Cut carbon emissions with Open Data on materials

[mozfest-bot]

[ UUID ] f43fffba-08e6-4a60-8982-d8c541cf73c2

[ Session Name ] Cut carbon emissions with Open Data on materials [ Primary Space ] Open Innovation

[ Submitter's Name ] Rick Lupton [ Submitter's Affiliated Organisation ] University of Cambridge [ Submitter's Github ] @ricklupton

What will happen in your session?

One sixth of carbon emissions come from making just five bulk materials: steel, aluminium, cement, paper and plastics. Big cuts in emissions are needed, and it's difficult to reduce emissions per tonne of material, so we need to find ways to live well with less material. The problem is that data on how we use materials is hard to find, a mixture of aggregated national statistics and very specific datasets.

I will give a short introduction to the issues and examples of the kinds of data involved, before a discussion on how Open Data could help.

Initial discussion topics:

• What other areas can we learn from?
• Do we need an ontology of physical resources?
• Is Linked Data the solution?

What is the goal or outcome of your session?

I want to work with the people at MozFest who care about the health of the planet as well as the health of the internet. We think there's a great opportunity to learn from how Open approaches in other areas to improve data on the way we use materials and physical resources. By the end of the session I hope that we will have:

• Brought together a group of people interested in this problem.
• Collected examples of existing approaches and tools to inspire open data on materials.
• Understood if there are important choices to be made about data formats and tools.

If your session requires additional materials or electronic equipment, please outline your needs.

Projector, post-it notes, flipchart and pens (multiple flipcharts depending on the number of participants)

Time needed

60 mins

[ricklupton]

@rjmyers Do you have any suggestions for the session? Links to the current projects on open data in this area would be great. Thanks!

[rjmyers]

@ricklupton Great initiative! Here are links to some projects that I'm working on in the Open Data/Open Science space:

Improving data transparency and accessibility in the Industrial Ecology community (Here's a definition for the non-industrial ecologists reading this! Industrial Ecology is the scientific field that aims to holistically understand how materials are used in society through a systems perspective, given technological, economic, environmental, political, and cultural contexts)

Developing a comprehensive open access database on material stocks and flows

For the session, I am likewise very interested to discuss and figure out how we can manage resources and materials to achieve a more equitable and sustainable society, e.g., envisaged through initiatives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Some example issues are: do we have large enough reserves of metals for everyone to own an electric vehicle, or to have access to comparable infrastructure to that which exists in G20 countries? To answer these questions, I agree that we need to harness Open Data efforts to develop a comprehensive understanding on resource and materials use. I'm hoping that the database I'm developing can help (see above), and in this session would love to discuss how it can be enhanced into a community run and edited platform, crowd-sourcing data from diverse users. Metabolism of Cities is an interesting example of this that I'm also contributing to.

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