The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Open Platform for Agile Trip Heuristics (NREL OpenPATH, accessible at https://nrel.gov/openpath) offers users a comprehensive tool to monitor their travel modes—ranging from cars and buses to bikes and walking—and assess the associated energy consumption and carbon emissions.

This innovative app equips communities with the insights needed to analyze their transportation habits, experiment with greener alternatives, and measure the outcomes. These insights are invaluable for shaping effective transportation policies and urban planning, ultimately fostering more sustainable and accessible urban environments.

NREL OpenPATH not only educates individual users about the environmental impact of their travel choices but also aggregates community-level data on travel modes, trip frequencies, and carbon footprints, which is publicly accessible through a dashboard.

The app's functionality is supported by continuous data collection and analysis facilitated through a smartphone application, a server, and automated data processing systems. Its open-source framework ensures transparency in data collection and analysis and allows for customization to suit specific research or community programs.

Upon initial installation, the app refrains from collecting or transmitting any data. Participation in data collection begins only after users consent by clicking a link or scanning a QR code to join a specific study or program. For those not affiliated with a partner community but interested in tracking their personal carbon footprint, joining NREL's open-access study is an option. Data from these individual contributions may serve as a control group for partner-led experiments.

Fundamentally, the app functions as an automatically generated travel diary, utilizing background-sensed location and accelerometer data. Users can add detailed annotations to this diary as specified by program administrators or researchers.

It's important to note that continuous GPS usage in the background can significantly reduce battery life. To mitigate this, the app is designed to deactivate GPS when the user is stationary, resulting in a battery drain of approximately 5% for up to three hours of daily travel.

What's New in Version 1.9.1

Last updated on Oct 15, 2024

• Push notifications are now optional, catering to programs that may not require them.