PEACOX - Persuasive advisor for CO2-reducing crossmodel trip planning

Abstract

Ecological issues in traffic become more and more pressing as personal transportation is one of the greatest contributors of CO2 emissions. Means to help people reducing their ecological impact are urgently needed. To answer this need, the project implemented a smartphone application for personalized multi-modal navigation that helps and persuades them to travel and drive in an ecologically friendlier way. The following key features were successfully implemented and tested in an 8-week field trial in Vienna and Dublin: • Peacox collects GPS and accelerometer data in the background and automatically generated trip diaries. • Dynamic user models are created allowing personalizing recommendations, e. g. with persuasive messages, based on prior trip choices and individual preferences. • Peacox uses advanced door-to-door emissions models that provide accurate feedback on the ecological/carbon footprint and exposure levels during trip planning. • Emission statistics are provided based on trip history. A tree loosing or gaining leaves provides persuasive feedback on one’s own ecological improvements. IVT was mainly involved in developing the processing methods for raw GPS and accelerometer data to create complete trip diaries including transport mode and trip purposes. Further, differences in data collected with smartphones and dedicated devices were analyzed, in order to gain insight on how accurate automatically generated trip diaries are.