Carbon Zero

Carbon Zero| What Is Our Carbon Footprint?

What Is Our Carbon Footprint?

Your challenge is to identify local sources of carbon emissions and/or estimate amounts of carbon emissions for different human activities to aid scientists in mapping carbon sources and sinks. How can you inform decisions to adapt to the consequences of a changing world and aid policy makers in making plans for the future?

Summary

Carbon Zero shows data from local sources on carbon emissions all around the world. It also collects and displays data in your city showing heat maps on places where there’s most carbon emissions locally. The app shows the user’s own carbon emission from a form the user fills in at the beginning of your experience with the carbon zero app. The more you use it, the more discounts you can get with the partnered eco friendly stores so the user is more and more encouraged in using our app. You can see all the data from carbon emissions all around the world and our mission is to encourage people to start learning more about carbon emissions.

How We Addressed This Challenge

We researched data sets to make an app which shows the user carbon emissions from all around the world in a simple and easy way to understand. The main idea is to encourage people to learn about carbon emissions and their own carbon footprint, so we created the idea for the app.

The app will collect data from our users to map their carbon footprint and make them aware of their impact on carbon emissions, with that we show the user how much carbon their city, state or country emits and if they want, they can look on carbon emissions from all around the world.

We used data sets from the government of Canada to map the carbon emissions from Canada on past years, and with precise locations we mapped where those emissions were coming from and showed on the in-app map, each region with the most and least emissions in the country using heat maps. We used this method so more people could understand and learn more about carbon emissions and carbon footprints with an interactive environment with encouragement to change people's everyday habits and make them more aware of their own impact on the world.

How We Developed This Project

The Carbon Zero concept emerged on the Miro platform, from several brainstorming sessions. Then, the team of developers and designers created a semi-functional prototype using Figma. All the data modeling was made in Microsoft Power Bi by another part of the team, which was responsible for the research and data analysis of all series of data we found to be relevant for our app.

After all the necessary data was obtained, we proceeded by making it accessible and easy to understand for the general public. A part of the team worked on it, the developers and designers were already making the app UI to be as sleek and easy to use as possible. After it was all finished, both segments of the team joined to put it all together and make the experience of using the app the most pleasing we could do during this time on the Hackathon.

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

The group used the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), which collects information on greenhouse gas emissions from facilities across Canada in addition to data on CO2 and CH4 emissions. All data collected were later filtered by city, province, latitude and longitude. At the end of the modeling process, graphs were generated by the Microsoft Power Bi program addition to a hanking of the companies made through the tons of CH4 that were issued by them.

The results generated were displayed in the "Statistics" tab on the Carbon Zero app, besides the heat maps on places where there's most carbon emissions locally. The classifications of economic activities found on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were used to relate the CO2 emissions for each activity and generate a historial serie in the form of a graph from the years 1970 to 2018.

The individual carbon footprint will be generated through a calculator built into the application, which will be based on an individual form about the daily habits of each user, in addition to the infrastructure of their home. Avarage time values were estimated for each activity in addition to the power of each device so at the end all the data can be converted into a carbon footprint and converted into coins and subsequent discounts on the application partners.