Intro
Guillermo Borragán is a cognitive environmental scientist with experience integrating technology to the development of sustainable territories. His work focuses on the integration of human factors to the design of energy efficiency programs and energy and climate plans. With a background at the crossroads between cognitive science, energy, and data science, he contributes to ensure the long-term success of these strategies by exploring the individual and collective elements that promote community engagement. Before joining VITO/EnergyVille in 2019, he completed a PhD in neuroimaging signal processing and human performance using neuroeconomic models. As part of his postdoc experience in Paris, he engineered data-oriented digital solutions to integrate user demand-response into local smart grids. Besides, he also led a project developing dynamic algorithms to offer energy efficiency tailored advice to households. He has participated in numerous international conferences and he is author of several peer-reviewed publications. During the last years, he has participated in EU research projects related to the energy performance of smart buildings and neighbourhoods (X-tendo, Digital Building Logbook, ePANACEA, SRI). He is now involved in two projects commissioned by the Flemish government on the modelling of end-user uptake of low-voltage technologies.
Involvement in 4TU Centre for Resilience Engineering
The increasing digitalization of services and the emergence of public databases are promoting the creation of new data environments that can lead to positive societal transformation. Having access to good quality data can be a game-changer for local communities and a way to boost innovation and promote new business models. Under the 4TU RE fellowship, I work with Samantha Copeland to better understand the factors that make data an asset to promote resilience of local communities. While there is no doubt that data sharing policies can promote local opportunities and resilience, there is a lack of knowledge on which and how to share successfully public and private data. Well processed, data can be used to identify tailored solutions, facilitate collaboration or promote citizen engagement. Making useful data accessible is the future for smart governance, aiding decision making processes and future-proofing the community. Supporting people to release datasets, provide the technology, training and processes that makes them useable, create policies and regulation such as those for data sharing and protection and collect, maintain and use data are some of the interconnected solutions that we will be addressing in this project.
I was a Young Fellow in the 4TU.DeSIRE programme.