NLR OpenPATH vs Kpal

The National Laboratory of the Rockies' Open Platform for Agile Trip Heuristics (NLR OpenPATH) enables people to track their travel modes—car, bus, bike, walking, etc.—and measure their associated energy use and carbon footprint. The app empowers communities to understand their travel mode choices and patterns, experiment with options to make them more sustainable, and evaluate the results. Such results can inform effective transportation policy and planning and be used to build more sustainable and accessible cities. NLR OpenPATH informs individual users about the impact of their choices, and also makes aggregated, community-level data on mode shares, trip frequencies, and carbon footprints available via a public dashboard. NLR OpenPATH incorporates continuous data collection and analysis via a smart phone app backed by a server and automated data processing. Its open nature enables transparent data collection and analysis, while allowing it to be configured for individual programs or studies. On first install, the app does not collect or transmit data. Once you click the link or scan the QR code to join a given study or program, you will be asked to consent to data collection and storage before the app begins functioning. If you are not part of a partner community or program but are simply interested in quantifying your individual carbon footprint, you can join the NLR-run open-access study. In the aggregate, your data might be used as the control for experiments run by our partners. At its core, the app represents an automatically sensed travel diary, constructed from background sensed location and accelerometer data. You can annotate the diary with semantic labels as requested by a given program administrator or researcher. Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life. Therefore, the app automatically turns off the GPS if you are not moving. This significantly reduces the battery drain caused by location tracking. The app results in ~ 5% battery drain for up to 3 hours of travel per day.

Track what you eat and what it costs. Kpal is a food diary for calories, nutrients, and food spending. Take a photo, scan a barcode, or enter a meal yourself. Check the details, adjust your portion, and add it to your day. Save foods you eat regularly so you don’t have to enter them again. Cooking at home? Build a dish from its ingredients, set how many servings it makes, and log the amount you ate. Keep your pantry organized and scan receipts to reuse the prices you actually paid. Your daily log and weekly trends show your calories, nutrients, and food costs. You can set calorie and spending targets, and optionally connect Apple Health to bring in your Active Energy. Photo-based nutrition and prices are estimates. Review them before saving—you can change the numbers whenever you need to.