Catalyzing the development of an Open Software Community around corporate greenhouse gas emissions reporting

IDC in Systems

University of Bristol and University of Bath

This project will address two linked research challenges:

1. Computer Systems Engineering:

• What data-models, semantic web ontologies, middleware tools, analysis techniques and visualisation front-ends can be provided to support the open publication and exchange of corporate climate emissions data, and the developing of an open software community on top of this?
• The project will aim to map out the space of options here, and develop prototypes including proto-standards where appropriate. This will support the ‘official’ process of reporting by corporations into various legal jurisdictions around the world and the exchange of data between different official data repositories.
• It will also aim to catalyze the ‘unofficial’ use of this data by other stakeholders to build services on top of these. These could include analyst companies interested in risk assessment, NGOs interested in measuring the relative performance of companies against each other, and press organisations researching data for news stories.

2. Sociotechnical Systems Thinking:

• How can this infrastructure be developed in such a way as to meet the objectives of the Carbon Disclosure Project: to encourage active reduction in GHG emissions by the corporate world?
• What will maximise transparency and active engagement by corporations? This will need balancing the objectives of NGOs, press and individual activists with the sensitivities of the corporate world, and require developing an understanding of the views of both leading and laggard corporate players.
• What is the role of proprietary ‘value added’ services versus freely available open services?
• To what extent can a profit-oriented market-driven approach bring the software community into being, versus an open press/activist approach?
• How can the two interact in a constructive way?