Notes: Week 5 (4/26 - 5/2)

Meeting with Stephanie Harrington, 4/27
Card Sort Notes, Terry Dievendorf, 4/29
Card Sort Notes, Lucian DiPeso, 4/30

Meeting with Stephanie Harrington, 4/27

• Requested items for schema: courses, university/faculty awards and associations, as well as expertise (this information checked annually)
• Climate Action Plan (CAP): Who maintains the data? This is a question that must be answered.
• Sequestration/offsets are things that need to be tracked
• Academics: primary focus - money and productivity.
• Also needs tracking: student enrollments/square footage/employee counts
• Office of Institutional Studies profiles provide some overlapping information that could be useful to cross-reference with this schema - whether overlap (where some of this data is contained in the sustainability schema) is a good idea is unclear.
• The "administrative group" element in the preliminary list needs to be renamed to "central administrative group" for clarity.
• U-PASS usage statistics might also be useful, but it's not clear where this information lives (is it King County Metro that keeps the data or someone in the UW's administrative structure?)
• Trends versus precision: this is an important differentiator to consider when designing the schema.

Card Sort Notes, Terry Dievendorf, 4/29

• Hydro: is this electric or water?
• Batteries: placed under utilities - " seems like a necessity" - moved later to electricity
• Wood/glass categorized as building materials
• "Natural": is this a gas, or does it get grouped with "green (utilities)"?
• Not grouping college and department in the same category
• "Foot": transportation type or unit of measure?
• Material types becomes a common group
• Not sure about where "refrigerants" will fit in the categorization
• Utilities, transit, food waste: emissions source is a possible category
• Toner cartridges: moves from "recycled materials" category to "electrical accessories"
• Food waste is both composted and recycled, so it could end up in either category
• Starch peanuts: packing material or paper?
• "Utility source" is an extremely hard term to categorize (may suggest need to rename). Is this descriptive of a utility used to make utilities run, or is it a source for the utility? Is this a descriptor term?
• Lighting group was one of the first groups to form, followed by recycled/virgin materials
• Virgin materials moved under food
• Fuel oil/diesel same, but distinction is being made for categorization purposes
• Gas/diesel serves as an output from the system, coal is an input to the system
• "Food waste" moved under "Garbage" as a header
• Reduction source: an area where reduction is possible
• Cost avoidance: avoiding money, focus on reducing sources and materials
• Making a distinction between things that are something and something that is a type of something else
• Utility source is either traditional or green (utility source becomes a header)
• Recycled and virgin materials becomes an umbrella category
• Batteries moved from gas to electronic accessories. The hierarchy for utility source now looks like:
  • Utility source
    • Green
    • Traditional
      • Sewage
      • Electricity
      • Water
      • Steam
      • Gas
• Start/end date is a property of an event
• A College has an enrollment total
• "Harborview" goes under "Center"
• "Central Administrative Group" has an "Other Address"
• "Central Administrative Group" has the following hierarchy:
  • College
    • Employee total
    • Enrollment total
  • Building
  • Department
    • Employee total
    • Enrollment total
  • Center
    • Harborview
• Create a "Central Admin Group Type" card - buildings and departments are related to the group, not the type.
• Hierarchy changes to:
  • Central Administrative Group
    • College
      • Department
      • Building
      • Enrollment total
      • Employee total
      • Campus
      • Quarter code
    • Center
      • Harborview
    • Other Address
• "Central Administrative Group" shifts from location-centric to input-centric. Hierarchy now looks like:
  • Central Administrative Group
    • Food
    • Lighting
    • Gas
    • Diesel
  All of the sub-items are items that the Group purchases. Quickly added a Purchase Date level:
  • Central Administrative Group
    • Purchase Date
      • Food
      • Lighting
      • Gas
      • Diesel
      • Transportation Type
        • College
        • Center
• Creates two new categories: products and byproducts.
• Recycled/virgin materials are both consumed items and byproducts. Created two more categories: consumed and reused.
• Hierarchy now looks like:
  • Central Administrative Group
    • Consumes
    • Byproducts
    • Consumed then reused
    • Event
      • Start date
      • End date
      • Cost avoidance
• Hierarchy now looks like:
  • Central Administrative Group
    • Event
      • Record ID
      • Consume
        • Virgin materials
        • Greenhouse gas offset
      • Produce
      • Recycle
• Utility source is utility being paid for

The final hierarchy is shown below. Note that some data was lost in transcribing the material, so while this is a fair approximation, it is not a 100% faithful representation:

• Central Administrative Group
• College
  • Building
  • Employee total
  • Enrollment total
  • Quarter code
  • Department
  • Location
    • Seattle
    • Tacoma
    • Bothell
    • Campus
• Center (research center)
  • Harborview
  • Other address (location)

These objects respond to a specific:

• Event
  • Cost avoidance
  • measurement unit
  • end date
  • start date
  • record identifier

These events result in some form of the following:

• Produces
  • recycled material
    • paper
      • books
      • baled cardboard
      • loose cardboard
      • office/white paper
      • UWMC paper
      • yellow pages
      • mixed paper
      • UWMC cardboard
      • white pages
      • Newspaper
    • Packing materials
      • Starch peanuts
    • Styrofoam
    • Wood
    • Metals
      • Ferrous material
      • tin
      • Aluminum
    • Glass
    • Pallets
    • concrete
    • plastic
• Byproducts
  • emissions source
  • Emissions type
    Greenhouse gas
    • Other chemical
    • Refrigerants
    • Garbage
• Consumes
  • Reduction source
  • purchase date
  • year (not academic year)
    • time
  • virgin material
  • Greenhouse gas offset
  • Food
  • Lighting
    • Iridescent
    • LED
    • flouresent tube
    • CFL
  • Gasoline
  • Fuel oil
  • Diesel
  • transportation type
    • Single occupancy vehicle
    • bike
    • air travel
    • transit
    • Foot
    • Car/vanpool
  • Electronic accessories
    • Batteries
    • Monitor
    • Printer
    • CPU (central processing unit)
    • Toner cartridges
    • Computer equipment
  • Utility type
    • Green (utilities)
      • Solar
      • Hydro
      • Wind
    • Traditional (utilities)
      • Sewage
      • Electricity
      • Water
      • Coal
      • Steam
      • Propane
      • Natural
      • Methane
      • Gas

  Card Sort Notes, Lucian DiPeso, 4/30

  • Going towards pollutants/resources as a categorization theme
  • Building resources and fuel being grouped together
  • Looking for items that fit into existing categories that he has already created
  • "CFL" should be clarified with a "(lighting)" note
  • Pile of outputs: pollutants, and pile of byproducts (specifically, byproducts of activity)
  • Backtracking from byproducts to pollutants
  • Methane: is it a fuel or a pollutant? Creates a duplicate card for methane.
  • Could do input and output, as well as byproduct, groupings.
  • Transportation options were quickly grouped.
  • Creates a "flourocarbon pile"
  • Computer-related items grouped quickly.
  • Creates an "Equipment" category, including pallets and packing materials - there is an "incidental cost " of equipment, including stuff like fuel.
  • Splits equipment into raw, packing/transport materials
  • Incidental cost is a supercategory.
  • Need to group items that generate electricity? Maybe - the UW has several options for electricity generation
  • Cost avoidance versus money saved - which term is better?
  • Regroups items to consumables, direct versus indirect costs, and results
  • Campus grouping/college grouping was done quickly
  • Data model: inputs into a particular location generate a particular output
  • The overall goal of the model becomes maximizing cost avoidance
  • Incidental costs are contained within inputs
  • The process for the data model starts with a particlar location: reducing cost at a location leads to reduction. Differentiating between physical versus administrative locations.
  • Buildings are a physical location, NOT an administrative location
  • Creates three elements: people, student, employee; divides employee into faculty and staff due to the potential differences in material consumption
  • People consule items, drive input and output. People have their own costs (transactional costs), which are separate from the inputs. These costs and people drive the inputs; same with events.
  • People and events are influences on the input/output loop
  • You can reduce cost or buy an offset - the offset is a possible solution to the problem of consuming items: can reduce the output itself or offset the output.
  • Enrollment total is also an influence on the loop (it describes the size of the loop itself)
  • Dates and times are their own group
  • Time is a cost
  • People have an indirect cost of transportation type
  • Solutions: offset or reduce
  • Time is a solution because it reduces the overall amount of things consumed
  • Overall model description: cost avoidance is a goal. We have an ecosystem with inputs (that are indirect and direct) that feed into locations (that are physical or administrative). Those inputs feeding into those locations result in outputs. There is a set of drivers that drive the input/output loop. These drivers have indirect costs associated with them. Solutions are designed to reach the cost avoidance goal by affecting the outputs. We affect the outputs by changing any part of the system. Thje goal is to reduce or offset output.
  • Reality: there are direct/indirect outputs (but this isn't reflected in the overall model).
  • Greenhouse gas are a category in both indirect/direct inputs and indirect/direct outputs.

  The final hierarchy looks like:

  • We are attempting to reach the goal of cost avoidance.
  • The following drive the input/output loop:
    • Event(s)
    • Enrollment total
    • Employee total
    • Patients
    • Visitors
    • Students
    • Staff
    • Faculty
    These drivers have the following indirect costs:
    • transportation type
      • Single occupancy vehicle
      • Car/vanpool
      • air travel
      • bike
      • transit
  • The UW ecosystem has the following components:
    • Inputs
      • Uncategorized (ran out of time)
        • emissions source
        • Emissions type
        • office/white paper
        • mixed paper
        • baled cardboard
        • UWMC cardboard
        • Other chemical
        • Batteries
        • UWMC paper
        • loose cardboard
        • Utility type
        • Traditional (utilities)
        • Green (utilities)
        • Newspaper
        • recycled material
        • yellow pages
        • white pages
      • Direct
        • Computer equipment
        • Monitor
        • Printer
        • books
        • CPU (central processing unit)
        • Electricity
        • LED
        • flouresent tube
        • Lighting
        • Iridescent
        • Electronic accessories
        • Toner cartridges
        • paper
        • CFL
        • Food
      • Indirect
        • Production/Manufacturing Inputs
          • Methane
          • Hydro
          • Steam
          • Wind
          • Solar
          • Gasoline
          • Diesel
          • Fuel oil
          • Coal
          • Propane
          • Gas
        • Materials
          • Glass
          • Ferrous material
          • tin
          • plastic
          • Aluminum
          • concrete
          • Wood
          • Water
          • virgin material
          • Sulfur hexaflouride
          • Refrigerants
          • Chloroflourocarbon (CFC)
          • Perflourocarbons (PFC)
          • Hydroflourocarbons (HFC)
        • Shipping-related inputs
          • Styrofoam
          • Starch peanuts
          • Packing materials
          • Pallets
    • These inputs feed the following locations:
      • Administrative locations
        • College
        • Center (research center)
        • Department
      • Physical locations
        • Tacoma
        • Campus
        • Bothell
        • Seattle
        • Harborview
        • Other address (location)
        • Building
    • The locations generate outputs:
      • Direct outputs
        • Hazardous waste
        • Garbage
        • Sewage
        • Landscape waste
        • Food waste
      • Indirect outputs
        • Greenhouse gas
        • Methane
  • Potential solutions to providing cost avoidances include:
    • Offset
    • Reduce
    • end date
    • start date
    • Central Administrative Group
    • Greenhouse gas offset
  • Uncategorized Cards (not used in the hierarchy)
    • purchase date
    • Quarter code
    • Foot
    • Reduction source
    • measurement unit
    • record identifier
    • year (not academic year)
    • time
    • Natural

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