Palestinian students, US experts co-create car application to reduce vehicle emissions

 
Palestinian students in the West Bank have cooperated with US universities to create a smartphone application that can help reduce vehicle emissions around the world.

The team included six students from Birzeit University, together with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, UMass Dartmouth and University of Washington.



 
The six students from Birzeit University were responsible for the creation of the application for the Android, which was named Carbin, said Malek Zek, a Palestinian student who worked on the application.

The application uses an automatization system to gain information about the quality of roads and its environmental impact in order to guide drivers to the most fuel-efficient route.

The work is based on research conducted by MIT to reduce vehicle's emissions by an estimated 5-10 percent.

The application, made by Zek and his colleagues, collects and shares road quality data to help identify where and when to make road repairs.



 
"The more the bumps, the more the fuel consumption and emissions," said Zek. "The application would suggest alternative routes that are more environment friendly and less costly."

"After some type of research, we proved the concept that smartphones could be used to detect pavement quality and this could help us to provide information about fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions and we believe this is a breakthrough," said Wasel Ghanem, a professor of the Computer Engineering Department, which supervised the Palestinian team that created the application Carbin.

"This is really something new, maybe for the first time that smartphone could be used to predict road quality, and carbon dioxide emissions," he went on explaining.

This project has showed me that technology can be utilized for sustainable environment solutions that would serve the entire world, said Zek.



 
Zek said that this application can also be modeled to be used to electric cars as well, because it will focus on safety for vehicle's suspension systems.

The newly launched application has already been used in 11 countries, mostly for testing, mapping over 200,000 miles of roads.