REHAB-C: Recommendations for Energy HABits Change

Abstract

This paper introduces REHAB-C, a goal-based context-aware recommendation system that supports users in transforming their energy habits. A combination of smart sensors and actuators collects information about user actions and their context and evaluates the actions to be proposed. Based on user decisions, REHAB-C either triggers an energy saving action, postpones or cancels it and records user preferences. The recommendation system continuously evaluates the user context and action against a rule base along with user goals and prioritizes the recommended actions, also considering other user preferences. The prototype implementation of REHAB-C is evaluated on two real-world scenarios, in an office setup. The user actions and presence are recorded for four weeks, as well as the user behavior towards energy saving, and his preferences on the recommended actions. The analysis of recorded results shows that goal-based context-aware recommendations can help users to improve their energy efficiency and in the long term can automatically adapt to user habits and reduce their energy footprint. 2020 Elsevier B.V.