MiddLab and Sustainability Solutions Lab Collaborate on Greenhouse Gas Inventory Codebook
| by Ryan Clement
This summer, MiddLab worked with Jack Byrne (Dean of Environmental Affairs and Sustainability; Director of Franklin Environmental Center) and two interns from the Sustainability Solutions Lab (Emily Hogan ‘24 and Oscar DeFrancis ’24.5) to create a codebook for the extensive Greenhouse Gas Inventory (GHGI) dataset that the institution has been developing and using to track emissions at the institution since 2007. In the past several years, librarians Wendy Shook and Ryan Clement and Scientific Computing Specialist Jonathan Kemp have been working with staff and faculty from Energy2028 to archive, preserve, and provide access to data related to Middlebury’s journey to sustainability and carbon neutrality. A codebook will help describe, document, and standardize the various data included in the GHGI, and their history, for future users.
Wendy, Ryan, and Jonathan worked with the SSL interns to guide them in best practices for data documentation, help them explore the GHGI dataset, and help them develop a codebook to make the data accessible and usable for future college staff, researchers, and the public at large. Emily and Oscar interviewed staff from across the College and tracked down former GHGI staff to better inform and illuminate the data; they also started developing plans and best practices for documenting these data going forward. Emily shared, “It is our hope that the codebook will be used by those maintaining and engaging with the inventory to increase accessibility and transparency, and we hope, in our continued work, to improve the inventory so that the Middlebury community can further engage with accurate and transparent data.”
Going forward, this dataset will eventually be shared, along with the codebook, through Middlebury’s data repository. The data will be available for researchers and staff at the institution, as well as researchers from around the world. More information about the availability of this data will be available in the coming months.