A new multidimensional research agenda:

cross-disciplinary perspectives in-home energy study inspired by nature

Sonja Oliveira, Lidia Badarnah, Merate Barakat, Anna Chatzimichali and Ed Atkins

Abstract

Home Energy Management (HEM) has a significantly growing impact on strategic energy policy, digital equity, as well as housing development and transport issues. With the proliferation of home working, reliance on electricity for heating and cooling, increasing needs for electric charging for transportation, there is an urgent need to develop novel ways for efficient management of home energy use. Current efforts focus on HEM technologies at individual household levels, without considering the social or spatial context or their collective community-wide interrelated dependencies.

We propose a multifaceted agenda at the intersection of disciplinary domains to tackle this problem by using a multidimensional lens that draws on energy behaviour, architectural research, biomimetics, and computational design, simultaneously. Optimal and effective behavioural patterns can be extracted and abstracted from nature, informing a more collective and interrelated behavioural dependencies approach that considers the complex multidimensional energy use patterns of different housing typologies. This paper discusses the analytical benefits of this new research approach through a study of home energy management behaviour. The approach though could be expanded to consider other similar empirical contexts whereby sustainable multidimensional resource management is sought for such as water use, food distribution as well as transport and mobility.

Game Instructions:

Panel

The Interface panels are on top of each other - please click & drag on header to separate.

You can also double click on the panel headers to collapse each panel.

press ‘p‘ to show/hide the panels.

Database

Please fill out the data first!

Press ‘z‘ to show your agent.

The agent responds real-time to change in parameters - but does not update the database. Press ‘z‘ again to add entry.

Update

Refresh page to reconnect to database - including your previous entries.

Thank you for Participating!