the project to the national and international academic community. Leading high impact conferences in the field of HCI (CHI, UbiComp), Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and particularly Participatory Design (e.g., PDC) and their companion high impact peer review journals (e.g., ToCHI, PUC, CoDesign) will be targeted to present this work. At least one paper will be written about the use of IoT technologies for energy advice for a high impact policy journal, e.g. Environment, Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, to ensure dissemination amongst policy makers.