WebSci12 - Day Three (more general thoughts at the web to energy interface)

As I missed the conference dinner last night, I am pretty fresh this morning for the final day of ACM Web Science 2012  #WebSci12, and walking in to the Management School at Northwestern University I was struck by a couple more general thoughts.

• Necessarily there has been a focus at the conference on understanding current activity on the web (given the discipline is early in its development).  There has been more limited consideration of the application of this understanding to address societal issues, aside from to improving (online) marketing. I believe there must be scope to apply, and value in applying this understanding of the web in other areas - so plenty of thinking for do (for me anyway) on if/how to reconcile the understanding of the web with action to create a more sustainable society.
• Danah Boyd (@zephoria) summed up her excellent and inspiring keynote with an impassioned call to act to self regulate big/social data before Government action (suggesting blunt regulatory instruments are on the horizon). Implicit in this call was a belief that the web/social media is different from other utilities (energy, water, telecoms) that tend to be heavily regulated to shape them (and address market failures)  - I guess I struggle to see why the web/social media is so different (why it would be immune to market failures and self regulation + ethical understanding will deliver enough)? Of course there would be downsides to regulation - but could the downsides of unregulated activity in this space been even bigger?

WebSci12 - Day Two (intial thoughts at the web to energy interface)

On day two of WebSci12 at Northwestern Uni (in Evanston) again I've been trying to keep a running list of the research ideas at the web science - energy interface. Today,  these include the potential to:

• develop a socio-technical systems analysis of the potential of open data to promote adoption of energy demand reduction measure under the Green Deal;
• analyse the online interactions of community energy initiatives (such as http://www.energy4all.co.uk);
• qualitatively analyse the wikipedia entries for low carbon technologies (e.g. solar) to develop understanding of the public perceptions/dialogue in this area;
• consider the incentives to encourage adoption of the Green Deal through interpersonal influence (e.g. incentives to adopt, plus incentives for getting your friends to adopt) - based upon the approaches used by Sinan Aral @sinanaral in the social marketing domain.

WebSci12 - Day One (intial thoughts at the web to energy interface)

A range of interesting talks today at WebSci12, I've been trying to keep a running list of the research ideas at the web science - energy interface. In no particular order, and to be added to if my jetlag allows, these include the potential to:

• Analyse the nature of, and connections and dialogue within, the political/energy/sustainability blogosphere;
• Use social network technologies to create competitive effects to drive down energy demand - what would be the appropriate incentives that consider both the status ("I respect you") and balance ("I agree with you?") attributes of relationships? 
• Map the challenges of designing for social feedback effects in the web science domain to  similar challenges in designing smart grids;
• Understand if a deep belief in the radical and transformative power of ICT/the Web is driving the smartgrid vision in the an inappropriate direction.
• Use crowdsourcing support the uptake of energy efficiency measures in the domestic sector;
• Analyse energy related documents in the public domain using some of the methods from Web Science.

The web as a low carbon technology

Through the research proposals I have been working on in the past couple of months I have picked up on an area of emerging interest within the energy demand informatics space.  This area is the potential of social network (e.g. Facebook and Twitter), and other Internet (e.g. Internet of Things), technologies to promote and catalyse the behaviour change required to radically reduce energy demand. I believe there are some really interesting research questions to address, and some great opportunities for creative thinking interdisciplinary thinking at this energy demand – social computing – web interface. A favour of the questions that occurred to me listed below.

·      can sharing personal energy consumption information (e.g. captured by Smart Meters) using social networks create a sense of competition that would encourage individuals to change behaviours and reduce energy consumption?

·      can information on energy consumption displayed on, and personalised prompts delivered to, mobile devices encourage individuals to change their energy consumption (at home and work, and in transit)?

·      how can web technologies support community based renewable and energy efficiency initiatives (such as http://www.energy4all.co.uk)?

So I can begin to explore these questions, and questions that I hope will emerge as my thinking/understanding evolves, I am offering a mini-project to 2012 intake for the Doctoral Training Centre in Low Carbon Technologies (at the University of Leeds).  This mini-project will offer a group of first year students, studying an integrated MSc-PhD course, the opportunity to explore the area over the course of a semester. I envision group will identify and pursue lines of enquiry such those outlined below (although the students may have much stronger ideas of course!).

·      Designing a mobile or web application to reduce energy demand – including producing a paper mock-up/prototype and seeking feedback on this (e.g. from the rest of their cohort).

·      Reviewing scenarios for a sustainable energy system (e.g. from DECC), and identifying where social networks and Internet technologies could play a role in radically reducing energy demand;

·      Exploring how social media, and other Internet, technologies are currently used in an energy related context - for example, analysing the online discourse on low carbon technologies on Twitter, to identify key actors, topics and sentiments within the discourse;

·      Articulating the extent to which current use of these technologies suggests they have a significant role to play in reducing energy demand over the period to 2050.