In this presentation at the 10th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications (IISA 2019), we discussed the GAIA Methodology. The methodology provides a framework for integrating energy-saving activities into the curriculum of a school with an IoT infrastructure in its building to monitor certain parameters. It is essentially a series of simple steps, in which students and teachers: • study their environment, • monitor the current situation and detect potential issues, • devise a strategy to achieve energy savings and act, • monitor and review the results of their actions.

1. AMETHODOLOGY FOR SAVING ENERGY IN EDUCATIONAL
BUILDINGS USING ANIOT INFRASTRUCTURE
Georgios Mylonas, CTI Diophantus
Patras, July 17th, 2019

2. Introduction
• IoT and smart cities are very popular research fields.
• Open issue: how can we utilize such smart city and IoT
in order to produce solutions that:
• Are economically sustainable and socially fair
• Create public value
• One possible answer:
• apply such tools in an educational context and focus on
sustainability, while achieving energy savings.
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3. Green Awareness In Action - GAIA
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GREECE
22 SCHOOLS
5500 STUDENTS
SWEDEN
1 TECHNICAL HIGH
SCHOOL
1000 STUDENTS
ITALY
1 TECHNICAL HIGH
SCHOOL
1 UNIVERSITY
1000 STUDENTS
• 3 countries: Greece, Italy,
Sweden
• February 2016 – May 2019
• 25 school buildings
• 7500 students in these schools
• 290 teachers involved

4. GAIA’s Objectives
• Increase awareness of
the school communities
in Europe regarding
sustainability and energy
savings
• Utilize an IoT
infrastructure inside
school buildings for data
• Build a European
community of schools
• Produce actual energy
savings by changing
students’ and teachers’
behavior
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5. Educational approach and rationale
• Use real-world data generated inside schools to:
• Enable more interesting lectures
• Let students discover things on their own
• Learn while doing cool stuff!
• Apart from results inside class, students also
tend to carry changes in their behavior to their
homes and friends
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6. • Power consumption
• Temperature
• Relative humidity
• Luminosity
• Motion detection
• Noise levels
• CO2 concentrations
• Weather parameters
What is monitored in
the school buildings

7. GAIA IoT devices
7
Power Consumption In classroomEnvironmental Sensor

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GAIA Challenge

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11. But…
• Although we provide tools, it’s not always easy for
schools to integrate them in their workflow
• It’s not always simple/trivial to use external tools
during class
• Not a lot of teaching time available!
• How to benchmark/compare between different
schools during energy saving activities?
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12. Thematic cycles application
• Schools in GAIA selected specific thematic cycles
• A model was needed regarding how to conduct an
activity related to energy consumption, using the tools
and data available through GAIA.
• It can be considered as a template / guide to how to
implement the plan for each of the thematic circles
chosen by the schools to be implemented during the
school year.

13. The GAIA Methodology
• A methodology we propose for integrating energy saving
activities into the daily life of a school with an IoT
infrastructure in its building to monitor certain parameters.
• Follows the philosophy of the project but is not limited to
GAIA's implementation or specific hardware/software
• A series of simple steps, in which students and teachers:
• study their environment,
• monitor the current situation and detect potential issues,
• devise a strategy to achieve energy savings and act,
• monitor and review the results of their actions.
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15. Step 5 – continue monitoring
• Focus after achieving some energy savings should be to
continue monitoring results and verify whether they persist, or
change in some way.
• One way to achieve this is to monitor the situation weekly and
reward pupils and classes on the basis of their progress.
• Another way is through competition, by organizing groups in
your school to be responsible for different parts of the school
building.
• Schools should also keep in mind that such aspects are
supported in the GAIA competition for this school year.
• These examples can also serve as examples for writing short
reports for each school.

16. Practical Example
• The technical high school in
Söderhamn (Sweden) monitors
electricity consumption in 1 of its 3
buildings.
• The school chose to focus on
consumption of electricity from
appliances and equipment during
lecture time.
• There are many computers and
other equipment used for several
hours on a daily basis.
• The school is already energy-
efficient

17. Step 1- Awareness
• The building includes a total of 8 classrooms, a
computer room, a room with 3D printers and laser
cutters, 3 teacher rooms and some small study rooms.
• Teachers at the school mapped the hours of teaching
that took place in the classrooms of the school.
• During a typical week, the building is used for about
140 hours of teaching.
• This number of teaching hours varies depending on
parameters such as excursions and outdoor visits,
holidays, etc.

18. Step 2 - Observation
• The school then measured how much energy the building
consumes when it is not used for lessons.
• This was done in the 44th week, a holiday season.
• This week the school kept ventilation in operation as if it were
an ordinary week.
• The biggest consumption occurred on Monday because some of
the staff were working on that day.
• On Friday, the school closed the ventilation one hour earlier that
day - as is normal.
• Basic school building consumption was calculated through
measurements for this week from the GAIA Building Manager
app.

19. • The average value for this week was 142 kWh per day.
• This was considered to be the baseline energy
consumption for this building, i.e., consumption that
is inelastic, and can not be changed easily, or its
change will have implications on the way the school
operates.

20. Step 3 - Experimentation
• The next thing the school did was to measure
consumption during a typical week.
• A good candidate was the 47th week of the year.
• All student groups were in the building, no excursions
and no teachers were absent, so that teaching
activities took place as planned.

21. Consumption and use of the building
1220
1750
1990
1865
1430

22. Step 4 – Action!
• The 50th week was the week that energy-saving actions
began.
• All students and staff were informed about disabling
electrical equipment that is not in use.
• There were students who were assigned to monitor the
building and disable unused equipment.
• Strategies to monitor and act were devised by students.
• At the same time, 2 teams competed in GAIA Challenge.

23. First Results
• The average price for this
week was 196.5 kWh per
day.
• During this week, the use
of the building was slightly
longer.
• We ended up reducing
energy consumption by
21%.
Week Daily
average
(kWh)
Difference
with week 44
(kWh)
44 141,9 0
47 211 69,1
50 196,5 54,6

24. Long term results
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Energy-saving week
Lighting change
Activity 1 Consumption
[kWh/week]
Difference with baseline
[kWh/week]
Baseline week 1147 -
Energy saving week 1049 -98
Activity 2 Consumption
[kWh/week]
Difference with baseline
[kWh/week]
Baseline week 1147 -
Week 19 987 -160

25. Step 5
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26. Conclusions
• The educational domain has many constraints on implementing
activities that are not tied to a specific lecture/learning outcome
• An attempt at providing a framework with a certain flexibility in
terms of choosing an energy domain to focus, as well as the
means to implement a strategy towards energy savings
• We have seen energy savings around 15-20% in several schools
• You don't always need complex tools to achieve good results
• Lots of room for improvement in energy consumption in schools
• The human factor plays an important role in achieving tangible
energy savings
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27. http://gaia-project.eu/
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