Archive for the ‘Tools’ Category
Economic Value of an Urban Forest: $80 billion
Posted in Models, Research, Tools by Kate Archdeacon on March 22nd, 2012
Photo by Mike_tn via flickr CC
From “Environmental contribution of Tennessee’s urban trees: $80 billion” by James Holloway:
A study published by the US Forest service values the State of Tennessee’s urban forest at $80 billion thanks to its contributions to the environment. With an urban population of 284 million, that equates to a mean value of $282 per tree.
The total is based on a number of costs that are to some extent offset by the presence of Tennessee’s urban forest (its urban tree population, in other words). These include $350 million-worth of carbon storage based on the current standing stock, over $204 million every year in pollution removal, $18.4 million per year in additional carbon sequestration, and $66 million per year in energy savings-”the most significant contribution” made by the urban forest, according to State Forester Steven G. Scott. But how are the environmental benefits of the trees evaluated?
Data was collected and analyzed using the Forest Service’s own i-Tree Eco software. Using a mobile app providing strict protocols for data collection, researchers took information from 2418 trees and saplings across 255 field plots. Variables noted include species, diameter at breast height (or DBH—taken at 1.4 meters above ground), height, crown dimensions, foliage transparency, damage, and proximity to buildings. The pool of sample data is assumed to be representative of the total population, and from there the software crunches the numbers using “peer-reviewed equations” to paint a macro-scale picture of the urban forest, based on quantifiable characteristics that describe its structure, condition and function.
>>Read the full article by James Holloway on Ars Technica.
>>Read the US Forest Service study.
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Climate Challenge: Play the game
Posted in Models, Tools by Kate Archdeacon on December 14th, 2011
Climate Challenge: Earth’s future is in your hands
A game where you are president of the European Nations. You must tackle climate change and stay popular enough with the voters to remain in office.
Play the game.
(It’s a bit confusing but the help button gets you through)
About the game:
Currently there is a growing consensus amongst climate researchers that Earth’s climate is changing in response to man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The main debate amongst scientists is focussed on the amount of climate change we can expect, not whether it will happen. With the current level of debate in mind, the BBC decided a game might be a good introductory route into climate change and some of the issues this creates for governments around the world. The producers’ primary goal was to make a fun, challenging game. At times it was necessary to strike a compromise between strict scientific accuracy and playability. For this reason, Climate Challenge should not be taken as a serious climate change prediction. Wherever possible, real research has been incorporated into the game. This document describes the scientific sources used to create Climate Challenge and some of the compromises made by the producers. These sources are a good starting point for someone interested in learning more about climate change. This document also describes some of the compromises the producers made for the sake of playability.
Game focus and aims
Apart from the primary goal of creating a fun game, Climate Challenge’s producers aimed to:
- give an understanding of some of the causes of climate change, particularly those related to carbon dioxide emissions.
- give players an awareness of some of the policy options available to governments.
- give a sense of the challenges facing international climate change negotiators.
Players must respond to catastrophic events caused by climate change as well as natural and manmade events, which may or may not be linked to climate change. This aspect of the game is meant to give some idea of what could happen as the Earth’s climate changes and also introduce the unpredictable nature of some natural events.
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Citizen Scientists Wanted for Climatology Projects
Posted in Movements, Research, Tools by Rob Eales on August 17th, 2011
Source: Skeptical Science
Photo: ARM Climate Research Facility on flickr, Licence: Creative Commons
Citizen Science: Climatology for Everyone is a great post over at Skeptical Science listing projects that aspiring Citizen Scientists (that is, you, me and anyone) interested in Climatology can take part.
“With recent posts addressing personal action in the fight to combat global warming, I thought it would be interesting to dedicate a post to ways in which the average citizen can help global warming by directly contributing to our scientific understanding of it. That is, becoming a ‘citizen scientist’.
Citizen science projects date back hundreds of years, with many of the first projects involving citizens keeping track of wildlife populations. The Audubon Christmas Bird Count is perhaps the most famous in the United States and dates back to 1900. With help from the internet, and a growing recognition of the value that citizens are capable of contributing, citizen science projects have been rapidly growing.
The range of subjects that are covered by citizen science projects is vast. Here are just a few of them, which directly relate to climate change:”
Read the full article by Dawei.
Also have a look at recent posts by the writers on the site about their own personal action and approaches in regard to climate change issues. The actions of individuals who are charting the changes and challenges of climate change link research and action and illuminate personal responses to the current situations which are usually missing from other sources of media, especially for climate scientists.
Eco-Ideation Tool: Re-Thinking Product Design
Posted in Research, Tools by Kate Archdeacon on August 3rd, 2011
Source: Food Climate Research Network (FCRN)
Bocken N M P, Allwood J M, Willey A R and King J M H (2011). ‘Development of an eco-ideation tool to identify stepwise greenhouse gas emissions reduction options for consumer goods’ Journal of Cleaner Production 19 1279-1287
Abstract
Pressure on consumer goods manufacturers to develop new products with significantly less environmental impact is growing, through increased consumer awareness of environmental issues and governments setting ambitious emissions reductions targets. A strategic response to this pressure is to prepare a portfolio of innovative product ideas to meet a range of future emissions reductions targets.However, although extensive work exists on ideation (the generation of novel product ideas) and ecodesign (design for reduced environmental impact), eco-ideation (generation of ideas that particularly aim to reduce environmental impacts) has had little attention.
The challenge of eco-ideation is to release the creativity of a broad range of employees, only few of whom may be familiar with the drivers of environmental impact. This paper proposes a novel tool to facilitate the generation of radical product and process ideas giving step-change reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The features of products and processes that drive greenhouse gas emissions across the product life cycle were characterized with a set of indicators. A simple visual tool was created to show these indicators on a sliding scale between best and worst imaginable performance. A leading question associated with each slider was designed to stimulate lower impact ideas.
The tool was iteratively refined and simplified through structured testing with individuals from across a range of roles and differing knowledge of environmental impacts. The final eco-ideation tool used 14 scales, with leading questions for each scale developed to stimulate idea generation. The tool’s effectiveness was evaluated through use in a series of 15 individual workshops and compared with the outcomes of an equal number of conventional 12-person group-brainstorming sessions.
The comparison suggests that using the simple tool generally leads to a wider range of more radical ideas than emerge from group brainstorming.
Read more about the Eco-Ideation paper here.
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Local Harvest: Metasite for organic & local food
Posted in Models, Tools by Kate Archdeacon on July 26th, 2011
From the LocalHarvest website:
LocalHarvest is America’s #1 organic and local food website. We maintain a definitive and reliable “living” public nationwide directory of small farms, farmers markets, and other local food sources. Our search engine helps people find products from family farms, local sources of sustainably grown food, and encourages them to establish direct contact with small farms in their local area. Our online store helps small farms develop markets for some of their products beyond their local area.
The richness, variety, and flavor of our communities, food systems, and diets is in jeopardy. The exclusive focus on economic efficiency has brought us low prices and convenience through large supermarkets chains, agribusiness and factory farms, while taking away many other aspects of our food lives, like our personal relation with our food and with the people who produce it. More and more people are realizing this and actively working to turn the tide and to preserve a food industry based on family-owned, small scale businesses. They are our best guarantee against a world of styrofoam-like long-shelf-life tomatoes and diets dictated from corporate boardrooms. The Buy Local movement is quickly taking us beyond the promise of environmental responsibility that the organic movement delivered, and awakening the US to the importance of community, variety, humane treatment of farm animals, and social and environmental responsibility in regards to our food economy.
LocalHarvest was founded in 1998, and is now the number one informational resource for the Buy Local movement and the top place on the Internet where people find information on direct marketing family farms. We now have more than 20000 members, and are growing by about 20 new members every day. Through our servers, our website and those of our partners serve about three and a half million page views per month to the public interested in buying food from family farms. LocalHarvest is located in Santa Cruz, California, and was founded by Guillermo Payet, a software engineer and activist dedicated to generating positive social change through the Internet.
www.localharvest.org
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Ethical Consumer is setting up a similar resource in Melbourne, Australia, and is seeking local involvement. KA
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Collaborative Consumption: Infographic
Posted in Movements, Tools by Kate Archdeacon on July 13th, 2011
Source: Fast Company‘s Co.Design
Infographic by Collaborative
From “Infographic Of The Day: A Tour Guide To Collaborative Consumption” by Morgan Clendaniel:
You might own some tools that you never use, or perhaps you have a backyard that you just don’t have the time to do anything interesting with. Until recently, those pieces of property mostly served as nagging reminders that you didn’t have enough time to do everything you wanted to do. Today, they can look like revenue streams, not wastes of money.
Ideas about ownership of property are slowly starting to change in this country. The success of Zip Car and of bike sharing programs in a few major cities are the vanguard of a host of different “collaborative consumption” services and businesses that allow people to monetize their own unused resources, or to find ways to get goods and services without purchasing them. This infographic shows some of the stuff that might be lying around your house that are just profits waiting to happen — and all the start-ups trying to help you along.
This infographic was made by the venture fund Collaborative–which invests in collaborative consumption businesses–and the Startup America Partnership in order to help illustrate the economic benefits of this idea.
Read the full article by Morgan Clendaniel to find out more about specific start-ups, including Park At My House and TaskRabbit (where you can get paid to assemble other people’s IKEA furniture).
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50 Ideas For The New City: Poster Campaign
Posted in Tools, Visions by Kate Archdeacon on June 20th, 2011
50 Ideas For The New City, from Urban Omnibus
With this poster campaign, we want to turn the language of ubiquitous marketing — in which every bus, taxi or construction barrier is a canvas for advertising anything and everything — on its head by using a similar language to share examples of creativity and innovation in the urban realm. We want to spread these ideas to the whole city. And we want to hear your new ideas too. So starting next week, (now live!) at UrbanOmnibus.net/Ideas you will find 50 ideas for New York already explored on Urban Omnibus and a space for you to share one of your own. We hope, in some small way, we can help re-enchant the urban environment as a landscape of possibility, a realm of action and intention, and a place that represents — and deserves — a long and evolving history of creative ideas.
Read more about the posters and click through each image or blurb to find the essay that led to the idea.
The poster campaign was part of New York’s Festival of Ideas for the New City.
On May 4-8th, the Festival of Ideas for the New City brought artists, designers, politicians and community organizers to downtown Manhattan, infusing the city with a commitment to creativity and dedication to place. Through a string of lectures, panels, workshops, a street fair and over a hundred art installations and openings of cultural projects, the Festival brought to mind a sensibility which first made the neighborhood a forefront for the avant-garde. For four days, a dizzying array of visionary thinkers, makers and practitioners shared ideas and projects that might help articulate what kind of city we want, as well as some concrete examples of how to get there.
Read more about the Festival in this recap by Caitlin Blanchfield.
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Chromaroma: Public Transport Game for London
Posted in Models, Tools by Kate Archdeacon on May 26th, 2011
Via Springwise
Chromaroma is a game that shows you your movements and location as you swipe your Oyster Card in and out of the Tube (Bus, Tram and Boat coming soon). It connects communities of people who cross paths and routes on a regular basis, and encourages people to make new journeys and use public transport in a different way by exploring new areas and potentially using different modes of public transport.
At its simplest, Chromaroma is about amassing the most points possible. By watching your own travel details you can investigate interesting new ways to travel and exciting new destinations in order to get more points. Grab “multipliers” and bonus points by working with a team, building up connections with fellow passengers and discovering mysteries that are attached to locations on your routes.
Beyond competition and conquest, Chromaroma’s gameplay opens up the beauty in the city’s transport flows and reveals to its most persistent players some of the mysteries of travel, and even the strange characters travelling through the tunnels in the centre of the system, who may hold the secrets to your city.
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I don’t totally understand this game, but mixing up social networking with real-time information and alternative transport use is something we’re pretty interested in at VEIL. Check out Chromaroma on Vimeo to find out (a little) more. KA
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Information Technology Supporting Transparent Future Food Policy
Posted in Movements, Opinion, Tools by Kate Archdeacon on May 13th, 2011
Source: Projects To Finish Someday via Sustainable Cities Collective
From “Information Technology: Coming to a Food Policy Near You” by Mari Pierce-Quinonez:
There are currently dozens of smartphone and internet apps designed to bring good food to tech-savvy consumers. You can now type in your location, the type of food you want and immediately get both directions to the best restaurant to go and the story behind the food they’re serving. If buying food in bulk to cook at home is more your thing, beta versions of a wholesale purchasing app is now available by invitation. Or if you want to grow your own, there are applications to aid you in planning your garden, sites to find a yard if you don’t already have one, and mobile apps with maps to fruit-bearing trees on public property. But the food system is more than foodies finding their next fix: the modern tech-movement goes beyond consumer-oriented apps. Food advocates and academics are using technology to connect the food system dots and are making good food policy decisions easier.
[...]
In the past, federal policymakers kept track of their own program-specific data: how many acres of farmland they had preserved, the nutrition status of the US population, the amount of vitamin D available in a particular type of milk. By moving everything online and opening this data up to everyone, all sorts of sophisticated policy recommendations can be made. The USDA’s Food Environment Atlas was released last year to much fanfare for the interactive maps that could show the state of the national food system. Much more exciting was the fact that this data was all available for download, and the site continues to act as a datahub for food policy advocates. Advocates and technophiles are using this data to produce reports and visualizations that help rally support as they begin to mobilize around the 2012 farm bill.
[...]
Read the full article by Mari Pierce-Quinonez over on Projects To Finish Someday.
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Transport Measures Which Change Travel Behaviour: Evidence Review
Posted in Research, Tools by Kate Archdeacon on April 4th, 2011
Source: Eastern Region Public Health Observatory (ERPHO) via Victoria Walks
This review of the evidence of travel change behaviour can be used:
- to help make the case for new investment, in bids or business plans.
- to inform any re-assessment of existing programmes so that decisions can be based on the best evidence of effectiveness and value.
- as a benchmark to compare the effectiveness of local programmes with published evaluations and evidence.
- to encourage more sharing of evidence about what works.
- to act as a focal point for new evidence, with annual updates.
Key messages include:
- Travel behaviour change measures can provide very high benefits compared to costs, when measured by WebTAG, the Department for Transport’s method for evaluating transport investment.
- Changing how we travel can reduce the need for expensive infrastructure.
- Behaviour change measures can be implemented much more quickly than infrastructure projects.
- All measures achieve genuine carbon reductions (from 5kgs to 1500 kgs per person per year).
- Greater impact is achieved from careful targeting of people likely to change their behaviour combined with multi-measure programmes across age groups.
Source: Eastern Region Public Health Observatory (ERPHO)
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