Digital technologies have a transformative impact in the economy and wider society. New innovations in Information Communication Technology (ICT) such as the next generation '5G' internet, automation and robotics, and big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have the potential to make a profound societal impact and the pace of development is staggering. The same technologies can though have a negative impact on society, including significantly increasing the carbon emissions related to ICT and thus creating damaging impacts on our environment. Managing this duality between ICT's benefits and risks must be at the heart of future ICT design and innovation - ensuring ICT can continue to bring value to our society and the economy, while keeping ICT innovations from exceeding planetary boundaries. However, there is currently scarce consideration of systemic impacts within ICT innovation, and design processes today lack the information and tools required to embed environmental sustainability into ICT. This project, PARIS-DE, will ensure that the carbon emissions associated with the ICT sector are aligned with the Paris agreement: limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To do this, the PARIS-DE project will develop a digital sustainability framework that systemically considers ICT's impacts and ensures Paris-compliant design through two key concepts: i) an evidence base around carbon emissions in the digital economy, and ii) a responsible innovation approach that targets environmental sustainability, yet maintains key aspects of ICT design that enable societal thriving. Using a range of disciplinary perspectives including computer science, human-centred design, philosophy and ethics and environmental economics, PARIS-DE will develop digital tools that support ICT development within planetary boundaries, and will create, demonstrate and evaluate the digital sustainability framework through three case studies: 1) big data and AI, 2) autonomous systems, and 3) video streaming. These case studies, taken as representative of the digital economy, will allow for an evaluation of different underlying technologies that threaten rising emissions. The case studies will also involve working closely with key stakeholders in ICT innovation (e.g. designers and developers in the ICT sector), ensuring the framework is comprehensive and effective. PARIS-DE will ultimately allow the ICT sector to innovate technology more sustainably and in-line with climate change mitigation targets.

The data that makes up people's online identities lies scattered across the virtual landscape, consisting of emails, photos, social network site interactions and more. Such data can have emotional, financial and intellectual significance. Yet the awkward question of what happens to this data when a user dies lies unanswered. There are three main components to this open question, which this research seeks to address: (1) How do online applications need to change to allow users to nominate data inheritors? There is no obvious mechanism for the bequest of one's digital artefacts. It is subject to the terms of use of individual web sites and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), buried far down in the small print or not dealt with at all. In life, we own our personal data, no matter where it is held. (2) How do online applications need to change to facilitate inheritance of personal data in the inevitable event of a user's death? After death, ownership of the deceased's personal data is a grey area. This can result in distress and inconvenience for the bereaved as they struggle to retrieve precious online artefacts. (3) What are the boundaries for the acceptable creation, ownership and management of online memorials which re-purpose inherited data, appropriate to UK cultural norms? We are already seeing spontaneous technology-based responses to death and loss emerging- e.g. - online memorials. Many are respectful and appropriate, yet some are not - and can cause further anguish to the bereaved as a result. There is a lack of research to establish boundaries of acceptability in this highly sensitive area.In this research, I will address the questions outlined above from a participatory perspective, collaborating with users, and with experts in law, psychology, sociology and social software. I will first establish what people want to happen to their data after they die, their preferences in expressing these choices, and how these choices should be acted upon. I will then examine how the bereaved choose to repurpose these digital artefacts, how this repurposing can assist in the grieving process, and the way in which these repurposed artefacts should be managed to protect the sensitivities of the bereaved. The work will be underpinned by a theoretical understanding of the bereavement process and empathetic social behaviour.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

This project will investigate innovative ways of dividing up and representing energy use in shared buildings so as to motivate occupants to save energy. Smart meters (energy monitors that feed information back to suppliers) are currently being introduced in Britain and around the world; the government aims to have one in every home and business in Britain by 2019. One reason for this is to provide people with better information about their energy use to help them to save energy. Providing energy feedback can be problematic in shared buildings, and here we focus on workplaces, where many different people interact and share utilities and equipment within that building. It is often difficult to highlight who is responsible for energy used and difficult therefore to divide up related costs and motivate changes in energy usage. We propose to focus on these challenges and consider the opportunities that exist in engaging whole communities of people in reducing energy use. This project is multidisciplinary, drawing primarily on computer science skills of joining up data from different sources and in examining user interactions with technology, design skills of developing innovative and fun ways of representing data, and social science skills (sociology and psychology) in ensuring that displays are engaging, can motivate particular actions, and fit appropriately within the building environment and constraints. We will use a variety of methods making use of field deployments, user studies, ethnography, and small-scale surveys so as to evaluate ideas at every step. We have divided the project into three key work packages: 'Taking Ownership' which will focus on responsibility for energy usage, 'Putting it Together' where we will put energy usage in context, and 'People Power' where we will focus on creating collective behaviour change. In more detail, 'Taking Ownership' will explore how to identify who is using energy within a building, how best to assign responsibility and how to feed that back to the occupants. We know that simplicity of design is key here, as well as issues of fairness and ethics, and indeed privacy (might people be able to monitor your coffee drinking habits from this data?). 'Putting it Together' will consider different ways of combining energy data, e.g. joining this up across user groups or spaces, and combining energy data with other commonly available information, e.g. weather or diary data, so as to put it in context. We will also spend time considering the particular building context, the routines that currently exist for occupants, and the motivations that people have for using and saving energy within the building, in understanding how best to present energy information to the occupants. Our third theme, 'People Power' will focus on changing building user's behaviour collectively. We will examine how people interact around different energy goals, considering in particular cooperation and regulation, in finding out what works best in different contexts. The project then brings all aspects of research together in the use of themed challenge days where we promote specific energy actions for everyone in a building (e.g. switching off equipment after use) and demonstrate the impact that collective behaviour change can have. Beyond simply observing what works in this context through objective measures of energy usage, we will analyse when and where behaviour changes occurred and speak to the users themselves to find out what was engaging. These activities will combine to inform technical, design and policy recommendations for energy monitoring in workplaces as well as conclusions for other multi-occupancy buildings. Moreover, we will develop a tool kit to pass on to other companies and buildings so that others can use the findings and experience gained here. We will also explore theoretical implications of our results and communicate our academic findings to the range of disciplines involved

This project brings together University College London, the University of Nottingham, which also hosts the HORIZON Digital Economy Hub, the London Borough of Waltham Forest, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and Leytonstone Business Improvement District (e11bid) to investigate how the urban experience mediated through connected large screens can be designed to augment real world interactions, support communities, and promote and develop culture so as to maximise the quality of the public experience within the urban realm.This project is inherently cross-disciplinary bringing together methods from Architecture and Computer Science. We will work in 'action research' mode engaging research organisations with the end user communities and Waltham Forest council. We will also engage at a national level through the involvement of CABE and Mike Gibbons, Head of Live Sites (a network of permanent large-scale digital screens across the UK). Through an iterative prototyping methodology we will integrate the content development, placement, local interactivity and distributed connectivity of four re-locatable screen nodes connecting Nottingham with London. This set-up will allow us to explore remote connectivity by comparing two with three and four networked nodes, creating situations and experiences that differ in their urban settings and the types of populations they support through different seasons. The screen content will be compared across different locations, allowing us to identify outcomes that are site-specific and ones that can be generalised across different sites. We will develop the screen content (such as applications and experience) and evaluate mediated public interactions around these screens by engaging with the London Borough of Waltham Forest, the local communities around all four nodes locations, and commissioned artists in definition of the research challenges as well as in the programme of research itself. These creative experiments will, however, be carefully designed to contribute to our research understanding of the dimensions of possibility and acceptance by the community. We will document design, management and public meetings and, as research results are generated, feed research findings back into local and policy debate, and feed forward into the design of the experience and interactions mediated through connected screen technologies. Our research takes a targeted and longitudinal approach in order to understand a complex range of social, technical and interactional issues.