HOMETRACKER: A HOUSEHOLD LEVEL FIELD INTERVENTION AND METABOLISM TRACKER

Abstract

Overconsumption of Food, Energy, and Water (FEW) has become a severe problem and has adverse impacts on the environment. The connections and dependencies between FEW resources are known as the FEW Nexus. It is important for society to understand how behavioral changes in the household can reduce the overexploitation of resources. The Food, Energy, and Water Conscious (FEWCON) project is one such study that uses different interventions to study and analyze household FEW consumption behaviors. A crucial part of the FEWCON study is HomeTracker, a web application used to track FEW consumptions and provide feedback in the form of intervention messages to participating households. Data collected through the application is used to provide feedback to the participants not only on their use of individual utilities and food resources but also to translate their consumption into different impact categories. The major impact categories include greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy use, and water use across the FEW Nexus. This report summarizes the main challenges and approaches of the HomeTracker web application and provides a detailed narration of application development.