Urban energy efficiency with decision support systems: Services and user engagement

Abstract:
Smart energy cities call for the integration of new technologies as well as its acceptance by urban citizens to promote energy efficiency. As yet many projects neglect social considerations our research focuses on the engagement of users as their involvement is crucial for developing smart solutions. It is part of the European project iURBAN which pro-vides ICT based decision support tools for electricity and heating in two European cities. Our research considers lead users’ perceptions and experts’ opinions to ease local applicability and to support the innovativeness of energy efficien-cy solutions. This paper demonstrates how the delivered energy services, such as comparison with peers, can influence users’ awareness and behaviours for private and public buildings in order to facilitate enhanced energy efficiency at the urban scale.