GreenSoul: An IoT Platform for Empowering Users’ Energy Efficiency in Public Buildings

The GreenSoul (GS) framework aims to provide a low-cost energy-efficient Information and Communications Technology (ICT) platform which seamlessly augments a traditional public-use building with a set of assets (apps, interactive interfaces, device adaptors, smart meters and a Decision Support Engine), which mediate in the interactions of users with their environments and the energy consuming devices or systems present in them. GreenSoul envisions public use buildings as ecosystems of GreenSoul-ed devices which cooperate with other devices, standard Smart Meters and, very importantly, with eco-educated and eco-aware users to minimize the unnecessary energy consumption. GS architecture is supported by a socio-economic behavioural model, which aids on behaviour understanding to turn energy consuming devices into active pro-sustainability agents that manifest to their surrounding users how well or badly they are being manipulated (energy-wise), offer tips about how to use them more efficiently and even adapt their own functioning to avoid energy waste.