On the 7^th Jan, 2014 and the 30^th May, 2014, Dr Shen Wei was invited to attend the first and second national meetings for ANNEX 66: Definition and Simulation of Occupant Behavior in Buildings, held in the Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and Tongji University, Shanghai, China. During the first meeting, Dr Wei made a presentation titled: Behavioural studies in Europe. During the second meeting, Dr Wei provided a presentation titled: A comparison of alternative occupant classification approaches for the modelling of window opening behaviour in buildings.

23-24 June 2014, Professor Pieter de Wilde attended the 2^nd conference of Building Simulation Optimisation, held in at the UCL, London, UK. During the meeting, Professor de Wilde presented a paper titled Extending the UK’s green deal with the consideration of occupant behaviour, based on the research carried out by the building technology team in eViz.

10-13 April 2014, Dr Shen Wei attended the 8^th Windsor conference ‘Counting the Cost of Comfort in a Changing World’ and presented a paper titled Using building performance simulation to save residential space heating energy: A pilot test, coming from his research in eViz.

3-4 April 2014, Professor Pieter de Wilde attended the CIBSE ASHRAE Technical Symposium 2014, held in Dublin, Ireland. During the symposium, he presented a paper titled: The building energy performance gap: Up close and personal.

12-14 March 2014, Professor Pieter de Wilde and Dr Shen Wei attended the first expert meeting of a new IEA project ANNEX 66: Definition and Simulation of Occupant Behavior in Buildings, held in Hong Kong. In that meeting the team from Plymouth University is one of the two institutions from the United Kingdom.

We are very happy to announce that there will be three eViz presentations at the upcoming BEHAVE energy conference! The Behave 2014 Conference ‘Paradigm Shift: From Energy Efficiency to Energy Reduction through Social Change’ will be held on the 3rd and 4th September at the Said Business School in Oxford, UK.

Burrows, R., Johnson, H., & Johnson, P.Online Social Media Systems to Influence Pro-environmental Behaviour: Modelling the Drivers of our Energy-use.

Stone, R., Guest, R., Pahl, S., & Boomsma, C. Exploiting Gaming Technologies to Visualise Dynamic Thermal Qualities of a Domestic Dwelling:Technical & Human Factors Challenges

Goodhew, J, Pahl, S., & Boomsma, C. A mixed method study of the role of tailoring in the design of visual interventions for domestic energy efficiency

Dr Neveen Hamza and Dr Robert Guest checking out cutting edge visualisation tools at the eViz meeting in Birmingham on 11th April

On the 25^th of March, Sabine Pahl attended the first Annual TEDDINET meeting hosted by the UK Energy Research Centre Meeting Place. The one day workshop on Transforming Energy Demand through Digital Innovation aimed to showcase the latest research in digital technologies for enabling energy demand reduction and demand response, and to map out future research challenges.

Below is a short video summarising the day, with a contribution from Sabine at 1.43 min.

TEDDINET Annual Meeting 2014: The highlights Dan van der Horst From: Transforming Energy Demand through Digital Innovation (TEDDI), 25 March 2014, London 2014-03-25 00:00:00.0 News Channel >> go to webcast>> recommend to friend

Islam Abohela has represented eViz at the Novel Energy and Biotechnology Developments in the Sustainable Built Environment Workshop held at Istanbul Technical University from Monday 24 March to Thursday 27 March. The workshop had contributions from leading researchers including Professor Ahmed Al-Shamma’a and  Professor Rafid Al Khaddar from Liverpool John Moores University; Dr Siddig Omer from the University of Nottingham; Dr Murat Cakan and Dr Begum Sertyesilisik from Istanbul Technical University, as well as other leading researchers from the UK and Turkey. Islam presented his on-going research; including his work on the eViz project.

The last two days of the workshop were dedicated to developing outline research proposals; Islam coordinated a group whose proposal was well received. Funding will be sought through the EPSRC responsive mode or through one of the calls of Horizon 2020. Research partners include, Liverpool John Moores University, The University of Nottingham and Istanbul Technical University.

Islam sums up the workshop as an “excellent experience and the outcome was invaluable. The workshop was generously funded by the British Council Researcher Links Scheme and coordinated by Innovative Green. It was an excellent event for networking and developing new research ideas.”

The building team in Plymouth has recently published a paper in the International Journal of Energy and Buildings. It can now be downloaded by following this link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037877881300683X