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agents. Local decisions are made by each agent in a context
of multiple criteria and, contrary to some widespread common
belief, they are seldomly anchored in a purely rational back-
ground. In many cases, decisions are early formed in the de-
cision maker’s mind, and the majority of the time said to be of
rational collection of data is in fact spent in a biased process
of reinforcing the early belief.
Decisions are thus rooted in an emotional setting,
which supersedes and biases rational thinking. It is therefo-
re important to address human behaviour and emotions, to
build openness to rational information and allow a slow shift
in perceptions and in criteria valorisation. An example of such
attempt is represented by the European Project FEEDBACK
(2021).
The concept behind this project was to change human
behaviour towards energy efficiency and energy use by cou-
pling massive monitoring with a gamification platform allowing
emotions to be positively expressed and rewarded whenever
behaviours favouring energy efficiency could be detected. Ga-
mification means adding a game context and mechanics to
non-game environments, enticing individual active participa-
tion and emotional involvement in processes otherwise tech-
nical and dry.
The project recruited two large services buildings, one
in the Barcelona metropolitan area, Spain, in El Prat de Llo-
bregat, under a Mediterranean climate, and the other being
the headquarters of INESC TEC, in Porto, Portugal, under an
Atlantic oceanic climate.
Following the script of Industry 4.0, massive sensing
was installed in both buildings, to collect data on energy and
comfort in real time – lights, power sockets, computers, ele-
vators, air conditioning, windows, interior air temperature and
humidity, CO2 and other information. A layer of data analysis,
intelligent models and knowledge extraction was created, and
gamification set-up organized, for every user of the building to
be involved in. This implied:

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