CO2 Tracker: a Platform for Improving the Awareness of Carbon Dioxide Levels in an Urban Environment

CO2 tracker is a digital platform that raises awareness about the concentration of carbon dioxide, its relation to the territory, and the causes that can increase it. The platform has been designed to gather carbon dioxide values and other environmental variables along a path and visualize them in real time. Citizens using the platform are challenged to find an alternative route, characterized by lower CO2 levels, for returning to the initial location. Thanks to this gamification mechanism, the citizens are pushed to think about the possible causes of higher CO2 values and test the hypotheses in the field, selecting alternative paths characterized by different environmental conditions, in terms of built environment, traffic, flows of persons, and other factors. A three-day workshop was held to evaluate the platform with 26 master’s students. The evaluation gave interesting results about different dimensions, including effectiveness, engagement, and impact on citizens’ behavior.