Solution Tag: Sensors

Development of a geolocation plugin

Posted on February 6, 2020 by -

Context

Eurostat started a project to modernize the data collection by developing innovative and shareable solutions among countries and to contribute to the European platform for Trusted Smart Surveys.

Time Use Surveys are an excellent example to show how sensor data can improve the data quality and collection efficiency.

This trajectory starts with the inclusion of sensor-derived geolocation as example.

State of play

Time Use Surveys have a long standing tradition and are recognized by international organisations (EUROSTAT, UNSD, UNECE, IATUR, …) as a valid and reliable source to study how people and households spend their time.

TUS measure the amount of time people spend doing various activities, such as paid work, household and family care, personal care, voluntary work, social life, travel, and leisure activities. Today, time use results are used to support the SDGs with comparable input.

Quest for TUS

Traditionally, household members are asked to write down their activities in a  paper diary. This process of data collection is seen as burdensome for both the respondent and the NSIs, turning into:

  • Low response rates
  • Large time investment from the respondent
  • High data collection and processing costs for the NSIs

At the same time globalisation is changing our world and a new digital transformation is taking place, turning into:

  • Quest to capture new activities, contexts and time use patterns
  • Quest to improve the quality of the data collection, and much cheaper and faster

Trusted Smart TUS

To support national and regional policymaking new metrics are needed, enhancing new collection strategies that are intelligent and more interactive in the way society is measured.

Of key importance for Smart surveys is the interplay between active and passive registration, with the respondent as the central position:

  • Smart survey: surveys that make use of smart devices like a smartphone, wearables, smartwatches, … and extract extra information from the behaviour of people
  • Active registration: straight-away input of the respondent to a front-office application (web/mobile) portal
  • Passive registration: inclusion of external sources of information (sensor, administrative databases, …) where the respondent does not have to do anything (but consent)
  • Interplay: external input that supports the respondent task to register qualitative answers but the other way around to provide the means to the respondent to adjust and supplement the input from external sources

The next step is to let TUS benefit from the technological developments in order to support the data quality and to lower the time con respondents.

Geolocation project objective

A basic strategy in TUS is to record activities within a temporal, spatial and social context. The idea behind is the improved registration quality when respondents remember the context within which an activity took place.

The strategy is based upon a modern version of the Hägerstrand’s time-space diagram (also called a framework) where household members spend a day of time interacting with the place and social environment.

The objective is to visualise the places where the respondent or household members have been throughout the day and which modes of transport they have used.

Creation of a plugin

Development of a Cordova Background Geolocation plugin for iOS and Android, capturing passive data:

  • longitude & latitude
  • time stamp
  • activity: still, walking, running, bicycle, vehicle
  • extra information on the location via connection with external database (e.g. Foursquare)

Plug and play principle

Transmission of the plugin data to a plugin-server. The plugin server can be called by candidate platforms resulting in efficiency and productivity gains through collaboration in sharing tools and infrastructure.

Integration into MOTUS

A visualisation of the space-time diagram is provided to the respondent via a web and mobile application in such a way that the passive data input can be accepted, changed and/or supplemented in an active manner.

The interaction between the passive and active input leads to Trusted Insightful Smart TUS.

SOURCE TM

Posted on August 31, 2018 by -

The motivation

In 2017 EUROSTAT started a project to modernise the collection of Social Statistics (ESS – European Social Statistics). By doing so, EUROSTAT builds on the Wiesbaden Memorandum from 2011 that strives for better information about patterns of time-use and consumption of households. More specifically, it involves the time-use survey (TUS) and household budget survey (HBS).

The project

Against this backdrop the SOURCE TM project emerged. SOURCE TM stands for Software OUtreach and Redefinition to Collect E-data Through MOTUS. The central aim of this project is to collect time-use data in Europe in a comparable way. Apart from the Research Group TOR, both STATBEL (the statistical office of Belgium) and DESTATIS (the statistical office of Germany) are involved. Within this project they will expand their knowledge about the MOTUS software platform, focusing on the way data is collected through a MOTUS application that runs both online and offline.

The challenges

The major challenge for the European modernisation project regarding the collection of Social Statistics is striving for comparability while at the same time leaving room for country specific interests (f.e. in terms of questions or activities) and wishes or concerns (f.e. in terms of the influx of respondents or the length of the survey). The MOTUS software platform accepts this challenge, because:

  • MOTUS is developed to design all survey components (questionnaires, diaries, context) as well as all communication with respondents within a single program (i.e. comparability); and
  • MOTUS is capable of adding unique contextual elements to this program at the same time (i.e. country-specific interests/wishes).

The quest for a proper configuration of MOTUS entails two phases of testing:

  • Developing a prototype of an e-TUS (online time-use survey) that will be evaluated by a large groep of scientists and representative that form the Workgroup TUS of EUROSTAT.
  • Having a non-representative sample registering their time-use for two days (one weekday and on weekend day).

“Comparability and customisation are two important conditions for the European modernisation project of collecting Social Statistics to be successful. Both elements are at the base of MOTUS.”

Both TUS and HSB are based on registrations in a diary: TUS for time-use and HBS for household consumption. Logically, both STATBEL and DESTATIS posed the question what it would take to use MOTUS for HBS purposes as well. Since the programming of MOTUS allows for such adaptations, this question has been included as an additional line of research in the project.

The aim

If successful, the aim of the project, which runs from January 2019 till February 2020, is to include MOTUS as a method for online time-use surveys (e-TUS) and online household budget surveys (e-HBS) in the CSPA catago. CSPA stand for Common Statistical Production Architecture. It describes that standards and principles for the production of national statistics and is aimed at improving the comparability of results.

Prio-climate

Posted on January 5, 2018 by -

Renovation in social housing

Renovation is at the top of the EU-priority list to higher the energetic performance of buildings and to acquire a high-level indoor air quality for sanity reasons.

Media campaigns and subsidy strategies are used to convince private owners to invest in their houses.  All parties together need to take actions to arrive to a fully renovate building stock in 2050.

However, an important group of people do not own the house they live in. For these houses the renovation rate is much lower, while the financial and health costs remain to be paid by the dwellers themselves. This is even more true for families who cannot even afford to rent a house or apartment to stay in. Many of these families rely on social housing companies who make apartments of house available against a low monthly rent. These houses are most-often not adapted to today’s energy and living standards.

Foyer Anderlechtois

The Social Housing Company Foyer Anderlechtois is exemplary in Belgium for houses with a lower living standard of their stock. They manage about 3.700 tenements (apartments and houses) in Anderlecht. About 500 houses are situated at the quartier ‘Bon Air’, or ‘Good Air’.

Action plan

Foyer Anderlechtois’ action plan is to renovate 86 houses in 2018-2020 in Bon Air. This renovation includes modernization, isolation and ventilation. But, just like in every project and now even more, choices must be made. Due to budgetary reasons. And ventilation is often neglected in favour of (e.g.) isolation. While a good ventilation is a precondition for a good air quality and subsequently a healthier life.

This good ventilation is reached more easily with a ventilation system type D hybrid where windows are being opened and closed automatically based on censored data. On the other hand, a type C can be used with fixed ventilation grills in the windows. Variations in between exist.

Living Lab

This project is initiated to set up a living lab where in multiple houses multiple ventilation systems will be introduced with variations in costs and in ease of use. The brings us to three research questions:

  • How do other renovation aspects have an impact on the ventilation performances and needs?
  • How do dwellers in a real day-to-day situation make use of the ventilation system?
  • How satisfied are the dwellers with the ventilation system in use?

It is in particular the day-to-day performance of the ventilation system, the usage by the dwellers and their appreciation about it that are essential in the decision to promote a certain ventilation system. These essentials are brought into light by MOTUS.

Towards a reproduction approach

About 20 households will be followed over the period of one year. Over this period dwellers will keep a registration of their behaviour and answering (triggered) questions about the air quality (e.g. during the night) and their interaction with technical devices in the house (opening or closing windows, switching on/off ventilation system). At the same time technical measurements will take place to grasp information on the temperature, CO2, amount of particles, … .

Both streams of data need to arrive to a balanced renovation concept that includes ventilation solutions and that is affordable, replicable and acceptable by dwellers in social housing.

Occupant-home interaction before and after renovation

Posted on February 14, 2017 by -

Our home: 5 features

We spend more than 90% of our time indoors, much of which is also spent in our own home. Studies show that the technical condition of a home also affects the physical and mental health of the people who live in it.

A healthy home usually has 5 features:

  • good sleeping conditions
  • comfortable indoor temperature
  • fresh air
  • plenty of natural light
  • good humidity level

Renovation: necessary, but not straightforward

In Europe the renovation of houses is an important focal point when it comes to energy efficiency. It is estimated that 9 out of 10 dwellings today will still be lived in by 2050. However, approximately 3/4 of these homes are not energy-efficient and so score poorly on at least 1 of the 5 features stated above. In fact, usually on several points. Yet despite that, many home-owners still hesitate to undertake the renovations needed due to a lack of knowledge and budget.

Affordable renovation in social housing

So how can we make sure that more homes are renovated? This is the question that VELUX asked when it embarked on a project in Anderlecht (Belgium), in the working-class district of Goede Lucht.  The project involved tackling a house built in the 1920s [JS1] where there was a significant need for structural renovation. Most of the residents of the area are tenants of the Social Housing company ‘Anderlechtse Haard’, which owns the building in question.

With this in mind, VELUX outlined an affordable renovation concept in which automatic controls play a key role: RenovActive.

From prototype to stereotype

Part of the affordability of this renovation project stems from the ability to replicate the renovation principles used. And so it was that the first renovated house was able to become the blueprint for 86 similar renovation projects in the neighbourhood. This means that RenovActive is now evolving from prototype to stereotype: millions of houses owned by social housing companies in Europe can use these same renovation principles.

OK – but what really changes for the occupant?

Every architect and manufacturer will argue based on the potential of the project or product in question. So it may be possible the effect that the renovation has on the way in which occupants actually use their house differs from the initial theoretical assessment.

A user analysis of the residents gives us an insight into the question of ‘how do various aspects of renovation have an effect on interaction between the occupant and the house?’.

Mixture of methods

Underlying the overall question, our aim is to gather knowledge about the 4 dimensions of the interaction between the occupant and the house:

  • Overall wellbeing
  • Satisfaction/happiness with the house
  • Perception of health
  • Patterns of behaviour

For this project hbits is using a combination of different data collection methods. There’s the (online) questionnaire, individual conversations and group discussions – and then there’s the MOTUS app for examining user behaviour.

The occupants use the MOTUS app to record their behaviour and answer context-related questions. The types of behaviour involve, on the one hand, the use/application of technical renovations (e.g. central ventilation, central heating, opening a window/door) and, on the other, day-to-day activities (work, domestic chores, free time, sleeping, etc.) at home/elsewhere, alone or with others.

The MOTUS app will also be used as an intermediary for communicating technical indicators (such as the consumption of heat) to the occupants and to ask extra questions about them. By doing this, we can link technical input with sociological input.

Before and after comparisons

All family members in the participating families are asked to take part in the screening at different periods of throughout the RenovActive project. The screening begins with a t-1 measurement at their old, unrenovated house and hence before they move back into their newly renovated home. Shortly after moving into the new dwelling, a t-0 measurement is carried out. A further 7 measurements are then carried out over a period of 2 years to assess any changes in behaviour and opinions. By doing this, we can also even out any seasonal variations.

The study began in 2016 and will end in 2018/19.