Begun as a Master of Engineering project during the Fall 2021 semester under the guidance of Professor H. Oliver Gao, Software Tools for Green Fleet Management is a project to design and develop a web-based software application to manage and track vehicle emissions from user automobile assets and fleets.
Air pollution is a significant and prevalent environmental hazard, having been a constant source of concern for the ecosystem, public health, and social welfare. Vehicle transmissions have shown to be large contributors of nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter (PM), hydrocarbons (HC), and other damaging pollutants found in our atmosphere. However, there is an increasing need and a continuation for the reliance of these vehicles. This leads to the question:
How can we continue maintaining and using these vehicles while reducing the amount of emissions we put in the air?
This has been the focus of research done by Professor H. Oliver Gao and Timon H. Stasko. Fleet management requires sizable resources and fleet managers very naturally are interested in minimizing the cost of maintaining these fleets. In previous work, an optimization model has been developed to aid the decisions of vehicle purchase, resale, and retrofitting while also factoring in emission reduction requirements.
With the developed optimization algorithm, there previously has been no method for it to be integrated into the daily management of vehicle fleets and assets. This project develops an web-based asset management tool for vehicles with an integrated optimization model formulated to minimize cost or emissions based on a user built fleet. The web-based software offers advantages like accessibility to the public in order to help fleet managers reach emission reduction goals while still maintaining full functionality of the optimization model.
The following is the final report for the project at the end of the semester.