Water is a scarce resource in California, with a multi-year drought that has been ongoing since December 27, 2013. We envision that in 15 years the situation will worsen. In 2036, water will be a scarce resource in California. Citizens will have to respect a quota settled by the government of 50 gallons per day, per person. If they don’t, fines will be applied. California’s habitable area will be reduced due to wildfires and sea levels rising in coastal cities. Co-living will become a common way of life. We predict families of 5 to 7 strangers will share a communal kitchen and a bathroom, having small individual bedrooms. People living together along with limitations on resources will exacerbate issues commonly found in shared spaces. Being able to understand, manage and predict your water usage is not an easy task. Our project uses machine learning with a human-centered approach, providing a system to help housemates to improve their water-related behaviour in an easy way.
Through the beautiful metaphor of an iceberg getting submerged as more water is consumed, FLOES product & service keeps track of consumption patterns, and allows you to get custom suggestions, see forecasts for future months and gain awareness to manage family’s resources in order of priority.
PRODUCT
FLOES module detects the pre-installed water sensors, from which it retrieves consumption data in real-time and showcases it through its module: the bluer, the more water is being consumed. With its Machine Learning, it learns about your behaviour and sets a realistic water consumption goal each month.
It visualizes different consumption stages: The horizontal line represents the monthly goal, the whole perimeter is the government’s limit, and when it lights red it means going beyond and getting fined. The standard view shows the whole water consumption, the user can interact with it to get specific information: touch the module to see the first area’s (ex: kitchen) detailed consumption, swipe left to go to the next one or right to go back to the previous one, touch again to go back to standard view.
SERVICE
The FLOES app works as a support to the product. The user may have access to more detailed data on water consumption and projections on monthly results.
Water consumption per room is displayed as well as the monthly history of limits and fines. It gives users a detailed-look into the rooms and appliances in which the family is spending most water.
The user can get tips on how to improve according to the family’s behaviour in each room. A projection of how much water will be saved by adopting the suggestion is displayed.
With a resource as vital as water, it can be difficult to understand the impact of our behaviour as it is something used everyday and many times. We need to help people understand how much water they consume, where they consume it, and how to limit this consumption.
With this project, we hope to show that small gestures have a real impact and suggest a sustainable way to save water together. We want to show people how they can contribute to a more sustainable world by assessing their own consumption.
The facility receives information about the house's total consumption to help it to manage fines, and shares the general data with the government, which uses this to define new policies and manage the state’s resources. The authority can modify the monthly limits and fines of the FLOES system in case of emergency.
