Nigel GoddardReader (aka Associate Professor) and member ofInstitute for Adaptive and Neural Computation School of Informatics University of Edinburgh |
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School of Informatics University of Edinburgh Informatics Forum 10 Crichton Street Edinburgh EH8 9AB United Kingdom |
Email: Mobile: +44 7879 671 811 Publications University of Edinburgh Summary Page |
Research Interests - Sustain Lab
My research focus is the application of machine-learning methods in energy-related areas. I also have a subsidiary interest in developing new approaches to macroeconomics based on accounting of real flows in the economy.
Current Projects
- Peoplehood
- Dispatch
- Smart Energy Research Lab
- Feather
Previous Projects
- IDEAL: Intelligent Domestic Energy Advice Loop. Reducing energy demand from existing dwellings through occupant behaviour change is crucial for meeting UK carbon emission reduction targets and will help the increasing numbers of households struggling to pay their energy bills. This project explores the interaction of energy technologies and householder behaviours related to energy in a sample of 600 dwellings. Using wireless sensing, machine learning, and natural language generation technologies, we will construct an intelligent advice loop that will provide information to householders on what activities they are engaging in which use energy and how much energy is used for each one, together with suggestions for what they might do to reduce their energy expenditure; for example: "Last week you spent £10 on hot water for showers, if you reduced your average shower time from 15 minutes to 12 minutes you could save £100 per year". If we can show that this loop is effective in helping people to reduce their energy demand, then we expect that energy suppliers and other companies will start to offer it as a service to households to help them keep their energy costs down. I am Principal Investigator on this project and have most interest in the machine learning methods we apply to infer behavours from noisy sensor data. I also oversee the software engineering aspects of the data pipeline and the feedback channels.
- BIG-SMALL This project studies the extent to which national surveys of energy use in homes can be carried out remotely and largely automatically using smart meter data augmented with carefully targeted additional sensor data. It is a spin-off from the IDEAL project, and is a collaboration with UCL's Centre for Energy Epidemiology.
- Enhance. Enhance is a research project which is taking a Living Lab approach to understanding and reducing energy demand in public sector buildings. The project is a collaboration between the School of Informatics, School of Social and Political Science, and Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh. I am Principle Investigator.
- 7see macroeconomic model
This project, led by Simon Roberts at Arup, is a multidisciplinary
collaboration aimed at understanding the long-term drivers and
constraints on evolution of the macroeconomy, in the tradition of
biophysical economics. We use system dynamics modelling methods
together with extensive analysis of national macroeconomic data to
enable evaluation of policy options related to natural resources
(principally energy). Two versions of the UK model have been
released (here and here) . The fundamental theses of this work is that, in contrast to
standard macroeconomic models:
- There are serious constraints on substitutability in the short and medium term. An obvious example is the forty-year commitment to energy sources.
- The system does not tend to an equilibrium but is a complex chaotic system that nevertheless in the right circumstances exhibits stability and strong patterns (think of weather and climate).
- Energy is a fundamental enabler of economic activity, and in a time of uncertain energy supplies can act as a significant constraint on economic activity.
Ph.D. training
I currently have one Ph.D. student and am open to taking on more students who are interested in working in areas related to my interests.- Sigrid Passano Hellan is working on machine learning methods for air pollution monitoring.
previous information for PhD
applicants
Other Activities
I was a member of the EU Smart Cities Initiative Stakeholder Platform,
in the Energy Efficiency and Buildings Working Group. Within this
group, I was Topic Coordinator for the "Living Labs and the Smart City"
topic. We developed a set of proposals for the European
Commission to advise them on key innovations to focus on over the
period to 2020.
Teaching 2022/23:
- Introductory Applied Machine Learning (Distance) This is our entry-level course into machine learning, for distance MSc students.
Entrepreneurship
From September 2002 to July 2006 I
was Founding CEO of the business that has become ResearchSpace Ltd, which provides an online Electronic Lab Notebook. I continue to advise and support the company.
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