Drive on a Greener Way: A Case Study on Navigating Cross-Regional Traffic Networks in South China

Abstract

Green navigation presents a challenge to sustainable mobility. Carbon emissions are a key indicator for evaluating the sustainability of a route. Some methods of green navigation consider the fastest and shortest route to be the least carbon-emitting option, solely from the driver’s perspective. To address this issue, various studies have incorporated road factors into the sustainability evaluation model and designed static route planning algorithms to minimize carbon emissions. However, there has been no comprehensive analysis of carbon emissions from both the road and the driver perspectives, and the influence of a sustainability evaluation using dynamic traffic states has not been considered. In this paper, we propose a carbon emission evaluation model based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) and a dynamic route planning algorithm that focuses on near-real-time traffic states. First, we develop an evaluation model for carbon emissions from both the road and the driver perspectives using a carbon footprint measurement method. Next, we propose a route planning method with both a static calculation and near-real-time adjustment to minimize carbon emissions. Finally, we select three cases from South China with different characteristics to verify the effectiveness of our model and algorithm. This evaluation model calculates the carbon emissions caused by all parties involved, providing a comprehensive assessment of the total carbon emissions generated by traffic. This approach addresses the problem of traditional route planning, which often fails to account for the influences of variable traffic conditions on the greenest route. We verify the effectiveness of the greenest navigation algorithm and near-real-time green navigation and apply these two aspects to cases where the greenest route is compared with other common navigation results from different dimensions. We compare carbon emissions from vehicles and roads from electric vehicles and gasoline-powered vehicles. If an electric vehicle is equipped with a wind power generator, the proportion of the vehicle’s carbon emissions will be very small. For other vehicle types, the carbon emissions will be more than 1000 times the road emissions.