UCFC - Ubiquitous personal Carbon Footprint Calculation Platform

Abstract

Recent attention to carbon dioxide emissions is turning to an individual's contribution, which we name as “personal carbon footprint.” One step towards solving this issue is to have smart software/calculator that can figure out individual carbon footprint. Such calculators have become more widespread on the internet. However even with similar inputs these calculators can generate varying results, often by as much as several metric tons per annum per individual activity. Overall the calculators lack consistency. Although carbon calculators can promote public awareness on the reduction of carbon emission due to individual's activities, calculators proposed so far cannot determine carbon footprint based on the dynamic behavior of the user or the environment. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a Ubiquitous Carbon Footprint Calculation Platform that is customizable and adaptable. Based on the platform, we developed a Ubiquitous Carbon Footprint Calculator application (UCFC) that allows the user to be aware of their personal carbon footprint based on their ubiquitous activity and act accordingly. The major contribution of this paper is the presentation of the quantitative model of the platform along with the entire design and implementation of UCFC system. We also present the results, analysis, and findings of an extensive survey, that have been conducted to find out users' awareness regarding increased carbon footprint, feature requirements, users' expectation and desire to alleviate CO2 emission by using a footprint calculator. The design of UCFC system incorporates the analysis and inference of the survey results.