Tuesday, 6 January 2009

Amee

AMEE is a database in the cloud that allows tracking of activities and applying emission factors data to the tracked activities. It was built from day one to support other applications and web sites which gather the activity data from consumers and businesses.

The advantages are many. AMEE is a neutral clearing house for data about energy consumption. It anonymises the incoming data from clients so that others can re-use it imaginatively. The whole project is open source and revenues come from annual or monthly service fee based on varying scales.

Instead of trying to solve the entire measurement problem in one go, AMEE starts with a known level of detail even if at that level of detail only estimated emissions factors are available.

As more and more systems connect to AMEE and provide data, those initial estimates can be refined and triangulated.
Every time a new measurement system comes online, whether it is smart meters in homes, or cars that talk to the network, the data can be fed into AMEE allowing for a gradual transition from estimated emissions to detailed actual measurement of emissions.
AMEE has made the deliberate choice to focus only on acting as a backend database and web service so as to not compete with any of the systems and companies that could provide inputs for AMEE and thus help improve the quality of AMEE's data asset.