SAS Integration with the AMEE Web Service
Overview
The SAS for Sustainability Management solution suite contains the ability to flexibly model GHG emissions across the enterprise. This includes the ability to model not just physical assets, but also allocate emissions to activities, behaviors, products or customers. Modeling emissions in this unique way allows SAS customers to go beyond a GHG inventory, and identify drivers and activities behind emissions and energy consumption. This insight provides fact-based information for creating real change within the organization.
One extremely difficult challenge however, is with obtaining accurate, timely and consistent 3rd-party data necessary for emissions calculations. For example, emission factors provided by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are published as complex spreadsheets, in extremely slow intervals, and with the metadata changing at each release (inconsistent naming conventions, changes to units of measure, etc.). There are also a number of different standards being formed, which create conflicts between methods and rates that should be used. SAS does not maintain these sources, but has partnered with another organization called AMEE to do this.
AMEE’s purpose is to map, measure, and track all the carbon and energy data on Earth. This includes aggregating every emission factor and methodology related to CO2 and Energy Assessments (individuals, businesses, buildings, products, supply chains, countries, etc.), and all the consumption data (fuel, water, waste, quantitative and qualitative factors). It is a web-service (API) that combines measurement, calculation, profiling and transactional systems. Its algorithmic engine applies conversion factors from energy into CO2 emissions, and represents data from 150 countries and regions. AMEE aids the development of businesses and other initiatives - by providing common benchmarks for measurement, tracking, conversion, collaboration and reporting.
By leveraging AMEE as a neutral aggregator of emissions and energy information, SAS is able to provide pre-build data integration packages that automatically maps emissions source information into the SAS ABM product. This virtually eliminates the maintenance of custom data integration project associated with aggregating emission rates manually.
About AMEE and SAS Energy and Emissions Management
The following links provide additional information and background on AMEE and the SAS Energy and Emissions Management Solution:
AMEE Main Home Page: The AMEE main Website, for general information and company background.
AMEE Developer's Site: The 'Explorer' site contains documentation on accessing the AMEE system, as well as the types of data stored and maintained by AMEE.
SAS for Sustainability Management Overview: Learn about the SAS for Sustainability Management Solutions.
Technical Integration
The latest release (v2) provides three (3) distinct AMEE extract tools designed to be used with SAS Data Integration Studio on SAS 9.2. The first, called the AMEE v2 ETL Engine, is designed to replace the earlier release of this tool, by providing a complete export and transformation of the most common emissions factors used by organizations today. The primary difference between this release and the 1.1 release is a) the replacement of the intermediate java program with native SAS PROC HTTP calls, and b) simplified mapping and metadata registration of target tables. This program therefore lends itself to greater field extensibility without having to rely on AMEE development resources, since any AMEE data items served up by the AMEE API can be added to the program by any competent SAS programmer.
The other two tools, called the AMEE v2 GET Mapped Dataset and AMEE v2 GET XML Only respectively, are described as follows:
- AMEE v2 GET Mapped Dataset: This transform is used to extract into table-form any AMEE dataset for which an XML map has been created (presumably with the SAS XML Mapper client). This is intended to be used when a specific set of data is required for a project either outside of the core transform engine, or to provide custom extracts and transformations based on the implementation requirements.
- AMEE v2 GET XML Only: This transform is used to extract into XML form any AMEE dataset within the AMEE Universe. It is intended to be used in a “one-off” fashion in order to retrieve data for which there are no XML Maps created, but where the user has the desire to build an XML map, to be used for the prior transforms.
The combination of these tools will enable any competent SAS user the ability to retrieve ANY data within the AMEE Data Universe, at any time, without necessarily having to write SAS program code. That is, all of it can be done within the provided Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs).
