Center for Energy, Environment and Economy (CEEE) has received the first H2020 Research and Innovat

Center for Energy, Environment and Economy (CEEE) has received the first H2020 project award at OZU with its Project titled:  TRIBE (TRaIning Behaviours towards Energy efficiency: Play it!). TRIBE has been funded as a Research and Innovation Action Project from the work programme ‘EE 11 – 2014: New ICT-based solutions for energy efficiency’. From the 94 submissions for the specific call, only four were funded while TRIBE Project ranked the first on the score list.
 
Prof. Dr. Pinar Menguc is the coordinator of TRIBE Project on behalf of Ozyegin University and comments that ‘TRIBE is especially important as it starts integrating the behavioral sciences to the equation of sustainable buildings alongside  energy efficiency, carbon emissions, finances and comfort, the major factors of a sustainable building that CEEE has developed an intensive expertise.' Professor Menguc and Dr. Pinar Ozuyar will guide the project, which will be focused on the OzU Engineering Building users.

TRIBE project aims to contribute to a citizens’ behaviour change towards energy efficiency in public buildings, through their engagement in the experience of playing a social game, linked by ICT to real time data collected from 5 pilot buildings hosting around 1300 regular users (employees, tenants, all users) and almost 12000 eventual users (visitors). The targeted average energy savings in the pilots is 24,8% of the current energy consumption. TRIBE project will carry out serious game aims to engage more than 750 000 players by the end of the project, involving users of the targeted pilot facilities and their social networks. As a result of the analysis and developments accomplished using the pilot cases of the TRIBE project, and in addition to the game that will serve to collect all the relevant information, a whole and very broad number of tools and guidelines named TRIBE pack will be set up to be used by public building tenants and owners. The goal is foster the spread of the public building users behaviour change as well as to support the deployment of ICTs for energy efficiency among public building owners and operators. The content of the final TRIBE pack will include; (1) an initial energy audit and diagnosis, (2) the development of a virtual pilot in conformity with the image of their real buildings, (3) an adapted ICT for energy efficiency deployment plan, (4) a funding scheme merging existing instruments with clean web solutions and (5) a user engagement campaign addressing the specific behaviour change challenges.
 
The three-year TRIBE Project has started on March 1, 2015, with a kick-off meeting in Zaragoza, Spain.