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The goal of this datathon is to enhance sustainability efforts on Boston University's campus through data analysis. BUDSA has collaborated with BU Sustainability to provide real world data pertaining to on campus emmissions and waste for participants to explore and analyze.
Participants will work in teams of 4-6 to solve one of three sustainabilty challenges on BU campus. Your performance in the competition will be judged based on 1) the quality of your results 2) the quality of your analyses and/or your reccomendations and 3) the creativity of your analyses.
- Go to Github and fork the datathon repository.
- Read the different track descriptions and examine their associated datasets and decide as a team which track you want to compete in.
- In your team's fork of the repository, go into the
submissionsfolder and create a new folder with your team's name. All of your work should be completed in this folder.
What is the waste use intensity (WUI) per person in large residential dorms? waste use intensity is measured according to waste per person and waste diversion. waste diversion is the proportion of the amount of waste that is recycled, reused, or donated to total waste.
Can you create a framework for scoring large residential dorms according to their WUI?
According to Boston's Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO), organizations with a certain threshold in square footage are required to report the greenhouse gas emissions, energy usage, and energy costs of their buildings. The purpose of BERDO is to make organizations more aware of these factors with the goal of enabling them to reduce all three. For more information on BERDO please refer to their website.
Boston University has decided to report on its entire portfolio of buildings, setting its baseline metrics to 2006. However, since 2006, new buildings have been established on campus, making it impossible to set baseline metrics for them since there is no data dating back to 2006.
Can you estimate the greenhouse gas emissions, energy usage, and energy costs of these new buildings if they were to have existed back in 2006 using historical data from research buildings?
The state of Massachusetts has a ban on commercial food waste disposal (does not include residential) based on a weekly threshold of half a ton. BU Sustainability has been working to determine the impact of catering practices on the buildings and their compliance with this waste ban. They are looking to expand their efforts to other buildings that may be impacted and how many catered events would push them above the threshold.
Can you determine how many staffed catered events and/or drop & go catered events would push a building over the ½ ton food waste ban threshold?
- Commit and push all relevant notebooks to your team's folder
- Make a PR to merge your team's fork of the repository to the main branch of the repository
Score from 1-5 (5=Excellent, 1=Poor)
Technology What technologies were used or explored? How well does your project demonstrate an understanding of data science concepts and tools (statistics, modeling, analysis, etc.)
Creativity/Innovation Does your project show a desire to learn about or apply concepts and tools that you haven't had experience with? What gives your project a "wow factor"?
Completeness To what extent did you achieve the task set out in your track's prompt. Is your project ready to be published? How much futher effort would it take for it to be a full-fleged methodology or solution?