The Hive | What Is Our Carbon Footprint?
Awards & Nominations
The Hive has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
What Is Our Carbon Footprint?
Carbon Footprint Click “CFC”
Summary
Our website is based on that local consumption is related to global greenhouse gas emissions. It helps to understand humans' footprint on Earth better and inform decisions to reduce the climate change impact. It is interactive and user-friendly than alternative applications and almost automatically and only needs the Zipcode from the user. Our website is connected to a CFC device we made to detect the carbon footprint locally and to calculate the emission of CO2 for getting the emission factor for the carbon footprint law. We linked our website with two global satellites (OCO-3 and OCO-2) to offer the user a global view of the carbon footprint.
How We Addressed This Challenge
It developed the available methods for the public to calculate the carbon footprint as they now could get the carbon footprint in their avenue (locally). Also, we made a device that measures most of the GHCs gases locally, which is connected to our website to get the estimated results for our users. Also, our interface is so much user friendly than other websites it just asks the user for its zip code and the other data our website do not need to get them from the user it gets it from the government which makes our procedures more professional and works efficiently and easier for the user.
These developments that we made in our website is significant as it gives our users local carbon footprint view to make them aware by the danger they could be putting themselves in by their actions and to make them aware by the procedures they should do to contribute in decreasing their carbon footprint. Also, it is crucial as it makes it for the youth also to could use the website not only scientists or adults and this is for our easy interface that does not ask for much data that may make them being confused while filling them in. The video that we made address exactly the sources the causes the emission sources of GHCs to contribute to spreading the awareness of the leading factors to these large carbon footprint results. Also, the challenge focuses on identifying the sources of carbon emissions and calculating the carbon footprint. Our project consists of a site and a device called "CFC". The "CFC" website helps users, researchers, and institutions know the carbon footprint of any region through zip code only!
We hope to spread this idea globally as it makes this process much easier and accurate from the recent methods as may the user enter wrong data or with wrong units that could affect on the whole result and may make the user think that he is not affecting badly on the environment and in the last we could found that it was wrong because of only a wrong unit.
How We Developed This Project
This challenge inspired our team as we found it will be an excellent opportunity to work in such project to save our environment as in the months during the quarantine we observed that the environment as it is way to become better, the air becomes cleaner, and finally, the ozone hole is closing, what such a blessing! So we found that maybe this pandemic a new beginning for our earth to breathe again and decided to take this challenge to contribute to growing the awareness of the public. The usual carbon footprint calculator asks the user much information such as the address, Water Consumption, electricity consumption, propane consumption, and the natural gas consumption that makes the interface a little bit difficult for the user. We made our website by using HTML, CSS, and JAVASCRIPT developed our website by making its interface user- friendly and more interactive also as the user is only asked to enter his zip code to get the carbon footprint for his avenue. This method is more accurate as we depend on our data to bring them from the government, which is the provider of the service and this is done by only using the zip code from the user. Also, it is interactive as if the resulted carbon footprint is more than the targeted carbon footprint result to be; there is a video link will appear to the user then that increase the user’s awareness and present them with simple steps to low their impact and contributes to saving our Earth. We found a problem which was that we need a source to offer our users the local carbon footprint. So we made another device, “CFC device,” that depends on Arduino, MQ-5, MQ-6, and MQ-135 sensor. To get more accurate and faster results, we needed to make a device that measures in air locally to get the emission factor used in the laws on the website to get the footprint result. There will be a CFC device for each zip code to get exactly the results that our users need to.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We used OCO-2 in our database in our website as it provides our users with a complete picture of human and natural carbon dioxide sources and "sinks," the places where the gas is pulled out of the atmosphere and stored. We also added OCO–3 to our database as it measures the carbon dioxide gas globally, which Provide our users global view for the carbon footprint.
Project Demo
Our solution is presented on a website that calculates the carbon footprint by using the carbon footprint formula: GHG Emission (MtCO2e) = Activity (unit of activity) x Emission Factor (MtCO2e/ unit of activity). Our website is also connected to OCO-3 and OCO-2 databases to give our users a global view of the carbon footprint. We found that we need to make our website provide our users with a local view of the carbon footprint as this will give them the awareness about where they live and how much this is affecting them and near to them, not just scientific articles like many others. So we made our device ”CFC device,” which is consisting of MQ135, MQ-5, MQ-6, and Co2 Sensor MG-811 sensors. These sensors are used for the air quality, sensitivity for benzene, Alcohol, Smoke, is sensitive to natural gas, LPG, butane gas, and measure most of the GHCs gases. There will be a device for each zip code and connected to our website to get estimated results. Our user will be provided with an accurate footprint as the website gets data from the government, the service provider. We created our website by HTML, CSS, and JAVASCRIPT to register with the zip code for the user's area without any other questions, which facilitated the process more. After that, the user is presented with the region's data regarding carbon footprint produced due to many factors like electricity, natural gas, water consumption, LPG, etc.
- Demo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uTGnQx1JnI6_bjPE0mJHEzozHPLAEBVu/view?usp=sharing
- The Awareness Video (Done by us): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnA8-wtX6UI&list=PL0Upo7UBuL4KdzKvhfrDYiAWVdLGHeGEQ
Data & Resources
• Carbon Footprint Calculator | Climate Change | US EPA. (2015, June 01). Retrieved October 03, 2020, from https://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/
• GES DISC. (n.d.). Retrieved October 03, 2020, from https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/OCO2_L2_Lite_FP_9r/summary
• GES DISC. (n.d.). Retrieved October 03, 2020, from https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/OCO3_L2_Standard_Early/summary?keywords=oco-3
• (n.d.). Retrieved October 04, 2020, from
https://earth.esa.int/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/o/oco-2
• Oco3. (n.d.). Retrieved October 04, 2020, from