IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2016 - 91

The interplay between an environment and its occupants
plays an important role in the happiness of its occupants. This
can be seen in the development of smart buildings, cities, and,
more generally, smart environments. Smart environments often
remove the occupant from the control loop and can lead to
people feeling disengaged with their environment. For example, heating systems in smart buildings are often controlled
centrally and do not allow any user input (another example of
this loss of control is automated windows that
open/close without any user input). This
removal of the human from the loop
counteracts and contradicts modern
design principles such as user-centered design [4] and seems to place
the building or resources as the
focus of design. By combining sensors (connected things), humans through
online accounts, and physical spaces (connected or unconnected things), we aim to
include humans throughout the loop and
enhance the smart environment. The goal of
our research is to optimize smart environments
by including humans in the loop, thus
enabling the occupants to act as
both a sensor and/or an actuator.
We define these as CPSSs. In

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The interplay between an environment and its occupants plays an
important role in the happiness
of its occupants.

the next section, we will discuss related work in the fields of
CPSs and citizen sensing.

relAted WorK
CPSs are physical and engineered systems with operations
that are monitored, coordinated, controlled, and integrated by
a computing and communication core [5]
[ or, as Lee defines
them, as an orchestration of computers and physical systems
[6]. Munir et al. propose that it is necessary to raise humanin-the-loop control to a central principle in system design in
CPSs [7];
this inclusion of humans inside a CPS has been
[
called a CPSS [8]
[ and a human-in-the-loop CPS (HiLCPS)
[9]. The challenge that all these systems face is how best to
incorporate human behavior as part of the system itself [7].
[
Crowley et al. [10]
propose a CPSS that incorporates social
[
media as the means of connecting a CPS to a building's occupants. Research such as Bull et al. examine how humans can
be included in smart building/environment design and the
importance of keeping users within the control loop [11].
[
This need for including humans in the loop is outlined in articles such as Carr, who highlights the dangers of too much
automation. Carr describes this process as "human-centered
automation," where systems are designed to keep engineers
in the decision loop [12].
[
Citizen sensing describes users enabled by web connectivity to report on events in their environment through social
media [13].
While citizen-sensing systems allow users to
[
post updates and this data can be very valuable, it often
does not form a complete feedback system. These systems
take advantage of humans as creators or publishers but not
as active agents in decision making or taking actions based
on their posts. The concept of citizen actuation comes from
the need to complete the loop started by a human in the
loop sensing. Citizen actuation is formally defined as the
activation of a human being as the mechanism by which a
control system acts upon the environment [10],
[14]. In this
[
work, we propose a citizen actuation framework that sends
a task to suitable occupants of an environment to complete.
We examine one important component of the framework
and outline a method for selecting users to complete a task.
This component of the framework is designed to ease the
burden on decision makers-by showing them the best
potential-fit profiles for a task based on social media profile
features. By designing a task allocation system based on
profile features and not user interests, we aim to create a
JULY 2016

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2016