Dr Victoria Aragon, MSc, MEng currently working at AbSolar, previously worked as a researcher in Energy and the built environment at the Energy & Climate change Division.
Victoria graduated with honours as a Civil Engineer in 2012, whilst working at a structural design studio. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Victoria has worked in the construction and building certification industries, and has travelled for interest, work and education, developing internships in Turkey and Germany, courses in Austria and Germany and, most recently, studying at the University of Southampton in 2014. Here she obtained an MSc in Energy & Sustainability with honours, and developed her dissertation on reducing energy consumption in current and future climate conditions, in two social housing blocks for the City Council of Portsmouth (dissertation results published in April 2016 and at the Demand and Windsor conferences).
Currently Victoria is working for Thermoss , an EU funded research project focused on increasing the efficiency of heating systems in domestic buildings across Europe. This includes managing the deployment of the project in two demonstration sites in the UK, including coordination and control of monitoring, equipment installation and data analysis. In parallel, she is working towards achieving her doctorate in the topic of heating patterns and controls use in the UK social housing context.
Additionally, Victoria is an active member of WISET+, a staff network to support women at the University of Southampton and has volunteered at multiple conference cycles on renewable energies and sustainability.
Research Interests
- Building Energy performance
- Sustainable architecture
- Low carbon technologies
- Occupant behaviour
Research Projects
APERIO, Low cost façade management in naturally ventilated buildings: This study proposed to develop and test a low cost, non-invasive technique to assess the impact of poor facade control on energy performance and enable facilities managers to address this issue. This study was a collaboration between the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, Electronics and Computer Science and School of Social Sciences at the University of Southampton funded by EPSRC (EP/L024608/1).
THERMOSS, Building and district THErmal Retrofit and Management SolutionS: Thermoss is a multidisciplinary project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program focused on building energy retrofitting at European level (grant agreement No 723562).
Research Outcomes
With a combination of monitoring sensors and social surveys, we can infer energy usage patterns and their determinants, as well as understand user’s motivations and constraints. This is a pathway to securing their thermal comfort needs as well as tackling with fuel poverty.
Trough the THERMOSS project we are monitoring social housing residents, particularly their heating usage and the reasons behind it. As part of this project, we have also developed representative occupancy profiles for English households, based on Time Use Survey data. The data set of profiles is available for public use.
Publications:
- Occupancy patterns scoping review project, 2016, Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Link
- Developing English domestic occupancy profiles, 2017, Building Research & Information. Link
- Evaluation of retrofit approaches for two social housing tower blocks in Portsmouth, UK. Link
- Reference procedures for obtaining occupancy profiles in residential Buildings, 2018, IEA EBC Annex 66 – Subtask A Deliverable. Link
- The effect of behavioural interventions on energy conservation in naturally ventilated offices, 2018, Energy Economics. Link
Contact
Email: V.Aragon@soton.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)23 8059 3940
Energy and Climate Change Division
Engineering and Physical Sciences
Boldrewood Innovation Campus
University of Southampton
Southampton SO16 7QF