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Sustainable Mobility Learning Lab http://www.sustainablemobility.org.vt.edu. Linsey C. Marr 1 , Lisa A. Schweitzer 2 , John C. Linford 3 1 Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2 Urban Affairs and Planning, 3 Computer Science.
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Sustainable Mobility Learning Lab http://www.sustainablemobility.org.vt.edu Linsey C. Marr1, Lisa A. Schweitzer2, John C. Linford31Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2Urban Affairs and Planning, 3Computer Science Users design a race car by selecting from one of three engine types, six fuels, three road surfaces, and four weather conditions and then test their car on the race track. Table 1. Example options that a user can select for a race car. “Sustainable mobility” describes ways of moving people and goods around while avoiding environmental and societal damage, such as energy resource depletion, congestion, and air pollution. Achieving sustainable mobility is a decidedly interdisciplinary challenge requiring a perspective that combines environmental, mechanical, and transportation engineering with planning and other fields of study. Figure 1. The sustainability crew is an interdisciplinary group that includes urban planners, computer scientists, businesspeople, and environmental, transportation, and mechanical engineers. The goal of this project is to provide students with an interdisciplinary introduction to transportation and environmental modeling. We have developed the Sustainable Mobility Learning Lab, a web-based tool designed to support classroom and university outreach activities. Figure 4. Some of the myriad effects of our transportation systems include congestion, global warming, and oil spills. The practice of sustainable mobility requires highly interdisciplinary considerations that address all of the topics shown to the left, at a minimum. The website explores each topic through a series of images (Figure 4), instructive text, and links to additional resources. Figure 2. Resulting concentrations of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in terms of air quality index (AQI) and parts per million (ppm) around the race track for each of the user’s options (Table 1). Users can adjust the map to show results for different pollutants (carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, noise, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and volatile organic compounds) and vehicle speeds (3-125 mph). Figure 3. Lifecycle analysis for a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine showing the contribution to resource consumption and pollutant emissions by each stage of the fuel cycle: (1) extracting the raw form of the fuel (feedstock), (2) processing and transporting it (fuel), and (3) operating the vehicle. Figure 5. A calorie calculator allows users to compare how their transportation and activity choices affect their personal energy consumption. Acknowledgments: This work was supported by the American Honda Foundation.