Carbono da peste| 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?

Carbono da Peste

Summary

The challenge chosen by the team was “What Is Our Carbon Footprint?”.The emission of GEEs directly affects the quality of life of the population and their health; causing an increase in the possibility of diseases, reduced life expectancy, skin diseases and the emergence of new diseases due to pollution. In addition to affecting the fauna and flora of the planet, melting glaciers, increasing the average temperature of the planet and affecting the lives of the next generations. We created a solution to help inform about carbon foot print and raise awareness of how our actions impact the planet.

How We Addressed This Challenge

Based on the ideation process, we developed the following solution to the challenge divided into three parts;


1. Locate countries that contribute most to CO2 emissions in certain areas of activity such as: Industry, Energy, Waste, among others. Showing this on a graph with filters such as country, year and area;


2. Inform the user about the impact of their choices through an interactive pixel art game. The game asks the user to choose between actions within some scenarios addressing issues such as food, plastic consumption, transportation options and places to buy food. The user, in these scenarios, can choose between two options; one sustainable and one not sustainable. At the end of the game, the result of these choices are showed in a future panorama in order to illustrate the impact of the user choices on  the future of the planet ; 


3. Inform the user about the actions he can take, to acquire a more sustainable life and reduce his carbon emission. In addition we made a selection of articles about carbon spending in each activity, GEEs produced by popular polluting companies to help expand the users knowledge on the subject.


The developed site is important once it measures, explains and advises people about carbon and its impacts on society. It works in an organized, visual and playful way, generating information which can be easily assimilated by people who are not from the scientific community. Thus, in addition, it has reliable sources on the subject and encourages political proactivity as it shows serious problems regarding the issue that needs attention of the society. In consequence, it is expected that the platform reinforces the importance of caring for the environment, instructing people to be more aware of their routine actions and how they can impact the planet. In addition, it is intended to show who are the largest global and national carbon emitters so that there is greater surveillance of public policies and the agreements that countries and/ or companies are involved in relation to sustainability. In this perspective, the aim is to flatten the carbon emission curve in the near future, taking the evolution towards more sustainable policies and actions, remembering that the individual initiative can indeed change the world.




How We Developed This Project

We chose this challenge due to the importance of getting informed about the carbon footprint, be it individual or collective, since, every day we contribute directly or indirectly to the increase in GEEs emissions, which, unfortunately, are causing irreparable damage to the environment.


First, our approach consisted of reading the entire challenge, followed by the resources available for the challenge, in order to immerse and have a better understanding of the problem and what we could use. In sequence, we started the ideation process using techniques such as brainstorm and 5W2H, from which we selected the most relevant ideas for the solution of the challenge and divided tasks to start prototyping. We used the tools; discord, figma, miro, docs for communication and organization, immersion and prototyping of the screens; vs code, react native, python, java script, html and css for coding. Our biggest problem was finding a way to involve the user to use our product, the interactive game, and arouse curiosity to learn more about GEEs and how to help. We were successful in finding an interactive and innovative way to inform the user about their carbon footprint and its impacts on the planet as well as overcoming several obstacles during throughout the weekend of the challenge.


How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

The data made available by NASA in partnership with other agencies helped the team to understand the problem in more depth, although the analyzes were complex, they were supported by an explanatory text, making the content easier to understand. We used satellite data which map the fires and thermal anomalies of the planet as a way to provide concrete and safe data for the users presented in the solution by the team. Because of these links we obtained several definitive insights for our solution, making the whole experience lighter.


After collecting all the data that we consider important, we wanted to show the world that this carbon emission is increasing and decreasing in some countries and nothing better than building graphs to demonstrate data. The graph has filters, among them 'Countries', 'Areas of Impact' and 'Year'.



Project Demo

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BOrtLnVWF0LYhRssW___dzruNaZs6MUY_u78aRVTEJw/edit?usp=sharing

Project Code
Data & Resources



Tags
#carbonfootprint #gamification #web #inform #sustainable
Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Judging process.