Google’s Sustainability division rolled out its Environmental Insights Explorer in 2018 to help map carbon emissions within municipalities. The data tool allows users to calculate carbon emissions from activities for any given city within the database, albeit only within the transportation and infrastructure sectors. By combining Google Maps data with NASA climate forecasts and other Google data sources, analyses are rendered which can serve as the basis of climate action plans and be crafted into carbon baselines. Users simply input the geographic area of focus into the tool and adjust values for one of the emissions activities in order to render desired results. By partnering with the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, the aim is for the tool to be leveraged internationally by a wide spread of cities to help in voluntary climate mitigation efforts. In the future, Google developers hope to provide users with insights on the waste sector, and broaden the tool’s reach to as many cities as possible.
Environmental Insights Explorer. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://insights.sustainability.google/
Categories
Data, Ecological Monitoring, Illegal Resource Extraction, Industry/Natural Commodities, Regulation
Air Pollution Robot
The dangers of air pollution to human health are well documented, though the traditional methodology of collecting and reporting on sample lags behind the need to keep abreast and regulate air pollution in a meaningful amount of time. The use of drones and robots have been identified by researchers as resources that can be tweaked […]
Artificial Life, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Ecological Monitoring, Industry/Natural Commodities, Lifestyle, Monitoring
Telematic Rivers
Erica Kermani’s artwork seeks to answer a central question: if rivers were seeing an equal, living entity, would humans take issues like climate change threatening them more seriously? In his year-long art exhibition in 2017, Kermani, in collaboration with Diana Salcedo & Jeana Chesnik, created a new forum of interaction between humans and rivers to […]
Climate Change, Ecological Monitoring, Lifestyle, Monitoring, Pollution, Visual Technologies
Co-occupied Boundaries
Art is easily found in nature but rarely is what considered art today inherently natural. The concept of co-occupied mediums that serve to be both functional for nature and aesthetically pleasing to people is being actively explored by Asya Ilgun and Phil Ayres, from the CITAstudio at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In […]
Climate Change, Ecological Monitoring, Lifestyle, Monitoring, Pollution, Visual Technologies