Causal modeling for the understanding of the energy demand on the residential and service sectors

Causal modeling for the understanding of the energy demand on the residential and service sectors

Diego Casado Mansilla [1] Cruz E. Borges Hernández [2] [1] https://morelab.deusto.es/people/members/diego-casado-mansilla/ [2] https://energia.deusto.es/people/members/cruz-enrique-borges-hernandez/

DeustoTech [1] is a private non-profit institution of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Deusto for applied research in new technologies. Since 2005 DeustoTech mission is to support the ICT activity in business and society through research, the development of technologies, innovation and knowledge transfer. We focus our activity around four applied fields: Industry, Mobility, Energy and Environment and Societal Challenges, and a transversal area, the Chair of Applied Mathematics. We are characterized for working with data of heterogeneous nature, throughout its life cycle and in compliance with ethical principles and humanists who define the University of Deusto. In this project, the Energy & Environment [2] and the Societal Challenges [3] groups will be involved. The first one host a multidisciplinary team that contribute to develop more sustainable processes, novel technologies and methods for sustainable urban planning, advanced monitoring systems, agent-based modelling, decision support tools, etc. On the other hand, the Societal Challenges has a strong background in humanizing the application of IoT technologies. That includes, sustainable awareness rising through IoT, empowering the citizen towards participating in the city daily decisions, or engaging employees towards promoting healthy or sustainable habits in the workplace avoiding attrition of campaigns. [1] http://deustotech.deusto.es/ [2] https://energia.deusto.es/ [3] https://morelab.deusto.es/

The candidate would be integrated in a highly multidisciplinary research group. As such it is of utter importance the communication skills and their ability to understand the different perspectives that the research topic have. Moreover, experience in one or more of the following fields in needed: * Development of causal models or bayesian networks * Knowledge of behavioural sciences or behavioral [chain] modeling

• Social Sciences and Humanities (SOC)
• Information Sciences and Engineering (ENG)

Energy efficiency and demand response are among the most important topics that the EU commision are pushing forwards to accomplish the new regulations established in climate agreements of Paris. Nevertheless, in both cases the role that human beings play a great role that it has not been sufficiently studied. The aim of this open position is to find a post-doctoral researcher with a strong background in behaviour change theories and causal modeling to formally define which are the drivers and barriers that people have in relation to the use of energy. Specifically, the objectives are: * Create user models according to socioeconomics and cultural profiles. * Define and establish which are the most prominent behaviour change models in the context of energy expenditure (e.g. TPB, VBM, Transtheoretical model, etc.). * Take into account the most important determinants as well as external variables (such us weather, costs, source of energy, etc.) to create an holistic model of behaviour. * Interventions design and simulation according to standards such as Theoretical domains or Behaviour Change Wheel in order to understand how these interventions may impact over drivers and barriers defined previously (including policy, gamification, nudging and/or persuasion). * Specify which are valid models related to confidence in technology, perceived usefulness and adoption of artificial intelligence that ally with human beings to improve the energy efficiency or perform demand response actions.

Diego Casado-Mansilla, et al. (2018) \»A Human-centric & Context-aware IoT Framework for Enhancing Energy Efficiency in Buildings of Public Use\» In IEEE Access. vol. 6. p. 31444-31456. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2837141. Ander Pijoan Lamas, et al. (2018) \»Transport Choice Modeling for the Evaluation of New Transport Policies\» In Sustainability. vol. 10. DOI: 10.3390/su10041230. Dimitris Papageorgiou, et al. “A Socio-economic Survey for Understanding Self-perceived Effectiveness of Persuasive Strategies Towards Energy Efficiency in Tertiary Buildings” Accepted in The 5th IEEE International Conference on Internet of People 2019. Diego Casado-Mansilla et al (2015) \»Embedding Intelligent Eco-aware Systems within Everyday Things to Increase People’s Energy Awareness\» In Soft Computing Journal. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. vol. 20. p. 1695-1711. DOI: 10.1007/s00500-015-1751-0. Cruz E. Borges et al. (2013) \»Evaluating combined load forecasting in large power systems and smart grids\» In IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. vol. 9. p. 1570-1577. DOI: 10.1109/TII.2012.2219063.

H2020 – GREENSOUL (Persuasive Eco-awareness for User Engagement through Networked Data Devices). GA 696129. UDEUSTO develops and tests a set of persuasion mechanism to reduce the energy consumption in public buildings. H2020 – WASTE WASTE4THINK (Moving towards Life Cycle Thinking by Integrating Advanced Waste Management Systems) – GA 688995. UDEUSTO coordinates this project with the main objective of moving forward the current waste management practices into a circular economy motto, demonstrating the value of integrating and validating several eco-innovative solutions that cover all the waste value chain. H2020 – PARITY (Pro-sumer AwaRe, Transactive Markets for Valorization of Distributed flexibilITY enabled by Smart Energy Contracts) – GA 864319. UDEUSTO will develop a socioeconomic model of the barriers that hinder the participation on flexibility markets. Basic Research – SentienThings (Towards augmented everyday objects that self-adapt and co-educate users to underpin their pro-environmental behaviour through persuasive technologies) – TIN2017-90042-R. UDEUSTO will develop several augmented objects connected to internet that will interact with their users in order to foster more sustainable behaviours. EMEurope – ElectricTravelling (Platform to support the implementation of electromobility in Smart Cities based on ICT applications) – ID 6. UDEUSTO will develop a set of tools to estimate the environmental and social impact of the electrification of the transport sector.

* energy sector knowledge * user profiling * behaviour and persuasion theories * intervention design and modelling * integration of external variables

The candidate will work on a highly interdisciplinary group where all the previous knowledge will be worked on. The candidate will collaborate with researchers of different background (mathematicians, engineers, experts in behaviour change, interface designers, Internet of Things, and social scientists) in order to achieve the objectives of the project.

The topic is a cross-sectional topic covered in several of the calls the energy efficiency call. See for example: * LC-SC3-EE-14 * LC-SC3-ES-01-2019 * LC-EE12 * LC-SC3-EE-8-2018-2019 * LC-SC3-2018-RES * LC-SC3-EC-4-2020 * LC-SC3-2019-ES-SCC Moreover, the 6th SDG is highly related to this research area as understand the demand will contribute to foster the correct policies to improve the accessibility to energy and more important, to clean energy. Finally, there is a long list of European policies related to the energy demand [1]. Prosumers are a central pile of the new energy system, nevertheless, currently models of prosumers behaviours are in their infancy and are the literature is scarce and fragmented. In this sense, not only more research is needed but also with a strong interdisciplinary approach in order to fully understand this central piece of the energy sector.

The Smart Specialisation Strategy from the Euskadi Region has as one of its pilar the Energy Sector. In particular, there are a wide range of strong enterprises (both big and SME) on the energy sector. In particular, the participant have relations with several of the stakeholders of the region involved in the energy chain: *DSO (Iberdrola) *ESCOs (MISE) *Electric equipment (Ikor, Ingeteam) *Energy cooperative / grassroots movements (GOINER) *Smart home (Wattio) *Policy makers (EVE)

The results of the project will be directly incorporated in GeoWorldSim, the multi agent simulation platform developed by the hosting institution. The platform is currently used by different stakeholders (research institutions, SMEs and large enterprises and public authorities) in several projects that covers all stages of the research spectrum (in a pure research context until in commercial environment). The results of this projects will be added to the portfolio of features that GeoWorldSim has and will be advertised in conjunction with the rest of the solution. Moreover, the results will be presented to other stakeholders in order to be incorporated in other points of the value chain. For example, the results will be presented to: * the regional agency for energy (EVE) in order to assess potential up-scale actions or the definition of new policies / grants. * social innovation consultancy services (urbanbat) in order to discuss the creation of group dynamics that could be offered to SME or large enterprises. * IoT devices manufacturers (Wattio) in order to discuss the creation of a set of devices that could be sold to households in order to foster behaviour change at home. * DSOs or ESCOs (Iberdrola, MISE) in order to assess to incorporate to their commercial portfolio of solutions for customers.

This research will be the first step in the development of products that will ease the deployment of products and policies to improve both the energy efficiency and the participation on demand response actions for the private and public settings (e.g. workplace). In fact, after the models creation, different intervention would be designed and tested in order to confirm the validity of the results. It is expected that several of the intervention or devices proposed could achieve results good enough to reach the market (in the case of both devices or interventions), or being able to establish policy recommendations.

One of the University of Deusto’s key duties is to be fully aware of problems within the institution itself and the society we live in. For this reason, it should take specific steps to boost integration and real equality of opportunity for people with specific support needs. Timely specific action is required to enable them to enter higher education in equal conditions and ensure their full integration in the university community. DeustoTech, as one of its institutions, is included into this service of social action and inclusion. The main aims consist of achieving full normalisation, equal opportunities and gradually adopting the steps needed to ensure that the University of Deusto is an inclusive educational institution. Furthermore, the University of Deusto provides them with guidance and support on the transition to the labour market jointly with special job centres and companies at large. In this project this policy will be fully taken into account. In fact, profiles will be created in an inclusive way including factors like the gender, the socio-economic status, the functional diversity, the cultural background, etc. User models for every profile should have to be created and conclusions for every group should be made. Finally, an holistic assessment have to be made not only contrasting the results but also assessing interventions that works in an inclusive way.