Zapico, Jorge L.
Turpeinen, Marko
Brandt, Nils

Title

Greenalytics: A tool for mash-up life cycle assessment of websites

Published in

Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Informatics for Environmental Protection.
Shaker Verlag,  Aachen, Germany, 2010.
ISBN: 978-3-8322-9458-8

Abstract

The environmental impact of internet is growing, reaching an estimated 1.4% of world greenhouse emissions. This impact is hidden for both users and web developers. Understanding and analyzing the environmental footprint of a website is not an easy task. The impacts are distributed through multiple hardware networks and a global user base, making the individual impacts difficult to allocate. This article presents the development of a functional application for generating automatic life cycle assessments for web sites based on mashing-up information. This application has the aim of making the impact of websites visible, allowing the instant analysis of their carbon footprint using existing analytics data and presenting it in an understandable and transparent way. The development process is presented with detailed information about how the calculations are performed. The results are discussed around two different cases, focusing on the challenges of calculating the server side impact and the possibilities for improvement.

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Greenalytics website

http://www.greenalytics.org

Zapico, Jorge L.
Kjelkerud, David
Berggren, Henrik
Turpeinen, Marko
Brandt, Nils

Title

Carbon.to: Improving the understanding of carbon dioxide information.

Published in

Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Informatics for Environmental Protection.
Shaker Verlag,  Aachen, Germany, 2010.
ISBN: 978-3-8322-9458-8

Abstract

We are nowadays increasingly presented with information about greenhouse gases in our everyday life. However there seems to be a gap between this increase in the exposure to carbon dioxide information and the understanding of how to interpret it, making behavioral change difficult. This article presents examples of how different applications have dealt with this problem by representing the carbon dioxide information in different ways. Based on the existing examples, an application called carbon.to was developed and released. This service tries to improve the understanding of carbon dioxide information by simulation in a playful way. Feedback from the users points towards that the gap in understanding existed and that carbon.to was successful in helping closing it.

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Carbon.to website

http://carbon.to

Zapico, Jorge L.
Brandt, Nils
Turpeinen, Marko

Title

Environmental Metrics: The Main Opportunity from ICT for Industrial Ecology

Published in

Journal of Industrial Ecology 14, 703-706, (2010),  doi: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2010.00272.x

Summary

There is a growing interest in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for environmental sustainability, including from academia, industry, and governance. There are still concerns about ICTs’ direct environmental impact, such as energy use and e-waste. The positive effects of using ICT for sustainability, however, are argued to be bigger (Climate Group 2008; Tomlinson 2010), and the corpus of research in this area is growing fast (DiSalvo et al. 2010). We have identified some of the most prominent trends in this research and organized them into three clusters where ICT has a positive impact on environmental problems: optimization, dematerialization, and behavioral change. Metrics, the measurement and accounting of data, are presented as the common ground for all three and therefore a main opportunity that arises from ICT for industrial ecology.

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Kjelkerud, David

Title

Lost in the supermarket: Mobile applications for sustainable food consumption

Published in

Master Degree Project at KTH, Media Technology (CSC), Stockholm, 2010.

Abstract

Food production and consumption has a major impact on the environment. In the last years the awareness of this issue has been growing both in the media and among consumers. Research shows that 25% of Swedes’ greenhouse gas emissions come from food consumption. This thesis is concerned with how mobile technology can help individuals to change to sustainable eating habits, specifically through persuasive applications. The research is focused around two prototypes: Fisk.cc, a seafood buying guide and Green Recipes, a mobile cookbook with sustainable recipes. The applications were developed and tested during the research. The thesis discusses the design of mobile applications for sustainable eating from three aspects: Social interaction design in persuasive applications, Motivating users to change behavior and Need for environmental data. The report concludes with four questions that serve as guidelines for development.

The study was undertaken for the Persuasive Services Project. David Kjelkerud was supervised by Marko Turpeinen and Jorge Zapico.

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Gröna recept

Video demonstration of Gröna recept (In swedish)

Fisk.cc

Zapico, Jorge Luis (KTH Centre for Sustainable Communications)
Spikol, Daniel (Linnéuniversitet – Celekt)

Title

Designing Mobile Persuasion: Using Pervasive Applications to Change Attitudes and Behaviors.

Published in

Sharing Experiences with Social Mobile Media. Proceedings of the International Workshop in conjunction with MobileHCI 2009, September 15th 2009, Bonn, Germany. Pp 11-16.

Abstract

We have a personal relationship with mobile phones, since they are closer to us than any other technological device. They are ubiquitous (60% of the world population owns one), individual, and pervasive in our lifestyle (we have them with us all the time and everywhere). These modern devices are nearly as powerful as personal computers, always connected to the Internet, and loaded with sensors like GPS and accelerometers. These mobile devices offer opportunities for persuading users to change attitudes and behaviors towards personal and societal issues. For this paper we focus on the design of a mobile application for reducing in carbon dioxide emissions in personal transportation choices that can change attitudes and behaviors. The paper presents design practices that have resulted in a prototype social mobile application.

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Proceedings PDF

Zapico, Jorge
Turpeinen, Marko
Brandt, Nils

Title

Climate Persuasive Services: Changing behavior towards low-carbon lifestyles.

Published in

Proceedings of Persuasive 2009: Fourth International Conference on Persuasive Technology, Claremont, CA, 26-29 April 2009, ACM Digital Library.

Abstract

ICT has reshaped our society, and with the current accelerating development of technology, and its wider distribution throughout the globe, they will continue doing so even more. These changes in society are important for sustainability. They affect the physical way the society and the environment interact, but they also affect the way people think, learn and behave.

We suggest that the persuasive power of ICT can be oriented towards climate change. For this purpose we define the concept of “climate persuasive services” as ICT applications that change personal attitudes regarding climate change and/or change behavior towards reducing greenhouse gases emissions. We consider mobile phones, pervasive sensors and social media as three key technological drivers for the development of climate persuasion applications.

We have analyzed the use of persuasion principles in existing web and mobile applications forming three clusters: tracking carbon footprints, sharing goals and making green behavior easier. Based on this analysis, we suggest a more planned use of persuasive principles, and propose six different opportunities for improvement.

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