By Stephen Lord (Lancaster University)
Overview: What exactly is “data relating to Climate Change?” Naively this is smart meter data relating to electricity use and perhaps an other energy source in the home. However, this only addresses a significant but not complete portion of an individ- ual’s impact. By exposing data from many other sources, in a style now known as open data one can include industrial systems, government and personal data col- lection. This could give a better indication of an individuals complete impact and how this fits in with their community. But where and how is this data aggregated? How is it then best displayed?

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May 13, 2011 at 9:25 am
Luis Lamb
1) good points:
- it raises an important issue i.e. how to manage data related to climate change from many sources?
- how to harness the power of individual agents?
2) questions:
- I suppose you have a data model in mind: further details about it would be welcome. I know there is no room in the extended abstract format, this has to be a point to discuss further at the meeting.
- Data collection: I suppose you may be thinking of a social/human computing tool. However, the way people normally use such tools demand further research on usability/HCI related issues.
- How would you gather numerical data from users?
May 19, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Elena Pérez-Miñana
There are a couple of statements in this research that need clarification: the “significant” impact people have on CC through their energy consumption levels, as there are others, which are equally if not more important, e.g. waste generated, the “consumerism craving”. The second aspect that also concerns me is the “myriad” of potential data sources with no reference either to “quality” of the data or other aspects such as privacy which extends not just to individuals but also to organisations, groups etc.
Having said this, I agree that the question is a valid and relevant one, but I feel a lot of simpler questions need to be answered first before attempting to clarify this particular one.
June 7, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Steffen Zschaler
I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed in this paper. Yes, data collection and analysis and the idea of transforming this into nudges is a valid research area. But, unfortunately, this is all the paper says and this has been known for some time now. What would be much more interesting is a concrete proposal of how to go about this: What specific data to collect? How to combine and analyse the “myriad data sources” to obtain useful indicators and triggers? How to ensure quality of the data and the resulting predictions and triggers? How to evaluate the effectiveness of such a technique? … …
June 8, 2011 at 12:42 pm
Sophia Drossopoulou
I think this paper is very brief, and would benefit greatly if it discussed things more concretely, and in some more detail:
For example:
1) How do you envisage “harvesting the power of citizens as data collectors”? What kind of data would they be collecting? How can you ensure that the data they collect are comparable? (I think that people are good at collecting facts, but not as good at collecting numerical data, esp on a distributed basis).
2) Can you give a scenario how the myriad of data sources would help uncover what aspects of current practices are responsible for CO-2? What kind of extra data would you collect, and how would these data complement the work [1]?
3) Once collected, what would happen to the data? Who would review them?
4) The work in [1] is mostly based on interviews. Your work, on the other hand, wants to collect numerical data – or so I thought. So, I do not see that clear a connection.
5) I wonder whether the data you want to collect can be collected by individuals. For example, the power consumption of a household is available at the power provider. Who should collect the data? The individual himself? The neighbor? The provider?
6) What are the practitioners you are talking about? What kind of experiments are you thinking of?