Saving water: a logical choice?

The amount of water we consume differs from person to person. To gain a greater insight into our behaviour, VITO has started the WaterVille research project. In DreamVille, the Tomorrowland festival village, smart sensors register water consumption. Researchers are also testing ways of reducing that consumption.  

You can view DreamVille as a temporary village that is built up every year in the weeks before Tomorrowland. During the two festival weekends, there are 38,000 people each time, who all take showers, use the toilet, wash their clothes in the laundrette sometimes, etc. But water consumption differs greatly from visitor to visitor.

In a second sub-study, WaterVille is investigating which aspects affect the behaviour of Tomorrowland visitors. “The main question is: how do you make water saving an obvious choice?” says sociologist Yves De Weerdt. “Behaviour depends on many factors: age, gender, individual needs, what friends do, the weather, the atmosphere, etc. Combining technology with behavioural knowledge allows you to communicate in a more targeted manner. Do you talk very dryly about water consumption or do you turn it into a game? Do you put up a display in the shower, allowing people to compare their water consumption to that of others? Later on we want to use the insights gained within broader research into smart cities.”