Via: SAVE ENERGY Website
The SAVE ENERGY Project aims to transform the energy consumption behavior of public building users – focusing on public servants and citizens – by applying existing ICT-based solutions, specifically real-time information from building management systems and Serious Games, in an innovative user-driven perspective. The project brought together 16 partners - including public authorities, public agencies, universities, research institutes, SMEs and corporations – to implement five large-scale pilots in five different countries (see Figure below) to test, benchmark, validate and stimulate new strategies and actions to the wider uptake of energy-efficient behaviors.
SAVE ENERGY builds upon the Living Labs methodology to provide an engaging virtual environment for users, citizens and policy makers to gain awareness, understanding and experience associated with energy saving attitudes.
SAVE ENERGY platform comprises a local data collection platform to be installed in the 5 different pilot buildings and a central platform where the information from all the pilots is consolidated, analyzed and compared to energy efficiency models which will be optimized along the project. The interaction with the users takes place through real time information and Serious Games.
Green My Place is a Serious Game for the SAVE ENERGY project. It has taken first prize at the 1st European Best Learning Game Competition, in the category Best Non-Professional Functional Game.
Green My Place is a game where the top level of play is mediated by a website - where in one sense the site is the game The design for the SAVE ENERGY Serious Game site, GreenMyPlace.net, has taken a while to mature but the result has been worth the wait.
The multiplayer game is played with a web browser in 5 different building locations. Users play simple, fast eco-action based mini-games to upgrade their Pilot Building and make it the best among the 5 buildings.
About The Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research (CKIR)
The Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research (CKIR), founded in 1999, is an international and multidisciplinary research centre at the Aalto University School of Economics, formerly Helsinki School of Economics (HSE).
CKIR’s main responsibility in the SAVE ENERGY project is the Serious Game, which aims to create a fun and engaging game experience, while shaping the player’s behavior towards energy saving issues.
Other primary responsibilities include project concept definitions as well as contributions to project vision. These tasks involve user-centered research in the SAVE ENERGY pilots aiming at creating project scenarios and decision models from the pilot users’ point of view. This type of research is in line with the SAVE ENERGY project’s objective to follow a so called Living Lab methodology, where large communities of motivated citizens are involved in co-creating ideas, decisions and recommendations. CKIR is also responsible for the policy recommendations that enable the dissemination of project’s results also in a wider context. CKIR takes actively part in the Helsinki pilot group.