WHO
QGO was designed as a data-driven visualization and optimization platform to identify and co-locate cost-effective sustainable project opportunities. The goal: to display for the following users how resources and costs could be optimized for high-reward, high-impact projects.
Sustainability Professionals: Requiring tools to identify, analyze, and visualize interconnected sustainable projects.
Communities and Local Governments: Seeking to implement sustainable projects and achieve economic growth.
WHAT
QGO is color-coded as follows:
Green: potential commercial locations for clean energy
Yellow: where energy is produced today via combustion.
Red: heights indicate the largest annual emissions.
This color-coding enables a fast visual assessment for the following uses:
Key Features
1. Project Identification: With additional economic, social, and environmental data, the best areas for sustainable projects are those with a high density of green.
2. Resource Mapping: Benefits for both people and nature, considering available assets, infrastructure, and natural areas, can be more readily highlighted.
HOW
We first identify the large networks along which energy and resource flows are needed. Then we can optimize such flows, with the provision of cleaner, more sustainable flows as a future target.
QGO has had 3 objectives in mind:
1) to calculate what is needed to zero out the emissions within an area that also improves the economic, human, and natural value in that area.
2) to highlight the people and resources that would make suggested projects profitable based on a community's economic, social, and environmental needs, and
3) to optimize the layout of projects to maximize the benefits of their co-location.