[HN Gopher] Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting loca...
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Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location
Just enter the locations people will be traveling from. MLC then
calculates the location, where the combined aircraft emissions are
minimised. Based on data from the European Emissions Agency.
Author : jonashendel
Score : 64 points
Date : 2023-03-11 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.meetinglocationcalculator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.meetinglocationcalculator.com)
| galacticaactual wrote:
| No thanks.
| jedberg wrote:
| It seems like once you have a few points in North America and
| Europe, the answer is always Iceland, no matter how many other
| cities you add.
|
| I guess this makes sense, but it's interesting to see visualized.
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| 1270018080 wrote:
| It would be cool to see the non-euclidean paths. Still very nice.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Peak of Everest
| ksniwmidjd wrote:
| [flagged]
| andai wrote:
| Any reason this wouldn't work as a mobile app?
| msla wrote:
| Does this only work on locations in Europe?
| SECProto wrote:
| It doesn't work well (graphically) if you choose eg, something in
| australia and something in the US. Shows the Australia flight
| travelling West across all of africa (when it actually travels
| northeast, across the ocean)
| tbabej wrote:
| Europe has quite a few high-quality, high-speed rail connections.
| If I may suggest a feature, in order for the tool is to be
| faithful to its mission, alternative mods of transport could be
| supported as well.
|
| Personally, I am more than happy to take an overnight train than
| a short-flight, given the additional overhead of travelling
| to/from the airport. An overnight train can take you pretty far
| within continental Europe.
| melx wrote:
| That's what I'm going to do this August with my 3yr old as
| we'll be visiting friends and family etc.
|
| I'd be taking a train to London (about 3h), then EuroStar to
| Paris (2h 15), then to Berlin (about 8h). Total time ~13 hours.
|
| Flight time for me to Berlin is ~4h, but to get to Airport and
| the wait for boarding brings it probably close to 8h, but then
| I can't visit the relatives in Paris that easy.
|
| Actually I don't like flying that much these days (the eco
| reasons aside).
| riedel wrote:
| This is the ideal case. However, I have been involved in
| quite a bit of European projects and it is not that easy.
| Last meeting was in Poznan and I could have used the train
| via Berlin from south Germany, but somehow I have not been
| able to book any night trains lately and traveling over the
| day would have taken a whole day of my work week instead of
| half. Next trip is the other direction to The Hague. I will
| take the train but last time I had to replan my trip 3 times
| while traveling due to cancellations and delays. I don't want
| to fly but I am always totally stressed after long train
| trips. To a typical meeting people from like 10 countries
| come in a European research project. Traveling from Germany
| to Spain or even Greece is not really feasible by train until
| we get better night train connections (only Austrian rail is
| actually operating them, but there seems currently no chance
| to book them)
| melx wrote:
| I don't travel for work by train but for fun, so my
| experience is probably different to yours.
|
| Some EU countries (Greece, Poland, Portugal) still have
| terrible, slow trains. Paris-Berlin takes 8h (fastest one)
| for about 877 km. Berlin-Gdansk takes 8h for about 400 km
| (!!).
|
| I last traveled by night train about 20 years ago
| throughout Germany and Poland. It was terrible experience.
| But great if I was looking for a companion to beer, or
| surprise sex with random folk.
|
| Also night trains are non-existent in some countries. For
| example in the UK, most trains run from 6am onwards on week
| days. Forget if you need to travel from York and be in
| London for 8am. We have some night services[0] that go out
| of London to Scotland/Cornwall but I see them more like
| touristic offer than for any economic reason.
|
| [0] https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/on-the-train/sleeper-
| trains/
| throwaway049 wrote:
| Do you have the option to use the train seat as a work
| space? That way daytime train travel is still useful.
| makestuff wrote:
| I was working on an app as a side project similar to this.
| Basically each traveler would fill out a form saying I live in
| X and I have access to car/train/etc. transportation. The idea
| was to match people and then find a central location for remote
| teams to meet up. For example, 2 people live in Chicago, 3 in
| NYC, and one in SF. Where is the best city to meet up; however,
| I was optimizing on cost.
|
| It turns out several people on HN had similar ideas (Villagers
| app was one but it seems to be offline now
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33344734). I stopped
| working on it after reading this HN thread where several people
| linked to various articles like
| https://blog.garrytan.com/travel-planning-software-the-
| most-....
| kushie wrote:
| why cant i view on mobile
| furyofantares wrote:
| How many times is it acceptable to post the same Show HN?
| (Genuine question)
| [deleted]
| outside1234 wrote:
| Strange that it doesn't choose one of the locations people are
| in.
|
| For example, for me it chose Toronto for an international meeting
| even tho one of the folks attending was from New York City. Why
| not NYC to prevent one person from traveling.
|
| Also, you need weighting, as often there are multiple people from
| a location.
| mplanchard wrote:
| You can add an airport multiple times to weight for multiple
| people
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| Isn't it better to meet in a place where one of the people is
| already located? Then one less person has to fly, and they can
| use their saved time to work and offset the CO2 spent by the
| additional time traveled by the others.
| dheera wrote:
| I guess if you're optimizing on the other metrics, yes, but if
| you're optimizing for CO2 only the best solution may not
| necessarily be where someone is already located.
|
| However, I did try putting in e.g. 10 x Boston, 1 x London, 1 x
| Paris, and it did in fact suggest Boston as the meeting point.
|
| Realistically, it is often also the case that the announced
| location of a meeting influences who attends it, as compared to
| travelling for a conference (flights + lodging + meals), the
| costs are much, much lower for people who already live in that
| city, who need to only buy the entry ticket.
|
| So if you announce a conference in Paris instead of Boston you
| might expect a bunch of people who already live in Paris to
| suddenly want to attend. This effect is hard to account for.
| wolrah wrote:
| > Isn't it better to meet in a place where one of the people is
| already located? Then one less person has to fly, and they can
| use their saved time to work and offset the CO2 spent by the
| additional time traveled by the others.
|
| I'm not sure if the tool specifically accounts for that or if
| the math just ends up working out, but I was testing with
| various combinations of my family and it always ended up at
| someone's home airport.
| capableweb wrote:
| > I'm not sure if the tool specifically accounts for that or
| if the math just ends up working out, but I was testing with
| various combinations of my family and it always ended up at
| someone's home airport.
|
| Not sure. But if you put the two locations of Caracas, VE and
| San Francisco, US, they suggest meeting in Houston, US.
|
| Does it make sense? Is it more environmental friendly for two
| people to meet in the middle rather than having one person
| staying and the other going there? My gut says the latter
| should be more environmental friendly.
| kortilla wrote:
| Better for one to travel. A disproportionate amount of a
| flight's fuel is in takeoff and climb. Meeting in Houston
| is far worse because you've doubled the required takeoff
| rolls.
| jamilton wrote:
| The tool claims to take that into account, it breaks it
| down in the "show report" button. Liftoff is 3 tons of
| CO2.
| gabrielhidasy wrote:
| Unless it's accounting for no direct flights between
| Caracas and San Francisco, which would mean either the
| Caracas person needs to fly to SF connecting in Houston,
| or both go to Houston in a direct flight, meet there and
| go back. It's the same 4 takeoffs.
|
| (Disclaimer, I have no idea if there are direct flights
| from Caracas to SF, but from Brazil I always need to stop
| by in a hub)
| jameshart wrote:
| It's certainly not always the case.
|
| In planar Euclidean geometry, for any three points, if the
| triangle formed by those three points has all its angles less
| than 120 degrees, then the sum of the distances from the
| three points to certain points inside the triangle will be
| smaller than the sum of the shortest two sides. Only if one
| of the angles exceeds 120 degrees will one of the three
| points always have the shortest total travel distance.
|
| The relevant concept is the 'Fermat point', which is the
| point that minimizes total distance from the vertices of a
| triangle.
|
| In _spherical_ geometry, it gets more complicated, but the
| same logic applies to spherical triangles that aren 't too
| large. You can definitely find sets of three points on a
| sphere, such that points inside the triangle are the one
| which minimizes travel distance.
| wiml wrote:
| The carbon cost of a flight isn't a linear function of its
| distance, though -- takeoff is much more expensive than
| cruise, and on long flights there's the cost of hauling the
| fuel itself, rocket-equation style. (Presumably the data
| underlying this website accounts for all that.)
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I would expect that aircraft emissions have a fixed cost +
| a distance dependent variable cost. Coupled with the fact
| that we are optimizing over a discrete set of locations, it
| is very possible that the optimal location is at one of the
| corners of the triangle.
| jameshart wrote:
| ... sure, but also possible that it won't always be.
| akira2501 wrote:
| They have variable costs that aren't dependent on the
| distance. Some planes take off in 10 minutes, some planes
| have to sit for 45 before they can take off.
|
| This all also assumes that you will always be able to fly
| directly to your destination on the selected day. If you
| end up diverting or getting delayed, or if certain routes
| make that _more_ likely, then this wouldn't be a win at
| all.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Does this still hold if you count the flown distance twice,
| because the meeting participants would probably like to get
| back home after it ends?
| winnit wrote:
| Of course, the lengths are just doubled. If someone
| travels twice as far to get to someone's home they also
| have to travel twice as far back. If the two met in the
| middle instead there would be four journeys but each
| would be half as long (2+2=1+1+1+1).
| bagels wrote:
| If you enter two locations, it picks one of the two as the
| meeting place.
| jamilton wrote:
| Not necessarily. San Francisco and New York give me Chicago.
| wolrah wrote:
| This is a really neat tool, but I'm having a hard time imagining
| situations where it'd be all that useful, where people from
| substantially different locations all need to meet in person, but
| don't care where they're meeting. How often does that happen?
|
| Am I missing something?
| cagenut wrote:
| there is a small but growing cohort of people who both a.) work
| in all or predominantly remote orgs and b.) understand the
| carbon cost of flying.
|
| if your team meets those critera then this is the _only_ way to
| make these decisions.
|
| even if your team doesn't entirely agree on b, those of us who
| do can use this to inform our votes on where to meet.
| wolrah wrote:
| My emphasis for that sort of scenario would be on the *
| _need*_ to meet in person aspect. I 've been working remote
| exclusive for over a decade at this point and even though
| we're all in the same part of a single US state the last time
| more than two of us occupied the same building at the same
| time was years ago.
|
| The more people or travel groups you add to the equation the
| less likely it is in my mind that you actually needed to
| physically meet unless you're meeting to do something in the
| real world which usually can't be done absolutely anywhere.
| If you're not meeting somewhere specific to do a thing in
| that place why couldn't the meeting have been done virtually?
|
| Someone else suggested conferences, and I guess that could
| make sense in the case of small conferences where any random
| major airport hotel can handle their needs and a substantial
| portion of the attendees can be expected to vote, but it
| doesn't scale.
| jameshart wrote:
| Remote-first companies encounter this problem all the time.
| ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote:
| Do they? I feel like remote-first companies seem to enjoy
| having an excuse to travel to exciting destinations as a
| recruitment/retention perk. "We're meeting in Kansas City
| because that minimizes emissions" likely doesn't spark joy in
| the same way that "we're meeting in the Bahamas because we're
| cool and fun!" would.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I refuse to fly to corporate meetings due to climate
| impact, and I have a few colleagues that do the same, so I
| don't think this is universally true. I would respect a
| company that didn't.
| nottathrowaway3 wrote:
| Because it's designed to optimize fuel efficiency, the use case
| is basically corporate greenwashing.
|
| HR: "our company meetup allows authentic inclusive in-person
| interactions, all while helping save the environment, by only
| releasing 1M tons of CO2 rather than 1.03M tons."
|
| The most environmentally friendly meeting is obviously one that
| happens online. In-person meetups increase retention but --
| until teleportation is invented -- that retention comes at an
| environmental cost.
|
| A similar tool could be designed to minimize something else
| (cost, flight time, etc.) which would have a better use case
| outside corporate ESG politics.
| jsharf wrote:
| I think for academic conferences, they typically choose a venue
| that changes every year. This could be used to aid in selecting
| a venue.
| Jolter wrote:
| They won't know who's attending then they book the venue. It
| works the other way around, usually.
|
| And of course, if you don't know who's attending...
| zenlf wrote:
| It would be funny if it redirects to Zoom.
| capableweb wrote:
| As funny as if you have a "ATM Locator" application that
| redirects you to the bank mobile application. What if I
| actually want cash in hand?
| cagenut wrote:
| first off thank you, anything even remotely down this road is the
| right direction.
|
| as a UI bug, when I typed "ewr" or even "newark" it shows zero
| search results. strangely if i back off just one character on
| either then it does show newark liberty international airport.
| for some reason the search is penalizing you for finishing the
| string.
|
| a second one, the show report button didnt work at all.
|
| product suggestion: make the results a unique url that can be
| shared amongst coworkers planning an event. they should be able
| to edit it like a google doc to collaboratively update how many
| people are flying from what locations, and then everyone can
| reference the shared url to see the calculated result.
|
| last thing, can you share some of the tech details behind how you
| made the globe/flight-visualizations?
| bagels wrote:
| Interested, but not enough to do the research, if the data takes
| in to account the fact that you won't find direct flights to most
| of the places it chooses as the meeting spot.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| The cheapest place to meet at is usually some destination for
| tourists, ouside of vacation season of couse.
| abeppu wrote:
| I entered the 3 US airports I use most frequently, and I was told
| to meet at an airforce base.
| blumomo wrote:
| It's not the one time meetings that are a problem. It's a problem
| when it becomes a habit to fly super regularly, on a daily or
| weekly basis. Picking climate friendly locations for a one off
| meeting has close to zero impact.
| switchbak wrote:
| Agreed. I've met a bunch of people that literally commute via
| airplane. That's just crazy to me.
|
| A one off meeting isn't going to move the needle as compared to
| that.
| e12e wrote:
| I agree with the general sentiment (fix harmful habits first,
| exceptions later) - but if we set the ideal at no flights -
| then even a few mid-distance flights come out as pretty bad.
| coding123 wrote:
| Zoom.com
| cristiioan wrote:
| I find the idea great, but there are a few issues with it.
|
| The biggest ones I have found is that when there are multiple
| people flying from the same airport, it won't redo the math to
| try to find a better location.
|
| Also it is more fuel efficient for just one to fly than two when
| there are only two people.
| capableweb wrote:
| > The biggest ones I have found is that when there are multiple
| people flying from the same airport, it won't redo the math to
| try to find a better location.
|
| Yeah, I saw this too. I started by choosing three locations in
| Russia, which put the meeting point somewhere in the middle of
| Russia. Then I added 10-15 departures in Europe. Realistically,
| the meeting point should be somewhere in Europe/Eastern Europe
| at that point, as there is only three departures from Russia.
| But the meeting point remained in middle/center Russia.
| e12e wrote:
| Does this account for number of people and trains/boat etc?
|
| [ed: on mobile so can't launch the app]
| mplanchard wrote:
| You can add an airport multiple times to account for multiple
| people coming from the same place.
| mtmail wrote:
| It doesn't. Flights/airports only.
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(page generated 2023-03-11 23:00 UTC)