Smiling Earth – Raising Awareness among Citizens’ for Behaviour Change to Reduce Carbon Footprint

Abstract

This paper describes Smiling Earth, a mobile app to increase citizens’ awareness about their own carbon footprint, by integrating energy and transport-related data. The main aim of our work is to explore the ways in which ICT could help raise awareness and educate and motivate citizens about their actions and their consequences on the environment. Smiling Earth provides feedback to users by visualising data about their daily activities with the aim to motivate citizens to change their behaviour to reduce their CO2 emissions by adopting a healthier lifestyle. The value of the Smiling Earth for individuals, cities and communities are discussed. The feedback from an expert evaluation and how Smiling Earth could contribute to Positive Energy Districts are also discussed.