Home // SMART 2016, The Fifth International Conference on Smart Cities, Systems, Devices and Technologies // View article

Greening the Scientific Conferences

Authors:
Amin Anjomshoaa
Carlo Ratti
Ferial Shayeganfar

Keywords: greenhouse gasses; emission; conference management; green events

Abstract:
Today we are facing an increasing number of scientific conferences that play an important role in the exchange of information for academia and researchers. In order to attend a conference, attendees travel to the conference city from all over the world and for bigger meetings this will produce a significant amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses. In sustainable urban environments, various mobility solutions such as public transport, car sharing, and ride sharing are offered to enable seamless multimodality and reducing the urban pollution. However, the urban impact of the academic events needs to be addressed on a larger spatial scale. In scientific conferences, the conference location is decided during the early stages of conference planning and is announced by way of a Call For Papers. To this end, the conference location is merely decided based on economic, political, or city-attractiveness concerns. In this paper, we will first articulate the importance of the conference location by analyzing the real world data of some past conferences. Next, we show that there is a strong correlation between the emission rate per capita of the contributing authors and the final attendees of the conference. Based on this finding, we will then propose the idea of variable conference location that suggests deferring the selection of conference city to the paper submission deadline. As a result, it would be possible to make an informed and environmental-friendly decision about the conference location.

Pages: 44 to 49

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2016

Publication date: May 22, 2016

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-3727

ISBN: 978-1-61208-4763

Location: Valencia, Spain

Dates: from May 22, 2016 to May 26, 2016