Börjesson Rivera, Miriam
Henriksson, Greger
Åkerlund, Maria

Title

Getting there and back again – Commuting and ICT in six cities across the globe

Published in

Report from the KTH Centre for Sustainable Communications, Stockholm.
ISSN:1654-479X, TRITA-SUS 2012:1

Summary

Ericsson ConsumerLab performed a qualitative exploratory study of how people experience daily commuting in three different countries. This report aims to present the outcome of the study in such a way that the data can be useful for further analyses and studies of commuting in relation to ICT use and environmental sustainability. Based on the study’s findings this report will present analytical data on: i) how ICT can be linked to everyday travel in order to facilitate commuting from the user’s point of view; and ii) how ICT solutions can enable commuting in an environmentally more sustainable way.

The study, which had an ethnographic approach, showed that in general, commuters would like their commuting time to be, or at least seem, as short as possible. The respondents spend hours commuting every week and often claim to consider it a waste of time. Regardless of means of transport, they would like to get the most out of their commuting time (working, socialising, relaxing etc.), which implies that there is a demand for further technological improvements in this area (voice recognition services in cars, privacy settings in public transport, connectivity in public transport, etc.). An aspect that adds to how people perceive their commuting time concerns the extent to which its duration is predictable – even if the time cannot be shortened, commuters at least want to know how much time they will spend on their daily commute, so that they can plan their day with more certainty.

Irrespective of means of transport, two major frustrations for commuters are lack of flow and the presence and behaviour of other people. People seem to lack good real-time information enabling them to avoid interruptions in their commute and much of their frustration relates to poor infrastructure conditions and management. Frustration with other people derives from their conduct in traffic contributing to inconveniences, congestion or hazards, or from noise, smell or littering on public transport.

The greatest motivators for commuting by car are a feeling of independence in relation to other people, schedule and choice of route, and the private space the car offers. This means that the car provides flexibility in terms of when and how people travel, while also providing a private space both mentally (“in the car you can do whatever you want”) and physically (“you don’t have to hustle with others on the bus or train”). The major frustration when commuting by car is the need to focus on driving, so drivers cannot utilise time as they would wish.
People generally justify their choice of public transport by anti-car arguments, which include difficulty in finding a parking space at work, expensive parking, fear of driving, lack of driving licence etc., but can also motivate their choice as giving them ‘me-time’ without having to focus on driving. The major frustration with commuting by public transport is dependency on time schedules and the shortcomings of the public transport network. This is exacerbated by a lack of relevant information or available options. However, commuting can be improved in a variety of ways for car and public transport users with the help of ICT. From a sustainability perspective, it is important to exploit the potential of ICT solutions to facilitate more environmentally friendly practices.

Many of the ICT (Information Communication Technology) solutions identified in this report require reliable access to the internet and/or mobile phone network. The mobile phone is currently the single most important internet device while commuting, thus perhaps being the point of departure for many of the solutions, such as travel planner, ticketing options, etc, but for car users mobile phone services need to be adapted through better in-car voice recognition technologies, since the focus needs to be on driving. Current information services could be more personalised and contextualised in order to better suit the individual driver and most of these ICT solutions and services are also applicable to public transport commuters, but an additional function for such commuters could be some kind of ‘emergency button’ on mobile phones to increase their sense of security in travel.

Home office solutions are a way of avoiding the frustrations of commuting altogether. While working from home is regarded by some with ambivalence and is impossible for many, there are ways of refining these solutions.

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CESC partner Ericsson ConsumerLab has performed a qualitative study on people’s experiences with commuting in Germany, India and USA. CESC’s report analyses data from the study and discusses ICT solutions that could facilitate commuting from the commuters’ perspective. The report also reflects on how ICT could enable commuting patterns that are preferable from an environmental perspective.

Börjesson Rivera, M., Henriksson, G., Åkerlund, M. (2012) Getting there and back again – Commuting and ICT in six cities across the globe. Report from the KTH Centre for Sustainable Communications, Stockholm.

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Anna Kramers, Örjan Svane

Title

ICT applications for energy efficiency in buildings

Published in

Report from the KTH Centre for Sustainable Communications, Stockholm.
ISSN:1654-479X, TRITA-SUS 2011:3

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The study shows that Alma Media online newspapers have a lower total environmental impact than the printed. However, when considering the time people actually spend reading the printed newspaper or the electronic version, the printed version is in favour.

Further results and details of the study will be presented at the Alma Media event “Towards sustainable media” at Finlandia Hall on 25 January 2012 (9:00-11:30 ). Åsa Moberg from CESC will attend the panel discussion at the seminar.

Read more
Alma Media’s press release
Environmental performance of Alma Media products (Project page)

SEB’12 is a partnership between the KTH Royal Institute of Technology (with representatives from the Centre for Sustainable Communications and  the School of Information and Communication Technology as co-organisers) and KES International. Following the success of earlier SEB conferences, SEB’12 will feature presentations from world-class researchers, engineers and industrialists, working in a broad range of renewable energy and sustainability topics for the built environment. Applicable areas include technology for renewable energy and sustainability in the built environment; also optimisation and modeling techniques, information and communication technology usage, behaviour and practice.

For more information on conference topics, registration and submission of abstracts please visit the SEB’12 website: http://seb.sustainedenergy.org

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Miguel-Angel Sicilia, Hannes Ebner, Salvador Sánchez-Alonso, Fernando Álvarez, Alberto Abián, Elena García-Barriocanal

Title

Navigating learning resources through linked data: A preliminary report on the re-design of Organic.Edunet

Published in

Proceedings of Linked Learning 2011: the 1st International Workshop on eLearning Approaches for the Linked Data Age, co-located with the 8th Extended Semantic Web Conference, ESWC2011, Heraklion, Greece, May 29, 2011.

Abstract

Learning objects repositories have grown and matured in the last years, being currently a cornerstone for open education. Several current systems are offering metadata openly through mainstream harvesting protocols or providing standardized query interfaces. Also, the use of standardized vocabularies or ontologies is becoming more common to provide a degree of semantic interoperability. However, learning object metadata is typically not linked across repositories, and it is not providing a way to navigate by using other sources of data available on the Web. The linked open data (LOD) approach provides the framework for the evolution of learning object repositories into a more flexible system of sharing learning resource metadata. This paper describes how linked data has been integrated in the design and redesign of the export mechanisms of Organic.Edunet, a federation of learning repositories in the domain of organic agriculture that uses an RDF store and several ontologies to browse and search resources. The paper focuses on how the existing search and semantic browsing mechanisms can benefit from the use of LOD across repositories.

Anna Kramers, PhD student at CESC, presents her research at KTH’s 2011 Energy Initiative, 9 November 2011.

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The first Green Hackathon attracted over 30 participants to engage in developing innovations for environmental issues.

The Stockholm Green Hackathon took place 21-22 October 2011 at the former reactor hall R1 at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Eleven teams of coders created exciting prototypes, web services and mobile solutions for sustainability. The two winners were:

James Smith from England, who found an fun way of displaying carbon emissions in Minecraft.

Petri Kola and Mikko Heikkinen from Finland, who built a Chrome extension automatically ”injecting” CO2 data into websites. With their tool Remember Carbon, browsing last-minute-flights will not just be about the price but also about the climate impact.

- Green Hackathon was a great way to learn from other people about how environmental information can be used. A hack is a smart approach to get people to sharing ideas and doing things, says Bianca Sayan from Sourcemap Inc., one of the participants.

Stockholm Green Hackathon was organized by the Centre for Sustainable Communications and EIT ICT Labs.