Consumption of the valuable resource that is water is a major concern from both financial and environmental perspectives. One of the objectives of Waternomics is to track the consumption of water and increase user awareness towards its usage. It is recognized that different users may have their own perception as to water usage quantities and simply showing them consumption volume water in units such as litres (L) or cubic metres (M3) may not therefore be universally understood or have significant impact. Using metaphors, water footprints or costs is proposed as an alternative means to better visualize water consumption quantities (Cybulski, Keller & Saundage, 2014; Zapico, Guath & Turpeinen, 2010).
In this context the “Water Flavours” application has been developed in what serves as an intermediary between analytics services and end user applications. It can be used to convert water quantities into other indicators such as prices of water (from a financial perspective) and water footprints such CO2 emission (from an environmental perspective).
This application is a concrete example of using Open Data in the Waternomics project. Indeed, we are using www.waterfootprint.org as a main source of open data for water footprints. We are also using utility websites for water costs for each country either involved in the project or not. We are also using other open data sources that are also available in the Waternomics data portal WKAN (see details in D3.1.1 and D 3.1.2).
One of the main features of this application is that it is independent from any other application of the Waternomics Market Applications. It can serve as all Waternomics applications as well as other projects applications. Indeed, it offers a REST API that application developers can query to get the full list of metaphors, footprints and costs.
This post is written in collaboration between Wassim Derguech and Christos Kouroupetroglou