CO2 Tracker: a game to understand the CO2 levels in the city of Venice

Climate change and air pollution are two of the biggest problems of the planet. Human activities such as pollution, deforestation, and overconsumption of the environment can lead to environmental degradation, which in turn can have serious consequences for humans and the environment. These consequences include climate change, habitat loss, and resource depletion. Environmental awareness is of paramount importance for coping with this situation. This thesis describes the creation of a game whose aim is to increase the citizens’ knowledge and spread awareness about the different factors which lead to modification of CO2 levels in urban areas. Furthermore, the project aims to introduce a novel approach based on gamification to gain a better understanding of the locations with the highest levels of CO2. In urban zones, there are many factors which can change CO2 levels in the air, such as car or boat trafficking. Even just changing the usual path to work or university may result in a healthier route. The game challenges the citizen to find a better route than the usual one in terms of levels of CO2, to achieve a better comprehension of the relation between CO2 levels and the environmental context. The data used for this project are gathered by a number of mobile stations designed and created by a team of students of Ca’ Foscari University as part of their master's thesis. The city of Venice was selected as a case study. The final part of the project is the analysis of the game users’ feedback to measure their comprehension of data and engagement during the game. The thesis describes the work starting from the analysis of related works, then focusing on the development of the stations for gathering data and the design of the game. At the end, the evaluation of the game platform and analysis of the users' feedback is presented.