Data and Developer Forum A Place to Discuss EPA Data and Developer Resources

Take a look at all this green app activity! You might want to check out some of these hack-a-thons as a developer, subject matter expert, or interested party. Or take a look at the challenges that are happening now.

Three hack-a-thons will happen in the next couple of weeks:

Code for Livability: The Partnership for Sustainable Communities and The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy are hosting a code-a-thon to bring together citizens, web developers, and agency staff to work on solutions that bring sustainability to the forefront of peoples’ everyday lives. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. January 22, 2012 in Washington, DC.

CleanWeb Hackathon NYC: A gathering to demonstrate the impact of applying information technology to resource constraints. The goal is to build apps and hacks exploiting new sustainable business models while leveraging the mobile and social web. January 21 and 22, 2012 in New York City.

London Green Hackathon: A weekend of hacking on climate change, sustainability, energy & carbon emissions. January 27 and 28, 2012 in London.

The World Bank’s Apps For Climate is a competition to discover extraordinary ways to use open data to address the challenges of climate change. Apps For Climate aims to bring together the best ideas from scientists, application developers, civil society organizations, and development practitioners to create innovative software apps using World Bank climate data. Applications must be received by March 16, 2012; winners will receive cash prizes and featured placement on the World Bank Open Data website. To qualify, apps must use at least one open dataset from the World Bank Data Catalog, but are strongly encouraged to incorporate open data from other sources. For more information, visit: www.worldbank.org/appsforclimate, or join in an information meeting on January 31st , also in Washington, DC.

Take a look at the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program Data, which was released recently. It includes publicly available and non-confidential data from the GHG Reporting Program for 2010. The files also contain information reported by suppliers of fossil fuels and industrial gases such as the six main greenhouse gases, industry sector, state, and quantity of emissions. Or you can look at the EPA GHG Data Publication Tool to see large greenhouse gas emitters on a map.

Don’t forget to use the 38 submissions to the Apps for the Environment Challenge. They’re made for you to use.

So check out all of these opportunities and tell the community if you know of other events!

At the beginning of the summer the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched our first developer challenge, Apps for the Environment, asking coders and entrepreneurs to use EPA data to promote public health and environmental awareness.  Today I would like to thank all of you for making the challenge a success! Apps for the Environment received 38 mobile apps ranging from dashboards to consumer-based information to games.

In addition to the diverse submissions, many contributions provided opportunities and insights critical to the success of the challenge and the development of a dialogue between the developer community and EPA. Nearly 100 app ideas were contributed from around the country, providing developers with an understanding of what applications are most needed and what innovations are possible with the use of EPA data. Community voices like Sunlight Labs, Alex Howard of Govfresh and O’Reilly Media, TechPresident, Code-for-America and Mashable helped spread the word, participated in webinar discussions and even supplied enhanced code to developers. American University in Washington, D.C. hosted their first ever code-a-thon to support Apps for the Environment, while Cleanweb in San Francisco encouraged their own participants to take part in the challenge.

Apps for the Environment will not end with your contributions to this single challenge. We have heard your recommendations and ideas and are using them now to shape the way we operate. We have already made enhancements to our Data and Developer Forum and look forward to continuing its evolution.

The Apps for the Environment recognition event, Building Innovation through Partnerships: Apps for the Environment Forum, will be held November 8 at the Artisphere. This event will continue the collaborations we began this summer, recognize participants and winners from the challenge, and explore how we can move forward together to support a sustainable, diverse innovation community. You have been a critical member of our team, and I hope you join us to celebrate the progress we have made and prepare to meet the next challenge.

Sincerely,

Malcolm D. Jackson

Assistant Administrator for Environmental Information

and Chief Information Officer

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

In less than a week since Popular Choice voting began in our Apps for the Environment challenge, you already placed more than 1200 votes in support of your favorite green apps. We’re excited by the response from the community, but not surprised after people from around the country already submitted almost 100 ideas for apps and created 38 final products that both use EPA data and promote public health. By listening to and working with the community from the beginning, together we’ve gained the momentum in helping developers and entrepreneurs use our environmental data to create innovative services that can make an impact.

We didn’t get here overnight, however – the contributions and leadership of people from coast to coast brought the Apps for the Environment mission into our local communities. The CleanWeb Hackathon recently held in San Francisco brought together a diverse array of engineers, data providers, start-ups, designers and investors to see what kind of useful apps could be created around energy and environment data over the course of a weekend. One-hundred and seventy-five people signed up for 100 spots, including a specialist from our own EPA Region 9 office, to innovate across 60 different data sets.

Despite it being a separate event from Apps for the Environment, multiple developers who participated also submitted to our challenge. This was a big step toward building a sustainable relationship between EPA, the Department of Energy and developers.

Thank you all for you continued participation, and remember, you can still vote for Popular Choice App for the Environment until Oct. 7 – make your voice heard, join our community as a supporter, and let us know how we can work together better as we bring innovation from your ideas to the palms of hands.

HTML5. Dashboards. Heatmaps. Travel. Social Communities. Games. When we launched Apps for the Environment we put EPA data into the hands of developers, student and entrepreneurs, and let the community decide how it could be used to address our strategic goals and promote public health. We are proud to announce that the community answered the call!

Voting begins September 21 for the Popular Choice award for your favorite Apps for the Environment: VOTE HERE. And with over 35 diverse submissions to choose from you’ll have tougher choices ahead than for your Fantasy Football roster.

While you select your favorites, we’ll be judging for Best Overall App, Best Student App, and their runners up: in all 5 top prizes amongst a field of submissions who all deserve a round of applause.

Our recognition event is November 8, but in the meantime please take this opportunity to congratulate everyone who supported this overwhelming contribution to our shared mission.

Some people refined data, others submitted nearly 100 ideas for apps, and between code-a-thons on two coasts the community had plenty of great opportunities to engage and participate. On our end, we also learned new ways to open dialogues with the community, and apply those lessons to our program. It’s been an exciting summer meeting you, and we look forward to finding out together what’s next.

When voting starts September 21, be sure to share your encouragement on Twitter using the #GreenApps hashtag.

And remember, our support for the developer community does not stop here – it’s only starting. Continue to use our resources to find new solutions to the challenges we face together, and let us know your ideas for we can all move forward!