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GPS Biking
News and resources to inspire concerned citizens to work together in building a healthier, stronger society that benefits all.
Out of the mouths of babes sometimes comes great wisdom. Seven-year-old Mason Perez won a school science fair in Reno, Nevada, for his project addressing water usage efficiency. Now, two years later, the principles he outlined have been used to save his city tens of thousands of gallons of water. The Reno Gazette-Journal reports that the boy’s inspiration came from an experience in a baseball field restroom, where he found the pressure of the sink’s faucet excessive. He turned it down and it still worked fine. For the project, Perez used a bucket and a stopwatch to measure water flow at several residences. By reducing the pressure while maintaining usability, he recorded savings of up to 24 percent. He repeated his experiments at several local businesses with the same positive results. Because the default position for valves in new construction is often 100 percent open, it is a simple procedure to adjust them to achieve a more efficient rate. Perez convinced the ballpark’s manager to try it, resulting in a 20 percent water savings for the municipal facility. The local utility, Truckee Meadows Water Authority, is now assessing whether the idea can be implemented in other parks, public schools, casinos and private homes.
Want to know how far it’s possible to travel by biking or using public transit in under 15 minutes? There’s a map for that. Mapnificent shows the areas one can reach from any point in a city at any given time. Stefan Wehrmeyer, a Berlin-based software architect, has developed a tool that uses public transit data to help users decide on where to live, work or meet up. Using data from the GTFS Data Exchange and overlaying the extracted information on a Google map, Mapnificent visualizes the reach of public transport in the selected city. This becomes especially useful for decision-making purposes, rather than trip planning. “Let’s say you found a job in San Francisco and want to move there,” Wehrmeyer explains. “Where can you live so that you need less than 30 minutes to go to your work place? Mapnificent is able to answer that question.” Mapnificent is available in public beta and can be used for major cities in the United States.
Source: Treehugger.com
Source: TheCityFix.com
Water Wiz
Science Project Saves a Gusher
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Greater Las Vegas
NA-LV.com
Mapnificent Will Show the Way