The course Sustainable development and ethics for computer science is taught by Frances Sprei at Space, Earth and Environment, together with Håkan Burden, adjunct teacher at CSE, with the aim to inspire and stimulate aspiring computer engineers to contribute to sustainable social development in their future professional role, and to provide knowledge and tools that students will need to tackle complex sustainability problems.
"We started a small project together with Ericsson, to provide interesting challenges for the students to work with. But there is a huge interest for these issues, so the collaboration grew to include the self-driving shuttle bus that's been running at Chalmers Campus Johanneberg, and the electrical bus lines 16 and 55. We also connected with Chalmers Five Star Campus initiative and the local municipal organizations for parking (Parkeringsbolaget) and environment (Miljöförvaltningen). We all see the city change, and new needs and possibilites for our daily travels arise", says Håkan Burden.
On November 23-24 of 2018, the students took part in an ideathon organized by UITP (the international organisation for public transport authorities and operators), Johanneberg Science
Park and RISE, hosted by
Ericsson at Lindholmen. The students were provided with real life cases and projects connected to sustainable development. This
helps the students see the relevance of their education, and gives them
the opportunity to collaborate with different stakeholders and learn
about their requirements. It is also a way to tie global challenges to
local issues, making them concrete and possible to act on.
Live experiment
As a result of the Ideathon, and thanks to technical solutions developed by Ericsson, during April 2019 vehicles on line 55 are in traffic with sensors that gather data about the air quality along the line. Measurements are also gathered from some of the bus stops on the route. The students, Åke Axeland, Magnus Carlsson, Simon Duchén, Henrik Hagfeldt, Lina Lagerquist och Sofija Zdjelar, hope to be able to visualize the measurements to be able to study them in real time.The gathered data will hopefully be stored and available for future analysis.
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