Examinando por Autor "Tzovaras, Dimitrios"

Mostrando 1 - 4 de 4
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    A cascading model for nudging employees towards energy-efficient behaviour in tertiary buildings
    (Public Library of Science, 2024-05) Kalamaras, Ilias; Sánchez Corcuera, Rubén; Casado Mansilla, Diego; Tsolakis, Apostolos C.; Gómez Carmona, Oihane; Krinidis, Stelios; Borges Hernández, Cruz E.; Tzovaras, Dimitrios; López de Ipiña González de Artaza, Diego
    Energy-related occupant behaviour in the built environment is considered crucial when aiming towards Energy Efficiency (EE), especially given the notion that people are most often unaware and disengaged regarding the impacts of energy-consuming habits. In order to affect such energy-related behaviour, various approaches have been employed, being the most common the provision of recommendations towards more energy-efficient actions. In this work, the authors extend prior research findings in an effort to automatically identify the optimal Persuasion Strategy (PS), out of ten pre-selected by experts, tailored to a user (i.e., the context to trigger a message, allocate a task or providing cues to enact an action). This process aims to successfully influence the employees' decisions about EE in tertiary buildings. The framework presented in this study utilizes cultural traits and socio-economic information. It is based on one of the largest survey datasets on this subject, comprising responses from 743 users collected through an online survey in four countries across Europe (Spain, Greece, Austria and the UK). The resulting framework was designed as a cascade of sequential data-driven prediction models. The first step employs a particular case of matrix factorisation to rank the ten PP in terms of preference for each user, followed by a random forest regression model that uses these rankings as a filtering step to compute scores for each PP and conclude with the best selection for each user. An ex-post assessment of the individual steps and the combined ensemble revealed increased accuracy over baseline non-personalised methods. Furthermore, the analysis also sheds light on important user characteristics to take into account for future interventions related to EE and the most effective persuasion strategies to adopt based on user data. Discussion and implications of the reported results are provided in the text regarding the flourishing field of personalisation to motivate pro-environmental behaviour change in tertiary buildings.
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    Engagement and accessibility tools for pro-environmental action on air quality: the SOCIO-BEE paradigm
    (Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2024-01) Atutxa Ordeñana, Ekhi; García Torres, Sofía; Kyfonidis, Charalampos; Karanassos, Dimitrios; Kopsacheilis, Evangelos; Tsita, Christina; Casado Mansilla, Diego; Emvoliadis, Alexandros; Angelis, Georgios; López de Ipiña González de Artaza, Diego; Puerta Beldarrain, Maite; Drosou, Anastasios; Tzovaras, Dimitrios
    The involvement of citizens and all stakeholders is crucial in tackling environmental and social matters. This, addressing equity and diversity issues, although challenging, is a necessary condition for achieving positive outcomes and ensuring that no one is left behind. To help ease this challenge, this work presents a systematic approach to ensure inclusive participation and leverage non-technical and technical elements to maximise stakeholder engagement in scientific activities to successfully address sustainability concerns. For that, it builds on the interim results of the H2020 SOCIO-BEE project, a Citizen science (CS) proposal to reduce air pollution through inclusive community engagement and social innovation. As part of an interdisciplinary CS project, an abductive systematic combining methodology was employed, which allowed for dialogue and collaboration between theory and practice throughout the whole process, during which separate groups of experts and potential end-users were involved. The article presents (i) the stakeholder engagement strategy codified in the SOCIO-BEE toolkit as a robust, actionable and inclusive foundation of engagement to CS activities; and (ii) the digital platform UX that allows setting up campaigns for measurements and assignment to citizens, incorporating the requirements for flexibility, accessibility, limited digital literacy, inclusion and legal and ethical considerations. Their combination and mutual interaction aim to leverage the pros of CS and technology whilst reducing their cons to ensure the four pillars of applicability, scalability, actionability, and inclusion. This is supported by the presented hybrid model which combines physical and virtual spaces and individual and collective action.
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    Mind the gap: the AURORAL ecosystem for the digital transformation of smart communities and rural areas
    (Elsevier Ltd, 2023-08) Gómez Carmona, Oihane; Buján Carballal, David; Casado Mansilla, Diego; López de Ipiña González de Artaza, Diego; Cano de Benito, Juan; Cimmino, Andrea; Poveda Villalón, María; García Castro, Raúl; Almela Miralles, Jorge; Apostolidis, Dimitris; Drosou, Anastasios; Tzovaras, Dimitrios; Wagner, Martin; Guadalupe Rodríguez, María; Salinas, Diego; Esteller, David; Riera Rovira, Martí; González, Arnau; Clavijo Ágreda, Jaime; Díez Frias, Alberto; Bocanegra Yáñez, María del Carmen; Pedro Henriques, Rui; Ferreira Nunes, Elsa; Lux, Marian; Bujalkova, Nikol
    Rural areas play a crucial role in addressing challenges related to climate change, food provision, biomass, and energy. At the same time, digital solutions have proven essential in improving safety, quality of life, and resilience in daily life. However, the lower population density and the lack of digital infrastructure in such rural areas make it difficult to develop technology-driven private businesses and public services. This can negatively impact socio-economic indicators and hinder the development of new services to cover peoples’ needs. For this reason, in this document, we seek to provide a stronger focus on rural regions in digitalization efforts and create new opportunities for rural communities. For that, we analyze the barriers and needs of the rural environment and present AURORAL, a digital service platform designed to meet the needs and contexts of rural areas. This ecosystem, comprising sustainable and multi-interoperable apps and services, can help communities succeed in innovation and smart transformation, providing the necessary infrastructure to facilitate long-lasting social, environmental, and economic benefits by prioritizing openness, interoperability, and decentralization. On the principle that the full potential of these technologies can only be realized when they are integrated into societal and economic activity and organization, AURORAL aims to promote economic growth and digitalization in the rural domain and contribute to bridging the digital divide between rural and urban areas.
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    Socio-economic effect on ICT-based persuasive interventions towards energy efficiency in tertiary buildings
    (MDPI AG, 2020-04-03) Casado Mansilla, Diego; Tsolakis, Apostolos C. ; Borges Hernández, Cruz E.; Kamara Esteban, Oihane; Krinidis, Stelios; Ávila, José Manuel; Tzovaras, Dimitrios; López de Ipiña González de Artaza, Diego
    Occupants of tertiary environments rarely care about their energy consumption. This fact is even more accentuated in cases of buildings of public use. Such unawareness has been identified by many scholars as one of the main untapped opportunities with high energy saving potential in terms of cost-effectiveness. Towards that direction, there have been numerous studies exploring energy-related behaviour and the impact that our daily actions have on energy efficiency, demand response and flexibility of power systems. Nevertheless, there are still certain aspects that remain controversial and unidentified, especially in terms of socio-economic characteristics of the occupants with regards to bespoke tailored motivational and awareness-based campaigns. The presented work introduces a two-step survey, publicly available through Zenodo repository that covers social, economic, behavioural and demographic factors. The survey analysis aims to fully depict the drivers that affect occupant energy-related behaviour at tertiary buildings and the barriers which may hinder green actions. Moreover, the survey reports evidence on respondents' self-assessment of fifteen known principles of persuasion intended to motivate them to behave pro-environmentally. The outcomes from the self-assessment help to shed light on understanding which of the Persuasive Principles may work better to nudge different user profiles towards doing greener actions at workplace. This study was conducted in four EU countries, six different cities and seven buildings, reaching more than three-hundred-and-fifty people. Specifically, a questionnaire was delivered before (PRE) and after (POST) a recommendation-based intervention towards pro-environmental behaviour through Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The findings from the PRE-pilot stage were used to refine the POST-pilot survey (e.g., we removed some questions that did not add value to one or several research questions or dismissed the assessment of Persuasive Principles (PPs) which were of low value to respondents in the pre-pilot survey). Both surveys validate "Cause and Effect", "Conditioning" and "Self-monitoring" as the top PPs for affecting energy-related behaviour in a workplace context. Among other results, the descriptive and prescriptive analysis reveals the association effects of specific barriers, pro-environmental intentions and confidence in technology on forming new pro-environmental behaviour. The results of this study intend to set the foundations for future interventions based on persuasion through ICT to reduce unnecessary energy consumption. Among all types of tertiary buildings, we emphasise on the validity of the results provided for buildings of public use.