Being More Sustainable: Travelling using the most sustainable route

Jurisdiction: New Zealand


We all know the effect on climate change from CO2 emissions. How can we translate this into tangible action made by a citizen, that they know is making a collective impact?

Transportation is a high CO2 emissions source. How can you assist a citizen to travel across the city, using the most sustainable route?

Everyone is different and have varying constraints in their lives, eg. a family of four cannot scooter, a single traveller has more flexibility. We need to take this into account.

Through this challenge, the council wants to encourage “Active Citizenship” under the greater theme of “Conscious choices”. This will help facilitate the citizen to understand the total cost of activity. Vote with your travel habits!

We want you to build a solution that assists a citizen when deciding how to travel from one point to another in the most sustainable way.

Additional Information:

Below are examples of how you might wish to approach this challenge. Please use this as an example only and not as guidance.

For example:

Option 1: Drive from A to B, for vehicle type C = D CO2 tonnes and cost you $E, F hrs in time, needing G Trees planted to offset the trip

Option 2: Walk from A to Station B, Take bus C, Stop at Station D, grab a lime scooter to E = F CO2 tonnes, cost you $G, H hrs in time, needing I Trees planted to offset the trip

  1. Provide an application that will ask the user for start and end locations in the city, provide them choices of transportation and display the impact of this choice in:

• CO2, Money, Time, Trees
• Researched assumptions for CO2 emissions by vehicle type

  1. Provide a feature to the help citizen’s constraints: minimize CO2, cost, time, transport changes

  2. Connect to a service that makes it easy to Buy, Plant a tree to offset the trip

  3. Create a social feature out of Tree currency, compete against friends, reach different levels of trees planted / cost game levels towards zero CO2 for their family; example: https://www.forestapp.cc/

  4. Let the citizen know the location of their trees planted

  5. A feature that optimizes routes to take the next electric bus

Eligibility: At least one team member must be able to attend and present challenge if selected at the Te Pae Technology Expo in Oct 2021 (at their own cost).

Entry: Challenge entry is available to all teams in New Zealand.

Dataset Highlight

New Zealand Vehicle safety and cleanliness of cars per category

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Christchurch City (NZ) - Cycle Lanes, Road network data from Open Street Maps

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Christchurch City (NZ) - Morning dropped off scooters - Dataset

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Christchurch City (NZ) Metro (Public Transport) Data APIs

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Christchurch City (NZ) - Morning dropped off scooters - MAP

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