Posted by matt on Monday, August 29, 2011.

2 easy ways to join the EPA's app challenge

As part of Administrator Lisa Jackson’s push to leverage open government data in meeting the its seven priorities, the EPA is hosting a great competition that challenges developers to build applications drawing on publicly available EPA data. The Apps for the Environment challenge is a call for new tools that help individuals and communities address environment and public health issues, with the top apps winning a year of promotion on the EPA website. Submissions are open for another three weeks.

Haven’t submitted anything yet? Using free Brighter Planet tools, you can get started on your own app super quick.

  • Use Brighter Planet CM1 for carbon and energy calculations. As a green developer, your time is far more valuably spent creating innovative new functionality than it is learning the ins and outs of climate science and reinventing the wheel with your own impact models. CM1’s RESTful JSON/XML API makes it surprisingly easy to build accurate, transparently calculated environmental impact estimates into your app. Since all of CM1’s models involve some use of EPA data, any app you make that uses CM1 will be eligible for the contest.

  • Pull EPA data from our reference data clearinghouse. You can get normalized, corrected, bona fide EPA data in a variety of useful formats, oriented around business logic rather than obscure EPA publications.

We’re psyched to be submitting a couple of our own apps (Careplane, HootRoot, and Greener Pastures), but we’re confident that using CM1 you can create even better projects in the brief time left until the deadline. May the best apps win!

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

Who's behind this?

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

Who's blogging here?

  1. Patti Prairie CEO