Urban Energy Data Visualization and Management: Evaluating Community-Scale Eco-Feedback Approaches

Abstract

As energy consumption in urban areas rises to the level of being a global concern, the impact of community behavior becomes critical to assessing and managing energy consumption. Eco-feedback systems are taking advantage of data streams from advanced metering infrastructure and are being widely implemented with the goal of increasing engagement in more sustainable behavior. However, the effectiveness of eco-feedback systems at an urban scale largely depends on how the information is communicated to and visualized by various communities. Advanced visualization technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), have proven to be efficient tools in information communication and visualization in diverse fields and present a promising opportunity in information representation for eco-feedback studies at scales larger than a single building. This paper examines the effectiveness of a VR-integrated community-scale eco-feedback system deployed across 54 buildings on Georgia Tech’s campus by integrating 15-min increment energy consumption data into an interactive VR platform of the campus and conducting a user testing experiment on visualization characteristics, such as immersion, presence, involvement, and simulator sickness, along with system usefulness, that play a decisive role in users’ preference and perceived energy-saving motivation toward the two systems. Yet, participants indicated polarized preferences for the two types of systems. This finding suggests that to increase the effectiveness of energy feedback at the urban scale as open urban energy data become more available, eco-feedback systems need to incorporate the specific preferences of the communities receiving feedback or be designed capable of displaying energy feedback that meets users’ diverse preferences. In doing so, we may capitalize on the increasing data richness of energy consumption information in cities to more effectively encourage energy-saving behavior and meet the sustainability targets set by city governments.