By: Katie Koenig
Data Dashboards
If you’ve scrolled through college websites, you’ve probably encountered a dashboard before. The most common is probably a breakdown of student demographics. Arizona State University, which I covered in my last post, created a Campus Metabolism dashboard to present live data on their buildings’ energy and pollution outputs.
Although that website is no longer accessible, Boston University is one of many institutions that has made a similar webpage. Called the Data Dashboard, the resource highlights the specific work BU has done to reduce their emissions, from waste to water to energy use.
Breaking Down BU’s Energy Dashboard
The BU Energy Dashboard is an easy page to scroll through, starting with general graphs like their Abatement Curve, which details BU’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. Later charts get more complex, broken down by location and not always adjusted for campus growth. The data shows that energy use stays the same over several decades, but you have to interpret that data in the context that the square footage of BU’s campus has actually increased at the same time. As such, building energy efficiency has gone up.
Still, this kind of detailed breakdown provides users with transparent access not just to BU’s net zero emissions goal but also how they’re meeting that goal. You can see the massive improvement to the university’s waste diversion rate near the bottom of the page, with 2024’s total waste production 45% less than in 2006, with over a 50% diversion rate.
Daily Insights
To highlight the very bottom of the page, BU offers exact numbers on their Atrius Building’s electricity, natural gas, and water consumption for the day. The numbers are interesting, to be sure, but this section emphasizes the connection between our individual, daily actions and the larger statistics that are more commonly discussed.
Think about it like the hydration stations on campus that say how many total bottles of water they refilled instead of having to buy new. It’s easy to say that one decision on a single day hardly has an impact on the environment, and nor does it greatly change community-wide trends. However, community action is exactly that—community-based. Even as individuals, we’re part of the groups of people that do have marketed emissions, and sometimes dashboards like BU’s and the hydration stations are a good reminder that even our daily actions have an impact when everyone gets involved.