Dissertation Related to the SINAIS Project
M-ITI Researcher Wins Best Ph.D. Student Award at SustainIT’2015
Filipe Quintal, researcher at the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (M-ITI), has recently won the Best Ph.D. Student Award at SustainIT’2015, with the paper “Exploring the Dimensions of Eco-feedback in the Wild.”
The paper, co-written with Nuno Nunes and Valentina Nisi, faculty members at Universidade da Madeira and researchers at M-ITI, presents the research conducted over the last three years in the area of eco-feedback systems, where the team collected and analyzed data from 30 homes in the Madeira Island. The results showed that, in the beginning, families using eco-feedback systems reduced their overall energy consumption. After four weeks of receiving information about the energy consumption in their homes, their attention to this information decreased. The eco-feedback system provided information through different devices (smartphones, tablets), and in different locations inside the house. The data collected showed that a few months later, the domestic consumption went back to the initial numbers. With these results, the authors showed new alternatives to keep consumers aware of their energy consumption, helping them reduce their ecological footprint.
This research, carried out in the scope of the SINAIS project, is very important in a time where the SmartGrid sector is investing in new ways to convince consumers to decrease energy consumption.
Besides being a researcher at M-ITI, Filipe Quintal is a Ph.D. student in Computer Engineering at Universidade da Madeira. His Ph.D. thesis, which addresses the use of technologies to reduce electric consumption in homes, began with a project developed within the CMU Portugal Program, funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. A pilot test was implemented in 30 homes thanks to the partnership between CMU Portugal and Empresa de Electricidade da Madeira (Madeira’s electricity company).
The main goal of the 2015 SustainIT 2015 is to bring together researchers, professionals and application developers, both from industry and academia. It is one of the main international Information and Communication Technology forums applied to sustainable development research.
April 2015
Source: http://www.m-iti.org/node/2784
