The document describes EnergyUse, a semantic platform that combines energy consumption monitors with an online forum to help users understand and reduce their energy usage. It collects electricity consumption data from smart plugs, publishes summary data using an EnergyUse ontology, and automatically generates semantic tags and descriptions for forum posts and topics to simplify browsing and maintenance. An initial trial involving 150 UK participants found the platform improved engagement and raised awareness of energy consumption.

1. GRÉGOIRE BUREL, LARA S. G. PICCOLO, HARITH
ALANI
Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.
ISWC’16, Kobe, Japan.
17-21 October 2016.
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform
for Monitoring and Discussing Energy
Consumption
User Profiles
Energy Consumption
Processing
O
2
Readings/
Data
Summary

2. Outline
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
Publications
2
Climate Change Impact/Awareness
Increasing Citizen Awareness
The EnergyUse platform
- Platform Components and Architecture
- Platform Design
- Discussion Pages
- Appliance and Topic Pages
- Profile Pages
- Semantic Components
- Semantic Tagging
- Semantic Description
- Data Collection and Publishing (EnergyUse Ontology)
- Analysis
Conclusion

3. Outline
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
Publications
3
Climate Change Impact/Awareness
Increasing Citizen Awareness
Platform Design Guidelines
The EnergyUse platform
- Platform Components and Architecture
- Platform Design
- Discussion Pages
- Appliance and Topic Pages
- Profile Pages
- Semantic Components
- Semantic Tagging
- Semantic Description
- Data Collection and Publishing (EnergyUse Ontology)
- Analysis
Conclusion
EnergyUse Demo today 18h-21h.

4. Climate Change Impact/Awareness
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
Publications
4
The rise in average of Earth surface
temperature is expected to cost in the
USA alone $500 billion by 2025 and the
World Health Organisation (WHO)
predicts that it will cause 250k additional
death per years by 2030.
- Citizen are do not necessarily know
what concrete actions to take to
fight climate change.
- Citizen engagement around energy
conservation is complex.
!
CC/Flickr/AsianDevelopmentBank

5. Climate Change Impact/Awareness
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
Publications
5
How can we help citizen to better
understand their electric energy
consumption and encourage them to
reduce their carbon footprint ?
1. Enable a social experience where
users of different communities can
discuss energy related topics and
motivate each others.
2. Allow citizen to see their own energy
consumption and compare with
others to better understand their
carbon footprint.
?
!
Discussions
User Profiles
Topic/Appliance PagesEnergy
Readings
A
Energy Consumption
Processing
Smart Plugs Data
1
2
Readings/
Data
Summary
1
1
2
1
5
Ge
Dat
Automatic Semantic Description
Fetch Content
Fetch
Context
Get Concept
Label
Add
Description
https://energyuse.eu

6. Increasing Citizen Awareness
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
Publications
6
Enable a social experience where users of
different communities can discuss energy related
topics and motivate each others.
Social platforms such as online forums can be
used for sharing energy related tips and
information.
Online communities are easy to setup and have
higher reach than offline local communities.
The information shared in online communities
can be distant from the needs of individuals.
?
!
+
-

7. Increasing Citizen Awareness
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
Publications
7
Allow citizen to see their own energy
consumption and compare with others
to better understand their carbon footprint.
Energy monitors and smart plugs can
be used for giving instant energy
consumption feedback to citizen.
Energy monitors can lead to energy
savings of 5-15%.
Energy monitors rarely attract user’s
attention for more than a few weeks,
unless combined with other interventions,
such as providing tips and social
engagement.
?
Display
Display Plug
!
+
-

8. EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
Publications
8
How can we help citizen to better understand
their electric energy consumption and encourage
them to reduce their carbon footprint ?
Create a platform that combine an online forum
with energy monitors for helping users to get
more accurate information.
?
!
+
Increasing Citizen Awareness

9. EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
Publications
9
How can we help citizen to better understand
their electric energy consumption and encourage
them to reduce their carbon footprint ?
Create a platform that combine an online forum
with energy monitors for helping users to get
more accurate information.
?
!
+
Increasing Citizen Awareness
User Profiles
Topic/Appliance Pages
nsumption
ssing
Ontology
Mapper
EU
Ontology
2
Readings/
Data
Summary
1 2

10. The Energyuse.eu Platform
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
Publications
10
The EnergyUse platform:
- Written in Python/Django.
- Extends the Biostar Question
Answering (Q&A) platform.
- Currently deployed as part of a
restricted user trial.
The EnergyUse Community:
- The platform is deployed as part
of a user trial (150 UK participants
supplied with energy monitors).
- 58 registered users, 67 concepts,
121 posts and 36 discussions
(April 2016).
Discussions
User Profiles
Topic/Appliance PagesEnergy
Readings
Au
Energy Consumption
Processing
Annotation Service
Smart Plugs Data
1
2
Readings/
Data
Summary
1
1
2
1
5
Get
Data
Automatic Semantic Description
generator
Fetch Content
Fetch
Context
Get Concept
Label
Add
Description
https://energyuse.eu

11. Platform Components and Architecture
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
11
Discussions
User Profiles
Topic/Appliance PagesEnergy
Readings
Automatic Semantic Tagging
Energy Consumption
Processing
Ontology
Mapper
EU
Ontology
Annotation Services
Clima
Term Content
Annotation
Open
Linked Data
SPARQL/REST
Query
Knowledge Bases
GEMET
Thesaurus
Smart Plugs Data
1
2
Readings/
Data
Summary
1 2
SPARQL/REST
Query
Content
Annotation
1
2
3
1
2
34
4
5
Add
Concepts
Get
Data
Automatic Semantic Description
generator
Fetch Content
Fetch
Context
Get Concept
Label
Add
Description
(Biostar)

12. Platform Design
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
12

13. Discussion Pages
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
13

14. Appliance and Topic Pages
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
14

15. Profile Pages
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
15

16. Semantic Components
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
16
Discussions
User Profiles
Topic/Appliance PagesEnergy
Readings
Automatic Semantic Tagging
Energy Consumption
Processing
Ontology
Mapper
EU
Ontology
Annotation Services
Clima
Term Content
Annotation
Open
Linked Data
SPARQL/REST
Query
Knowledge Bases
GEMET
Thesaurus
Smart Plugs Data
1
2
Readings/
Data
Summary
1 2
SPARQL/REST
Query
Content
Annotation
1
2
3
1
2
34
4
5
Add
Concepts
Get
Data
Automatic Semantic Description
generator
Fetch Content
Fetch
Context
Get Concept
Label
Add
Description
(Biostar)

17. Semantic Components
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
17
Discussions
User Profiles
Topic/Appliance PagesEnergy
Readings
Automatic Semantic Tagging
Energy Consumption
Processing
Ontology
Mapper
EU
Ontology
Annotation Services
Clima
Term Content
Annotation
Open
Linked Data
SPARQL/REST
Query
Knowledge Bases
GEMET
Thesaurus
Smart Plugs Data
1
2
Readings/
Data
Summary
1 2
SPARQL/REST
Query
Content
Annotation
1
2
3
1
2
34
4
5
Add
Concepts
Get
Data
Automatic Semantic Description
generator
Fetch Content
Fetch
Context
Get Concept
Label
Add
Description
(Biostar)

18. Semantic Tagging
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
18
EnergyUse add tags automatically existing
discussions in order to simplify user browsing:
- The content of posts is used with DBPedia
Spotlight and the ClimaTerm annotation tools.
- Spotlight annotate posts with DBPedia entities
(General terms).
- ClimaTerm uses GEMET as a data source
(Specialised on environmental terms).
- All terms from ClimaTerm are used since the
tool is specialised to deal with environmental
terms
- In the case of Spotlight, only appliances are
selected.
Discussions
Topic/Appliance PagesEnergy
Readings
Automatic Seman
Ontology
Mapper
Annotation Services
Clima
Term C
An
SPARQL/REST
Query
Knowledge Bases
GEMET
Thesaurus
Smart Plugs Data
1 1
SP
Content
Annotation
1
2
3
1
4
4
5
Get
Data
Automatic Semantic Description
generator
Fetch Content
Fetch
Context
Get Concept
Label
Add
Description

19. Semantic Descriptions
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
19
Each appliance/topic page has a description,
background image and icon for helping users to
understand them better.
This information needs manual input from system
administrators and can remain empty.
EnergyUse uses an approach similar to the
semantic tagging for generating descriptions
from DBpedia:
- dbo:abstract is used for the description text.
- dbo:thumbnail is used for the background
image.
- dbc:Home_appliances indicates if a topic is an
appliance.
Discussions
Topic/Appliance PagesEnergy
Readings
Automatic Seman
Ontology
Mapper
Annotation Services
Clima
Term C
An
SPARQL/REST
Query
Knowledge Bases
GEMET
Thesaurus
Smart Plugs Data
1 1
SP
Content
Annotation
1
2
3
1
4
4
5
Get
Data
Automatic Semantic Description
generator
Fetch Content
Fetch
Context
Get Concept
Label
Add
Description
!

20. Semantic Descriptions
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
20

21. Data Collection and Publishing
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
21
EnergyUse collects electricity consumption data from users
using energy monitors and smart plugs supplied by
Green Energy Options (GEO):
- Supports 41 different appliance types (e.g. TV, Kettle,
PC…).
- Data is collected every 15 minutes and
synchronised once a day with the EnergyUse
platform.
- For each plug, 96 readings are collected every day.
- Users can visualise their own consumption.
- For each appliances, public summary data are
computed using the collected data (e.g. mean, min,
max and mean daily consumption).
- The summary consumption data as well as public
conversations are then published as JSON-LD using
the EnergyUse ontology.
Display Plug
Display Plug

22. The EnergyUse Ontology
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
22

23. Analysis – Semantic Tagging / Descriptions
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
23
Semantic Tag Generation
- 48 user tags and 17 additional automatic tags with
ClimaTerm and 4 tags (2 new) with Spotlight.
- Tag network density increases from 0.061 to
0.065.
Semantic Descriptions
- 67 concept labels with only 25 manually annotated.
- Out of 67 labels, 46 were automatically linked to the
proper entity (69%).
- 65% of the tags were correctly identified as
appliances.

24. Analysis - LD and Scalability
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
24
Linked Data Publishing:
- The platforms publishes 58 user profiles, 121 posts
from 38 discussions and consumption data for 37
appliances (April 2016).
- The EnergyUse ontology reuse important ontologies
such as FOAF and Dublin Core Terms.
- Data can be accessed in web pages as JSON-LD.
Scalability:
- Average loading time is currently 4.02 seconds
without caching mechanisms.
- The Biostar platform is scalable and used for hosting
Q&A websites that receive more than 600 visits per
hour (26k users / 181k posts)

25. Conclusions and Future Work
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
Conclusions
- EnergyUse is a collective platform that
raises user engagement and awareness
about energy consumption.
- The platform combines energy
monitors with a forum.
- In order to simplify data access, summary
data is published as JSON-LD using the
EnergyUse ontology.
- For simplifying platform maintenance and
information access, topic descriptions are
generated automatically and posts are are
also tagged automatically.
25
1 2
Future/Current Work
- Use additional annotation tools for
improving appliance/tag identification.
- Allow manual energy reading
submissions.
- User survey and usability evaluation of the
platform (later this month).
- Increase energy trial to additional user
groups.
EnergyUse Demo today 18h-21h.

26. Questions and Discussion
@
Email: g.burel@open.ac.uk
Twitter: @evhart
EnergyUse:
https://energyuse.eu
EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption
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