AMEE API / AMEE Concepts

Introduction

This page offers a primer for key concepts of AMEE. The understanding gained via this page and related pages should be sufficient for you to utilise AMEE and the AMEE API.

Overview

AMEE is a self contained web application which calculates and remembers CO2 emissions as part of a Profile. Profiles belong to an individual, group, organisation or other entity. Profiles and Profile Items are important entities within AMEE.

Profiles, Profile Items & Profile Item Values

Profiles track the CO2 emissions of various Profile Items. Each Profile Item can represent a car, a flight, a fridge or anything else that contributes to CO2 emissions.

The CO2 emission value for each Profile Item is individually calculated by AMEE. By aggregating all the Profile Item CO2 emission values within Profile Categories and Profiles we can determine an overall CO2 emission figure for the entity being measured (such as an individual like you).

Profile Items can contain values representing extra information, such as the quantity of a particular type of light bulb in use. These values are stored in Profile Item Value records. A Profile Item can have many of these.

AMEE uses various other entities related to Profiles and Profile Items to perform CO2 emission calculations. These include Data Items, Item Definitions and Algorithms.

Profile History

Each Profile has a history. It's possible to see the state of a profile at any point in time, such as now, last month or 6 months ago. This makes it possible to track and compare CO2 emissions recorded within a Profile for different points in time.

For more on Profile history see: Profile History

Data Categories, Data Items & Data Item Values

Each Profile Item is associated with one Data Item. A Data Item represents an individual item that can be measured in a Profile, such as a particular mode of transport (UK taxi) or appliance (A++ rated fridge).

When creating a new Profile Item the associated Data Item must be identified. This is equivalent to declaring that your own a particular type of fridge or a specific light bulb.

Data Items contain the precise values needed to perform emission calculations (such as the KWh figure for the A++ rated fridge). These values are stored in Data Item Value records.

Similar Data Items are organised into categories, e.g., cars, flights and taxis belong to the 'Transport' category. Categories are represented within AMEE by Data Category entities. Data Categories can be nested to form a hierarchy, rather like folders in a desktop computer. This means that the 'Lighting' Data Category can live within the 'Home' Data Category. See URL Architecture for more on this.

Profile Items and Profile Categories are organised as an exact mirror of the structure of the Data Categories and Data Items described above.

Item Definitions, Item Value Definitions, Value Definitions & Algorithms

Before Data Items, Profile Items and their values can be created and used we need to specify what they represent. This is done via Item Definition, Item Value Definition and Value Type? entities.

An Item Definition is the specification for what information Data Items and Profile Items can hold. An Item Value Definition specifies the individual values in Data Item Values and Profile Item Values. Each value belongs a single Data Item or Profile Item.

Item Definitions can have many Algorithms. Currently the only Algorithms recognised by AMEE are those named 'perMonth'. Algorithms contain the specialised logic required to compute CO2 emission values for Profile Items.

AMEE Entities

These are the core entities modeled within the AMEE.

AMEE Entity Diagram

Below is a simplified entity model diagram.

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