Building Thermography Practitioners Needed for Interview Study

Do you perform energy audits of buildings? Do you use a thermal camera for your inspections? We need your help!

As sustainability researchers at the University of Maryland, we are exploring current methods and practices for performing energy audits of buildings and, specifically, the role of thermography in these audits. We are looking for experienced building thermographers, facilities managers, and building inspectors to participate in a short interview about their experiences as energy auditors. Some example questions include:

How are thermographic assessment of buildings performed and how useful is this data is for making sustainablity improvements to: residential, commercial, industrial, and institutional constructions?
What tools are used to collect and analyze energy audit and thermographic data?
What are the primary challenges in performing energy audits and using thermography?

Study sessions should last approximately one hour including a short demographic survey, a semi-structured interview about your professional experiences assessing buildings, and a brief design elicitation exercise aimed at informing the design of future thermographic systems.

Interview participants will be reimbursed $20 for their time. Interview sessions can be conducted in-person at a specific location of your choice in the DC metro area or via Skype, Google Hangout, or another video chatting service. All participants must be 18 years of age or older and be active or formerly active building thermographers, facilities managers, or building inspectors with hands-on thermographic experience. Apart from these restrictions, we encourage people of all genders and ethnicities to participate. If you are interested in participating, please email Matthew Mauriello (mattm@cs.umd.edu) the following information:

Brief description of professional experience with thermography
Current industry status (i.e., active or formerly active)
Years involved in thermography and/or working with thermographic data
Desired communication mechanism (i.e., in-person or by a video chatting service)
Desired meeting time and location

Feel free to take a look at our research lab's website to find out more about our research program: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/. Please also feel free to redistribute this posting.

Sincerely,

~Matthew Mauriello, MS
Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland
A.V. Williams Building, 4122
College Park, MD 20742
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http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mattm/
Twitter @mattm401