Discussione:7.3 Overview of Deliverables

Phases

• Enabling Phase
• Attraction - Community development (inbound)
• Propagation - Snowball and memes (outbound)

Enabling Phase

During the enabling phase, project partners prepare the conditions (a catalyst environment) for gathering a community of interest around a knowledge centre about building renovation for NZEB.

Key elements of this RINNOVATE collaboration development environment are:

• democracy tools for the governance of the community
• a manifest and a code of conduct
• shared basic meanings (ontology)
• tools for technical collaboration among interested parties;
• interface(s) and tools for easing end-users involvement, usage and contribution;
• tools for participation to social networks;
• tools for machine to machine collaboration (semantic web, aka web 3.0)
• a large, qualified, semantic-reach knowledge map
• one (or more) basic procedures for binding renovations and maintenance to NZEB goals
• commonly agreed communication principles

Democracy tools for the governance of the community

Because RINNOVATE roots on the principle of using (or re-using) and valorizing existing know-how, tools, methods, expertise, products, ecc., democracy tools will be chosen among the most adapt ones (following the results included in the deliverable D2.1-Overall Requirements Report from Task 2.1 - Analysis and definition of overall requirements). For this purpose several tools exist, backed by large communities and with a long history of successful implementation for this same purpose (e.g. Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, Mediawiki) Possibly this will be one of the few tools actually hosted in the same domain of the RINNOVATE catalyst (collaboration development) environment, unless the requirement analysis will suggest to use an existing service.

RINNOVATE manifest

The manifest is the costituency chart of the community, a short, simple document that summarizes values, aims, goal, vision and governance of the community. At the beginning of the project partners will deliver a seminal document (reflecting the project's essentials) that will be tha base for the sharing, elaboration, discussion and deliberation that will follow.

RINNOVATE code of conduct

It is the set of rules outlining the responsibilities of or proper practices for individuals and organizations participating tho RINNOVATE community. Its principal aim is to build confidence and trust among members and users. Especially people who accesses to audit services and design advice must be able to trust RINNOVATE members with their planning decisions.

Shared basic meanings (ontology)

Ontologies are formal descriptions of terms and relations between them in some knowledge domain – in our case Building & Construction, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy Sources. Ontologies improve human access to information and promote shared understanding. On computer side, ontologies facilitate comprehension of information and more extensive processing. At present ontologies are being increasingly used for structuring expertise and transform it into computable, shareable representations in many fields (including sensitive ones, e.g. medicine). In RINNOVATE we will re-use fundational layers of existing ontologies (e.g. the "freeClass Ontology for construction and building materials and services" and to provide the skeletal knowledge and infrastructure for integrating knowledge items relevat to renovation of buildings, energy performance (including renwable energy sources), independent of particular implementations. For instance commercial basic patterns will be described following an existing ontology (possibly GoodRelations, adopted by Google, BestBuy, Overstock, Yahoo, OpenLink Software, O'Reilly Media, the Book Mashup, and many others), and contacts described using FOAF, but only essential elements will be required. In RINNOVATE this tool will enable symbolic and visual search, multiple language search, disambiguation across disciplines and jargons, and will help the elaboration of integrated renovation specifications/terms of reference in public contracts.

Tools for technical collaboration among interested parties

These tools are the swiss-army knife for contributing to and taking advantage of the RINNOVATE community. Following the overall RINNOVATE paradigm "go where people are, use what people already use", RINNOVATE tools for collaboration fall into three groups:

• tools for newbies: anything goes, starting from the same tool used as "democracy tool"; in fact the same environment (e.g. MediaWiki based) allows to create a new page, upload images, assign properties to items, categorize the page as project, allow other to comment, monitor new contributions, etc.
• existing tools already used by one party; it is nonsense to sink a well-done slide presentation into the site itself when we can easely open a window on a world-class service (for instance Slideshare, authorstream or Scribd); possibly members of a publicly funded project hosting a blog would try to attract a discussion to "their blogroll" or Facebook or Tweeter pages; good, as far as a link with the originating thread is maintained;
• specialized tools; these include instruments for technical collaboration (iPad CAD collaboration software, shared viewers, etc., annotated websites, etc.); again we expect that groups already working with cloud-computing solutions will continue to do so and contribute to RINNOVATE including its principles in their work; RINNOVATE will actively contribute to successful 'tool centered' communities (e.g. Autodesk(tm) Green building design studio (tm) or similar products' user groups).

Interface(s) and tools for easing end-users involvement, usage and contribution

If users find RINNOVATE useful and easy-to-use they will probably return. Case descriptions and search for solutions in sectors as building and construction, energy efficiency and renwable energy sources/technologies show inherent complexity. If the scope of description or investigation goes across domains and languages, as in the case of renovation projects orientated to NZEB, uncertainty and ambiguity spread. The good news is that visual interfaces may help. Some are already available. For instance sketch-up plugins for Google building creation. RINNOVATE will simply create a basic ZEBRA visual navigation interface (the paradigm is that this interface should allow to simply describe an environment taking pieces from existing examples and combining these pieces together anew): in so doing links will connect to the underlying ontology and to concepts. Nothing new to invent, because the method is already used for training in repair services. RINNOVATE will only deliver the essential to start the snow-ball: community driven solutions will hopefully grow on top of these basic tiles.

Tools for participation to social networks

Basically there will be one-stop-shop interface to relevant groups and webplaces. Anyone can bypass this centre, simply it is cheaper, quicker and more fitting when focusing on planning renovation for achieving NZEBs (e.g. it will allow public bodies to hit the interested community from their buyer profile when publishing RES/RUE/renovation tenders). You can imagine it as a mixup of Wibiya bar and RSS feed. These section of tools will be based on available FLOSS software and embedded in the RINNOVATE site.

Tools for machine to machine collaboration (semantic web, aka web 3.0)

These tools will be implemented in order to allow the automation of information gathering, mash-up, remix and exchange. In fact a typical result of a RINNOVATE search-by-example will mash-up location information, energy-performance indicators, trust indicators, linked domain information, contact and more-info data. For instance mashing-up a service like "foursquare" with cases from RINNOVATE database allows to distribute on-site inspection to the nearest member of the community.

A large, qualified, semantic-reach knowledge map

The set of websources related to building renovation and RUE/RES/RET domaind will be crawled by automated software agents searching for essential information required to work with the shared basic meanings of the RINNOVATE community. A first result will be a directory searchable with a uniform schema for ZEBRA purposes. The collection will be screened by RINNOVATE expert partners who will ask further information for those items deemed of value. Owners of data will be able to add semantic rich annotations. Iy will be up to them to update the additional information layer, while the basic schema will be automatically updated regularly. The final result will be an information roundabout of high practical value for all parties.

One (or more) basic procedures for binding renovations and maintenance to NZEB goals

An important contribution of RINNOVATE is to build owners and contractors confidence on integrated energy performance investments during renovations and maintenance: credibility is foundamental, because it leads to trust, which is one of the pillars of persuasion. In the RINNOVATE environment we do not have third-party-based traditional approaches for reputation management: no single entity is responsible for collecting, updating, and disseminating the reputation of each member and of the services, products and advice channeled through the community. Instead, each 'service comsumer' records its own perceptions of the reputation of only the services it actually uses, hence a personal evaluation. Only clear, publicly available and largely agreed protocols allow comparing results on a same scale, for instance expected energy performance improvements as consequence of including a given RET in a renovation plan. RINNOAVTE partners will draw the protocol for assessing a “pathway to ZEBRA”, i.e. evaluating actual energy performances of a given case, establish realistic NZEB target performances in a given period of time, conceive a frame of integrated measures and plan it over reasonable schedule, compute energy and bill returns, compare with alternatives. The protocol will be continuously analyzed, discussed and elaborated further by community members, but until a new version is accepted, the stable, previously accepted protocol will be the rule for community members.

Commonly agreed communication principles

In order to increase the power of propagation of ZEBRA and of RINNOVATE concepts through other communities, few binding communication principles will be established. For instance avoiding unrealistic claims, or pretending community endorsement of commercial practices falling outside the project scope, or communication techniques considered unfair.