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“There is no single technology that will solve climate change. If we want to prepare our students to fight global warming, they need to understand the scientific and the human dimensions of the problem, and we need to give them the tools to address the problem.”     - Professor V. Ramanathan

Background: Current navigation systems offer “shortest-distance” or “shortest-time” functions to help avoid traffic congestion but neither of them determine the most fuel efficient route. With rising gas prices and vehicle emissions, a more advanced navigation system with additional functions, such as an environmentally-friendly feature, is needed. This accomplishment can make a huge improvement on increasing fuel costs and air pollution. The in-vehicle navigation system is also expected to competitively penetrate the US market in the next couple years with annual sales quadrupling to $13M.  Brief Description: UCR researchers have developed an innovative vehicle navigation system (VNS) that will allow users to choose a route that is the most gas efficient and emanates less emissions. The energy- and emissions-minimization function is incorporated on top of distance- and time-minimizing functions that currently exists in the traditional VNS. This new intelligent transportation system utilizes a state-of-the-art modal emissions model (CMEM) that encompasses real-world vehicle activity patterns, and can calculate the fuel consumption and emission values of each vehicle trajectory.