Carbon Hero
From IdeasInTransit
Carbon Hero is a device that, when linked with a mobile phone, provides the user with an estimate of their carbon footprint based on mode of travel.
Contents |
Product
Carbon Hero brings together existing technologies in an innovative way to provide a personalised measure of an individual's travel carbon footprint. The GPS-based handheld unit, which is the size of a keyring, works as a sensor to detect the location, velocity and pattern of the user's movements and links, e.g. via bluetooth, to a mobile phone running the Carbon Hero (Java) application (or to a PC-based application). The application processes the data stream via a database and algorithm. The software uses DEFRA values for the environmental impact of each mode.
The developers have minimised the data input and learning required by the user and have designed the user interface to be engaging for the user. The interface informs them of how different travel choices impact the environment using a combination of text and graphics to show daily, weekly or monthly data. As many people find the unit of carbon very abstract Carbon hero presents the user with alternative units.
The device is currently configured to work in the UK, although it has also incorporated 1,000 thousand airports from around the world.[1]
People
Carbon Hero is the creation of Andreas Zachariah and Nick Burch.
Zachariah has a B.Eng(Hons) in Materials Engineering, an MBA in Finance, and an MA RCA in Industrial Design Engineering. His career includes: Goldman Sachs Analyst, UniCredito Swaps trader/Corp Bonds & Macro Trader, Daiwa SMBC New Products. His digital skills include: Rhino 4.0, Solidworks 2006/2007, Adobe CS3-Photoshop/Illustrator/Premiere, Flash8, Excel, Powerpoint.
Burch studied chemistry at Magdalen College, Oxford, and specialised in Computation Chemistry in his masters year. He then took a job with an Oxfordshire web applications firm, Torchbox, where he has been since. Nick is involved in a number of open source and open geodata projects, not all of them location related. His involvements include OpenStreetMap, OpenGuides, NPE Maps, and various python scripts targeting the mobile phone. In addition, he is a vice president of the Apache Software Foundation, responsible for the POI project.
Their partners include Friends of the Earth and RSA (Royal Society of Arts) Carbon Limited.
History
In 2006, Andreas Zachariah came up with the idea of a small and practical device to track personal CO2 emissions during travel. In April 2007, Oxford graduate student Nick Burch joined Zachariah to develop the application.[2]
Zachariah and Burch have filed a patent for their invention were in a closed beta-testing phase in early 2008.[2]
Zachariah hopes to launch the service late 2008/early 2009, first to early adopters such as BlackBerry and potentially Nokia NSeries users as well. It will first be made available to the UK market and then extended to cover Europe and the U.S.[3]
Impact
Domestic energy and travel constitute a large proportion of an individual's carbon footprint. Several initiatives have begun to quantify the environmental impact of products/services/activities, e.g. home energy suppliers conveying energy use to households, food producers/supermarkets labelling food with its carbon value. In addition several websites provide calculations of the carbon footprint of different travel modes.
Carbon Hero allows an individual to find out their personal travel carbon footprint by deducing their mode of travel. The developers hope that based on the information provided by Carbon Hero, the user will choose to change their transport habits to reduce their environmental impact, or offset usage through carefully selected projects. Corporations could also be potential users as they are increasingly under pressure to reduce their carbon footprint and make reductions, but also because it could be used to save money by reducing travel costs.[3]
External Links
- Carbon Diem - the Carbon Hero project page
References
- ↑ Tracking carbon through your phone BBC News
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Tracking your carbon footprint ESA News
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Carbon Hero to the Rescue EarthTech
