Power Aware

Executive summary

Power Aware is a research program that won the 2016 Siebel Energy Grants and the 2013 MIUR (Ministery of Italian Education) Smart City and Social Innovation competition.
It concerns the use of collaborative web platforms to enhance citizens’ awareness on key factors of energy costs.

Background

Collective Awareness Platforms (CAPs) aim to tackle issues in different focus areas (such as consumption, economy, open democracy, etc.) by harnessing participation of citizens on the online platforms in order to create a social networking effect that would lead to shared knowledge and collective intelligence.
The process of exchanging information among users, in fact, is finalized to find the best possible solution to a given challenge in order to induce social innovation and to address citizens towards more aware lifestyles.

Objectives

Power Aware is a research project aimed at understating the key requirements for building up a CAP focused on the development of a network of knowledge shared among citizens about energy consumption issues and possible solutions. The project exploits ICT tools and data visualization in order to drive behavioral changes at individual and collective level, encouraging participation of users through competition and cooperation among them. Therefore, the goal of the platform is to engage citizens in the process of change of consumption patterns.

The mission of Power Aware is to enhance citizens’ awareness on key factors of energy costs, to reduce energy use by changing the consumption habits.

Results