Open Source Projects Focus on a Greener, Safer Planet

by Sam Dean - Dec. 19, 2011Comments (0)

In the past, we've covered a number of open source projects focused on humanitarian goals, but did you know that open source communities are also increasingly focused on contributing to a greener, more sustainable planet? There are thriving open source communities focused on ecological goals. In this post, find out about some of the most notable open source ecology projects and sites.

Ecobot. One way to start contributing to a more sustainable planet is to keep track of your own carbon footprint. Do you track how much fuel, power and paper you use, for example? If not, Ecobot is a free, open source Adobe AIR application that tracks your fuel consumption, paper consumption, and much more. It also directs you to green resources that you can leverage. We covered Ecobot in this post.

OpenSourceEcology.org. Open Source Ecology is a fascinating project, and its community includes farmers and engineers. The project is dedicated to sustainability goals that leverage open source principles, and members collaborate on building greener harvesting tools using scrap materials and much more. Computerworld has an in-depth look at the project here.

Before and After the Disaster. Here at OStatic, we've done many more posts on open source tools that can help communities and governments around the world cope with natural disasters. In this post, you can find out more about OpenHazards, which is designed to predict the possibility of earthquakes anywhere in the world. It's a highly interesting tool. It's also worth looking into Lisa's post on Sahana, an open source tool that governments are deploying for disaster relief management.

Finally, the Linux community is also focused on many projects dedicated to a smarter planet. You can find out about some of these efforts in this post.