Green Gown Awards 2014 - Technical Innovation - De Montfort University - Finalist

SmartSpaces – putting the smile into energy and water saving

SmartSpaces is a unique approach to displaying complex utility consumption data in a way which is fun, engaging and simple to understand. Building performance on energy and water consumption is visualised as a simple scale of smiley or not so smiley faces. Good performance is reflected as a happy, green face. Poor performance is reflected as a sad, red face. Yellow faces represent neutral performance. The system updates several times a day so that the results of actions by staff and students can provide positive feedback to encourage further actions.

Smart Spaces uses an online discussion forum for building users to post messages about the energy and water performance of their buildings. Beneath this simple visual interpretation of the data and online forum exists a more detailed analysis which Estates and research staff can interrogate to identify faults and issues.

It is helping to both reduce energy and water consumption and increase staff and student knowledge of energy efficiency and how we can move to a low carbon society.

Top 3 learnings

1 Rapid identification of problems in the energy management of participating buildings by facilities managers (the online tools are updated every couple of hours)
2 Increased environmental awareness and “energy literacy” of staff and students through discussions on the online forum
3 Research staff are working with Estates staff, building users and the wider community to enable people to better manage their building’s energy and water use.