Terra

Inspiration

We realize an issue is that people do not know that carbon emissions are a very pressing matter and are affected by your communities.

What it does

Terra visually and numerically represents carbon emissions in an intuitive and easily digestible manner. Our figures were derived from data from multiple sources and checked against expert predictions. It also includes a subsequent Point of No Return clock which indicates the point in time at which crossing the 2º C limit of global temperature rise set in the 2016 Paris agreement is expected to become a certainty.

How we built it

We built it through a mix of html5 and python. Our database is built off of parsed .csv data files with our own calculations as well as a way to calculate to most accurate and recent population figures.

Challenges we ran into

Formatting the data from all the different sources was difficult; there was a lot of sorting and algorithms that went into getting the data into one database. Getting data was often blocked through a paywall or required third parties to manually respond to us (such as Cool Climate and Income By Zipcode), meaning we had to create our own calculations that would accurately represent the data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to create our own income as well as carbon emissions estimator all within 24 hours and learn what and what does not impact emissions.

What we learned

We have learned how to compile different data resources to create an accurate representation of carbon emissions. We have also learned how to not depend on external paid resources to have our own free way to calculate carbon emissions and income. We have also learned how to show your community on our map.

What's next for Terra

We wanted to include lines for the county you were in which we classified as your community. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in finding a solution. We would also like to create more precision and more factors accounting for our carbon emission calculation. Currently, we only have the data from Illinois, however, this can easily be done with more time.