Enabling sustainable smart neighborhoods

In this paper we provide a technical solution to combine the two factors automation and user motivation that help to realize sustainable smart spaces. To support these factors, commonly central components provided by energy providers or by public social networks like Facebook are used. Approaches that are based on a centralized architecture are problematic for various reasons, including making consumers dependent on a single operator, and introducing privacy risks. This paper presents the Distributed Smart Space Orchestration System (DS2OS), a fully decentralized approach for solving the connectivity problem in and between smart spaces. DS2OS connects entities of a smart space with each other and with trusted remote smart spaces of friends. A focus of the presentation lays on security, and establishing friendship relationships. The security is based on X.509 certificates for authentication. Secure friendship relationships are established by locally issued certificates for remote friends. This way a web of trust of distributed entities can emerge between spatially distributed smart spaces. The presented solutions foster the emergence of smart neighborhoods by offering more flexibility and being more privacy-friendly than centralized solutions. Their use is illustrated with four scenarios for (a) Reducing Peak Demands and Demand Adaptation in Energy Consumption, (b) Neighbor Accounting and Distributed Energy Generation, (c) Neighborhood Coordination, and (d) Sharing of Data and Knowledge.