Closing the loop - From citizen sensing to citizen actuation

“Human-in-the-loop” sensing or citizen sensing as a method for collecting, analysing, and mining information about events is becoming more mainstream. In this work, we aim to utilise the concept of citizen sensors but also introduce the theory of citizen actuation. Citizen sensors observe, report, and collect data – we propose by supporting these citizen sensors with methods to affect their surroundings we enable them to become citizen actuators. We outline a use case for citizen actuation in the Energy Management domain, propose an architecture (a Cyber-Physical Social System) built on previous work in Energy Management with Twitter integration, use of Complex Event Processing (CEP), and perform an experiment to test this theory. We motivate the need for citizen actuation in Building Management Systems due to the high cost of actuation systems. We define the concept of citizen actuation and outline an experiment that shows a reduction in average energy usage of 24%. The experiment supports the concept of citizen actuation to improve energy usage within the experimental environment and we discuss future research directions in this area.