We are happy to announce that our paper “Timing of Pedestrian Navigation Instructions” was elected 2. Best Paper at COSIT 2017 conference in L’Aquila, Italy!
Interview with Prof. Martin Raubal on the Project SBB Green Class
Prof. Martin Raubal has answered questions regarding our data analyses in the course of the SBB Green Class Project. The full interview (in German) can be found here.
Using Locally Produced Photovoltaic Energy to Charge Electric Vehicles
As more and more countries announce their plans for banning combustion engines (e.g., [1, 2]), it becomes critical to find ecologically sustainable ways to power electric vehicles. While wind and water provide energy throughout the whole day, photovoltaic installations have production peaks around midday which need to captured either by smart appliances (such as washing machines) or by some form of energy storage, such as batteries or water reservoirs. A solution for both problems could be to use the car batteries to cap the solar production peaks – possibly even completely locally, i.e., without requiring transmission lines to transport energy over large distances.
Our paper Using Locally Produced Photovoltaic Energy to Charge Electric Vehicles [3] (to be published in Computer Science – Research and Development and presented at D-A-CH+ Energieinformatik 2017) discusses this potential of using solar energy to power electric cars of commuters in Switzerland. On the one hand, we compute the potentially available solar energy on rooftops in each municipality:
This is put in relation to the energy required by all work commuting travels, both within municipalities, as well as between different ones. The routes traveled are given as follows:
In a first scenario, we assume that people only charge their electric cars during the day at their workplace. We find that without shifting power from one municipality to another it is possible to cover up to 89% of the energy demand of commuter mobility. This also means that in larger cities (which have a high photovoltaic potential due to many rooftops), energy production peaks can be captured by electric cars, without the need to deploy additional batteries or storage capacity. The following figure shows the energy balance in July:
In a second scenario, where people only charge their cars at home (usually during the night), solar energy could cover 99.95% of the commuter energy demand. However, this requires installed storage capacity of around 9.32 GWh to shift the energy from day to night. Currently, 13.5 kWh batteries are targeted at homeowners, which means that around 690’000 households in Switzerland would need to be equipped with such a battery to let people charge their cars at home during the night.
The above presented analyses consider a full coverage of rooftops with solar panels, as well as a complete replacement of combustion engine cars with electric cars. This shift will not happen instantaneously, so the values should be taken solely as indications of potential future energy balances. It also needs to be noted that leisure travel and freight transport make up a substantial amount of mobility, which is not represented in above numbers. For more details, seasonal influence on solar energy production, and scenarios where people charge cars both at home and at work, please refer to the paper.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/06/france-ban-petrol-diesel-cars-2040-emmanuel-macron-volvo
[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/norway-to-ban-the-sale-of-all-fossil-fuel-based-cars-by-2025-and-replace-with-electric-vehicles-a7065616.html
[3] https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/173513
Call for participation: Scientific study of location-based mobile learning
Dear geography teachers,
using mobile phones as an educational tool? Interacting with and augmenting local geographical phenomena via virtual assistants? With ETH’s learning platform OMLETH (Ortbezogenes Mobiles Lernen an der ETH / Location-based mobile learning at ETH), it is possible to go mobile and complete tasks in situ. The platform was developed as part of an Innovedum project at ETH Zurich:
With OMLETH, teachers can conveniently develop their program as a nature trail in the web browser and implement lessons out of school with the support of tablets and smartphones. This kind of teaching strategy allows the student to process learning content directly on the spot.
OMLETH was continuously evaluated and improved in cooperation with various partner institutes and learning experts within and outside of ETH. Numerous secondary school teachers in geography have already successfully implemented dozens of learning modules with OMLETH – not only for teaching, but also for high-school diploma theses. These studies have shown that this educational method is highly interactive and constructivist, and can have a positive effect on the learning objectives.
As a next step, we aim to evaluate the learning effectiveness of this new teaching strategy in an experimental setting. We are looking for individual teachers or groups of teachers who would like to use OMLETH and compare student’s learning achievements gained in regular classroom-based teaching versus location-mobile learning. These activities are planned for late summer / fall 2017.
In order to use the summer holidays as inspirational period, we recommend to organize an initial meeting right before or just after this time. It will contain an introductory trail around the school building, testing OMLETH on desktop computers and finally a presentation of the study design. Technical questions will be answered at any time during the study.
Further information about the platform and the study can be found at https://omleth.ch/workshop/ (in German).
If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact us by phone. To plan your first meeting, please send us your registration by July 30 2017. Thank you!
SBB Green Class E-Bike!
The Swiss Federal Railways (SBB/CFF/FFS) are looking for mobility pioneers for the project “SBB Green Class E-Bike”. People interested in participating in a pilot project that researches people’s use of the combination e-bike/general public transport subscription/Mobility carsharing (“all inclusive”) can sign up on www.sbb.ch/greenclass until July 13. The project is scientifically accompanied by researchers from the MIE Lab.
Energy-based Routing and Cruising Range Estimation for Electric Bicycles
Personal mobility is critical for successful cities, but also a major threatening factor for the livability they provide to a growing urban population. For this reason, it is highly important to switch towards more sustainable travel behavior, and substitute many of the trips previously covered by car with smaller and more energy-efficient modes of transport, such as electric bicycles. With rising sales numbers, e-bike fleets in companies and emerging e-bike sharing systems, there is a growing demand for services which provide e-bike specific routing and range assessment.
In the MIE Lab, we developed a prototypical GIS-based application with the aim of route planning and cruising range estimation for electric bicycles. The model parameters were either measured during field tests with electric bicycles, or taken from literature and the bicycles’ specifications.
For more information see:
Energy-based Routing and Cruising Range Estimation for Electric Bicycles
Simon Haumann, Dominik Bucher, David Jonietz
In Proceedings of the Short Papers, AGILE 2017, Wageningen, The Netherlands. Best Short Paper Award
Or try out the application on ebikes.dominikbucher.com!
Best short paper at AGILE 2017
We are happy to announce that our short paper “Energy-based Routing and Cruising Range Estimation for Electric Bicycles” was elected best short paper at AGILE 2017 conference in Wageningen, The Netherlands!
Try out the system on ebikes.dominikbucher.com!
PhD position – Mobility Information Engineering
The Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation is looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate in the area of Mobility Information Engineering at the Chair of Geoinformation Engineering, starting at the earliest possible date.
More information here
2 papers accepted at COSIT conference
Collaborating with our colleagues from the GeoGazeLab, we have two full papers accepted at this year’s COSIT conference, which will take place in L’Aquila, Italy. For more information, visit our publications site.
2 shortpapers accepted at AGILE conference
We have two shortpapers accepted at this year’s AGILE conference, which will take place in Wageningen, The Netherlands. For more information, visit our publications site.