I'd like to propose the creation of a working group to help define the units, tags, and other items related to working with greenhouse gas. I know many members of the Haystack community are doing work in this area, so I think we definitely have the expertise within the community to work on this.
I am open to any ideas for what this group should attempt to address, but my initial high-level goals would include the following:
Define units for working with greenhouse gases (e.g. CO2, CO, others?) Do we need specific units like that, or is it really just a weight unit?
Can we standardize some tags that indicate how energy was created on a meter (e.g. coal, natural gas, etc.)
Should we define energy fuel sources?
Can we standardize conversion factors as part of the ontology?
If you have expertise in this area, or are doing applications related to greenhouse gas, please join the working group to help us out. I am willing to champion the group if necessary, but if someone else would like to take the charge I can help you get the group going too.
Once we get a few members on the group, I'll organize the first meeting. Thanks!
Ross SchwalmFri 2 Apr 2021
Hi everyone,
I have been doing some research on greenhouse gas emissions recently and working on calculating those emissions. I don't think there has been much activity in this working group, but perhaps we can make some progress prior to Haystack Connect.
Right now the focus is on the 7 greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol:
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Methane (CH4)
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)
Hydrofluorocarbons (HFC)
Perfluorocarbons (PFC)
Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6)
Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3)
After working on this using the current Haystack 4 taxonomy and discussing with a few people, it seems like the fundamental taxonomy is missing the concept for measuring emissions of specific types of gases. To solve that, this proposal introduces an ^emission quantity that can be paired with a type of ^gas to track emissions of that type of gas into the atmosphere.
Now a value that identifies the amount of CO2 emissions resulting from the consumption of electricity from an electrical grid or from the generation of electricity via combustion can be identified with co2-emission. Similarly, the amount of Methane emissions is identified with ch4-emission. If the value is representing the carbon dioxide equivalent of the gas, then the ^co2e marker tag can be added (ch4-emission-co2e).
Changes to the current taxonomy:
Currently, there is a ^co and ^co2 def that are subtypes of ^airQuality and are focused on measuring indoor air quality. The defs themselves are quantities versus specific types of gases and represent the measurement of a concentration of the gas. Therefore, this proposal includes a new ^concentration quantity. The conjuncts for the current ^airQuality subtypes (^co, ^co2, ^pm10, ^pm25, ^tvoc) with ^concentration are now subtypes of ^airQuality.
With the new ^concentration quantity, the way you model indoor air quality sensors will change from air-co2-sensor to air-co2-concentration-sensor. Modeling a carbon monoxide, pm10, pm25 or tvoc sensor will also change. For example, air-co-sensor will change to air-co-concentration-sensor.
---
def:^concentration
doc:When paired with a substance this identifies the abundance of that substance in the total volume of a mixture.
is: ^quantity
quantityOf: ^substance
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration
---
def:^emission
doc:When paired with a gas this is a measurement of the quantity of that gas exiting to the atmosphere.
is: ^quantity
quantityOf: ^gas
---
def:^airQuality
doc: Measures the presence of substances which can be harmful to the health of humans and other living beings
is:^quantity
quantityOf: ^air
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution
---
def:^co2
doc:Carbon dioxide
is: ^gas
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
---
def: ^co2-concentration
is: ^airQuality
preUnit: ["ppb"]
---
def: ^co2-emission
is: ^airQuality
preUnit:["ton","lb","kg"]
---
def:^ch4
doc:Methane
is: ^gas
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane
---
def: ^ch4-emission
is: ^airQuality
preUnit:["ton","lb","kg"]
---
def:^n2o
doc:Nitrous oxide
is: ^gas
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide
---
def: ^n2o-emission
is: ^airQuality
preUnit:["ton","lb","kg"]
---
def:^hfc
doc:Hydrofluorocarbons
is: ^gas
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluorocarbon
---
def: ^hfc-emission
is: ^airQuality
preUnit:["ton","lb","kg"]
---
def:^pfc
doc:Perfluorocarbons
is: ^gas
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorocarbon
---
def: ^pfc-emission
is: ^airQuality
preUnit:["ton","lb","kg"]
---
def:^sf6
doc:Sulphur hexafluoride
is: ^gas
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_hexafluoride
---
def: ^sf6-emission
is: ^airQuality
preUnit:["ton","lb","kg"]
---
def:^nf3
doc:Nitrogen trifluoride
is: ^gas
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trifluoride
---
def: ^nf3-emission
is: ^airQuality
preUnit:["ton","lb","kg"]
---
def:^co2e
doc: Carbon dioxide equivalent
is: ^marker
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
---
def:^pm10
doc: Particulate Matter 10; Microscopic particles of solid or liquid matter suspended in the air with an aerodynamic diameter of 10 micrometers or less
is: ^marker
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates
---
def: ^pm10-concentration
is: ^airQuality
preUnit: ["µg/m³", "ppb"]
---
def:^pm25
doc: Particulate Matter 2.5; Microscopic particles of solid or liquid matter suspended in the air with an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less
is: ^marker
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates
---
def: ^pm25-concentration
is: ^airQuality
preUnit: ["µg/m³", "ppb"]
---
def:^tvoc
doc: Total volatile organic compound (TVOC). This is a general term applied to the overall total volatile organic compounds (VOCs) detected.
is: ^marker
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_organic_compound
---
def: ^tvoc-concentration
is: ^airQuality
preUnit: ["µg/m³", "ppb"]
---
def:^co
doc:Carbon monoxide
is: ^gas
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide
---
def: ^co-concentration
is: ^airQuality
preUnit: ["ppm"]
---
Next Steps:
Some of the greenhouse gases may need subtypes (HFCs, PFCs, etc.).
I think we can come up with a taxonomy for fuel sources that could really make this powerful for correctly calculating greenhouse gas emissions.
Jay HerronSun 4 Apr 2021
I think that the proposed changes look excellent. Thanks Ross!
My only small hesitation is around pollutant emissions subtyping from airQuality. I could be convinced otherwise, but my first reaction is that while co2-concentration meets my intuitive understanding of airQuality, co2-emission does not. Does it make sense to have another quantity as a peer to airQuality named pollutant or greenhouseGasEmission or something that all emission conjucts can subtype from?
Thanks again!
Mike MelilloMon 5 Apr 2021
After a few passes and reading Jay's remarks I'm inclined to agree, too, but with one exception in the mix. What if -
concentration remains a quantity as does emission, the former representing the level of a substance presence within a space, the latter being the level of a substance generated as waste (regardless of where it is physically emitted to). This preserves two distinct categories of analyzing substances as particulate levels or as wasteful emissions without any bloat terms.
airQuality then loses its status as a quantity tag and instead just becomes a marker indicating that this entity is related to the air quality of a certain space or system. airQuality itself is not really a measurable quantity (as its name would imply). Even the associated wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution is a loose scoring system rather than a scientific measurement, which puts airQuality a little at odds with the rest of the quantity family.
In short, its confusing to have most quantities be measurable by an instrument (which gives rise to the prefUnit tag in most quantities) whereas airQuality is really a qualitative measurement currently conflated with concentration.
I think this would also set a good precedent for incorporating water treatment type systems, where we would want to quantify concentrations see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_quality A lot of the metrics mentioned there are prevalent for potable water, but in commercial/industrial HVAC systems would also apply to condenser water treatment.
Jay HerronTue 6 Apr 2021
Great points Mike. I totally agree that airQuality is a black sheep in the quantity group, and that replacing it with concentration and emission quantities would fix that.
Brian FrankMon 12 Apr 2021
The main purpose of the airQuality is to organize the taxonomy. I do think its nice when looking at the subtype tree to have those grouped and there is definitely a logical "is-a" relationship there that seems more specific than just general purpose concentrations. I don't think changing airQuality to just a marker would provide that nicety.
Although I agree mixing emissions into airQuality might be a little confusing.
How about we define airQuality as supertype of the xxx-concentration types. And then just make the xxx-emission types subtype from emission. That seems logical, provides some inference value, and will make the taxonomy organization a little more intuitive in the docs.
Also tangentially related, anyone have a problem adding a pm01 tag for Particulate Matter 0.1 (its come up recently)
Jay HerronTue 13 Apr 2021
How about we define airQuality as supertype of the xxx-concentration types. And then just make the xxx-emission types subtype from emission
I'm okay with this.
I do agree with Mike's points about concentration being a better quantity since its measurable (airQuality seems like an interpretation - if you're measuring CO2 concentration in a boiler exhaust to determine combustion efficiency, you're not really concerned with the "quality" of the air. We don't categorize temp under an interpretation like comfort). However, since the main use case right now appears to be indoor air quality, this distinction doesn't seem super important yet.
adding a pm01 tag for Particulate Matter 0.1
No issue with this either.
Mike MelilloTue 13 Apr 2021
Both of those sound good measures sound good. I agree with the nicety point in making things user friendly.
The alternatives would be a little more gut-wrenching (either airQuality becomes a marker... or something more drastic like introducing a quantityType choice). I'll echo Jay's comment though, it may require addressing down the road if use case shifts.
But the only significant change I made from Ross's proposal was to have pm01, pm25, and pm10 subtype from solid. And I made tvoc subtype from gas. In Ross's proposal these were just markers.
We can close this WG out, or I'm thinking maybe leave it open as a standing group. I know Ross has talked about also tackling fuel sources too
Ross SchwalmFri 16 Jul 2021
Building off the last update, I would like to propose some more additions to build out more fuel sources. I am leaving out the input/output defs along with the Ref defs to be succinct, but the necessary associated ontology tags will be added as well.
---
def:^propane
doc: By-product of natural gas processing and petroleum refining.
is:[^gas]
lib:^lib:phIoT
wikipedia:`https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propane`
---
def:^propaneHeating
doc:Heating by the combustion of propane
is:[^heatingProcessType]
lib:^lib:phIoT
---
def:^diesel
doc: Liquid fuel specifically designed for use in diesel engines.
is:[^liquid]
lib:^lib:phIoT
wikipedia:`https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel`
---
def:^coal
doc:Combustible sedimentary rock.
is:[^solid]
lib:^lib:phIoT
wikipedia:`https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal`
---
def:^coalHeating
doc:Heating by the combustion of coal
is:[^heatingProcessType]
lib:^lib:phIoT
---
def:^biomass
doc:Plant or animal material used as fuel to produce electricity or heat.
is:[^substance]
lib:^lib:phIoT
wikipedia:`https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass`
---
def:^biomassHeating
doc:Heating by the combustion of biomass
is:[^heatingProcessType]
lib:^lib:phIoT
---
I would also like to propose a minor enhancement to the default units. When calculating Greenhouse Gas emissions from the combustion of gas fuel sources, it is common to work with a heat content and/or emission factor that are expressed with a unit that includes standard cubic meter. To avoid confusion about whether or not that unit is already defined, I have added some additional ids (without changing any of the defaults) to the cubic_meters_natural_gas and cubic_fee_natural_gas unit definitions.
Matthew Giannini Tue 7 Jan 2020
I'd like to propose the creation of a working group to help define the units, tags, and other items related to working with greenhouse gas. I know many members of the Haystack community are doing work in this area, so I think we definitely have the expertise within the community to work on this.
I am open to any ideas for what this group should attempt to address, but my initial high-level goals would include the following:
If you have expertise in this area, or are doing applications related to greenhouse gas, please join the working group to help us out. I am willing to champion the group if necessary, but if someone else would like to take the charge I can help you get the group going too.
Once we get a few members on the group, I'll organize the first meeting. Thanks!
Ross Schwalm Fri 2 Apr 2021
Hi everyone,
I have been doing some research on greenhouse gas emissions recently and working on calculating those emissions. I don't think there has been much activity in this working group, but perhaps we can make some progress prior to Haystack Connect.
Right now the focus is on the 7 greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol:
After working on this using the current Haystack 4 taxonomy and discussing with a few people, it seems like the fundamental taxonomy is missing the concept for measuring emissions of specific types of gases. To solve that, this proposal introduces an
^emissionquantity that can be paired with a type of^gasto track emissions of that type of gas into the atmosphere.Now a value that identifies the amount of CO2 emissions resulting from the consumption of electricity from an electrical grid or from the generation of electricity via combustion can be identified with
co2-emission. Similarly, the amount of Methane emissions is identified withch4-emission. If the value is representing the carbon dioxide equivalent of the gas, then the^co2emarker tag can be added (ch4-emission-co2e).Changes to the current taxonomy:
Currently, there is a
^coand^co2def that are subtypes of^airQualityand are focused on measuring indoor air quality. The defs themselves are quantities versus specific types of gases and represent the measurement of a concentration of the gas. Therefore, this proposal includes a new^concentrationquantity. The conjuncts for the current^airQualitysubtypes (^co,^co2,^pm10,^pm25,^tvoc) with^concentrationare now subtypes of^airQuality.With the new
^concentrationquantity, the way you model indoor air quality sensors will change fromair-co2-sensortoair-co2-concentration-sensor. Modeling a carbon monoxide, pm10, pm25 or tvoc sensor will also change. For example,air-co-sensorwill change toair-co-concentration-sensor.Next Steps:
Jay Herron Sun 4 Apr 2021
I think that the proposed changes look excellent. Thanks Ross!
My only small hesitation is around pollutant
emissionssubtyping fromairQuality. I could be convinced otherwise, but my first reaction is that whileco2-concentrationmeets my intuitive understanding ofairQuality,co2-emissiondoes not. Does it make sense to have another quantity as a peer toairQualitynamedpollutantorgreenhouseGasEmissionor something that allemissionconjucts can subtype from?Thanks again!
Mike Melillo Mon 5 Apr 2021
After a few passes and reading Jay's remarks I'm inclined to agree, too, but with one exception in the mix. What if -
concentrationremains aquantityas doesemission, the former representing the level of a substance presence within a space, the latter being the level of a substance generated as waste (regardless of where it is physically emitted to). This preserves two distinct categories of analyzing substances as particulate levels or as wasteful emissions without any bloat terms.airQualitythen loses its status as aquantitytag and instead just becomes amarkerindicating that this entity is related to the air quality of a certain space or system.airQualityitself is not really a measurable quantity (as its name would imply). Even the associated wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution is a loose scoring system rather than a scientific measurement, which putsairQualitya little at odds with the rest of thequantityfamily.In short, its confusing to have most quantities be measurable by an instrument (which gives rise to the
prefUnittag in mostquantities) whereasairQualityis really a qualitative measurement currently conflated withconcentration.I think this would also set a good precedent for incorporating water treatment type systems, where we would want to quantify
concentrationssee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_quality A lot of the metrics mentioned there are prevalent for potable water, but in commercial/industrial HVAC systems would also apply to condenser water treatment.Jay Herron Tue 6 Apr 2021
Great points Mike. I totally agree that
airQualityis a black sheep in the quantity group, and that replacing it withconcentrationandemissionquantities would fix that.Brian Frank Mon 12 Apr 2021
The main purpose of the airQuality is to organize the taxonomy. I do think its nice when looking at the subtype tree to have those grouped and there is definitely a logical "is-a" relationship there that seems more specific than just general purpose concentrations. I don't think changing airQuality to just a marker would provide that nicety.
Although I agree mixing emissions into airQuality might be a little confusing.
How about we define airQuality as supertype of the xxx-concentration types. And then just make the xxx-emission types subtype from emission. That seems logical, provides some inference value, and will make the taxonomy organization a little more intuitive in the docs.
So the taxonomy tree would look like this:
quantity airQuality co2-concentration pm10-concentration ... emission co2-emission ch4-emission ...Also tangentially related, anyone have a problem adding a pm01 tag for Particulate Matter 0.1 (its come up recently)
Jay Herron Tue 13 Apr 2021
I'm okay with this.
I do agree with Mike's points about concentration being a better quantity since its measurable (airQuality seems like an interpretation - if you're measuring CO2 concentration in a boiler exhaust to determine combustion efficiency, you're not really concerned with the "quality" of the air. We don't categorize temp under an interpretation like comfort). However, since the main use case right now appears to be indoor air quality, this distinction doesn't seem super important yet.
No issue with this either.
Mike Melillo Tue 13 Apr 2021
Both of those sound good measures sound good. I agree with the nicety point in making things user friendly.
The alternatives would be a little more gut-wrenching (either
airQualitybecomes a marker... or something more drastic like introducing aquantityTypechoice). I'll echo Jay's comment though, it may require addressing down the road if use case shifts.Brian Frank Thu 15 Apr 2021
I just pushed this to GitHub.
I tweaked some of the language.
But the only significant change I made from Ross's proposal was to have pm01, pm25, and pm10 subtype from solid. And I made tvoc subtype from gas. In Ross's proposal these were just markers.
We can close this WG out, or I'm thinking maybe leave it open as a standing group. I know Ross has talked about also tackling fuel sources too
Ross Schwalm Fri 16 Jul 2021
Building off the last update, I would like to propose some more additions to build out more fuel sources. I am leaving out the input/output defs along with the Ref defs to be succinct, but the necessary associated ontology tags will be added as well.
I would also like to propose a minor enhancement to the default units. When calculating Greenhouse Gas emissions from the combustion of gas fuel sources, it is common to work with a heat content and/or emission factor that are expressed with a unit that includes standard cubic meter. To avoid confusion about whether or not that unit is already defined, I have added some additional ids (without changing any of the defaults) to the cubic_meters_natural_gas and cubic_fee_natural_gas unit definitions.
Brian Frank Tue 17 Aug 2021
I pushed Ross's proposed changes