Posted by Matt on Tuesday, November 08, 2011.

New best practices for green data providers

This is a time of unprecedented threat to the environment brought about by increasing population and consumption – but it’s also an age of unprecedented opportunity for innovating solutions to these challenges. Increasing migration of daily decisions and activities to cyberspace, and increasing availability of valuable data resources, are giving software developers more opportunity than ever to build data-driven apps that power more sustainable decisions. The movement to build data-driven green apps is just getting started, and the government, business, and non-profit organizations with the data to power these innovative tools have an important role to play in helping ensure their success.

That’s the focus of our latest report, entitled Growing the Green Apps Ecosystem. The paper, edited by Ethan McMahon at the EPA’s Office of Environmental Information, outlines best practices for data providers in engaging green developers and ensuring their data provision is as developer-friendly as possible. The paper combines the results of interviews we conducted with various green developers, our own experience working with data providers and green apps, and Ethan’s fact-checking perspective as an EPA official helping lead the movement for green apps innovation.

In the paper we reassess open data practices for data providers, explaining how a focus on data orientation and life cycle can help ensure that open data practices actually meet developer needs. We also outline seven tactics for engaging developers in the creation of green apps, including hackathons, APIs, contests, and data support channels. You can read the full report here.

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Safety in Numbers is Brighter Planet's blog about climate science, Ruby, Rails, data, transparency, and, well, us.

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We're Brighter Planet, the world's leading computational sustainability platform.

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  1. Patti Prairie CEO