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Energy and Sustainability
Client
Sarah Zemanick, Cornell Energy and Sustainability Department
sarahzemanick@cornell.edu
607-254-2818
CS 5150 contacts
The following CS 5150 students are interested in building a team for this project. Please contact them if you are would like to join the team:
Nikunj Jethi,
607-379-1411,
<nj92@cornell.edu>
Alexander Visbal, <alv32@cornell.edu>
Ethan Kao, <ek382@cornell.edu>
Project
The Cornell Energy and Sustainability department has adopted a student-initiated effort called “Lights Off, Cornell!”. The students recruit and organize volunteers to turn off unnecessary lights in the public buildings on campus. The department is in the process of building an application to collect user information, schedule “offing” events, collect data, and create metrics. The client has two volunteer developers working on this currently.
She has two projects that are suitable for CS 5150:
- The current development of the application that does the automatic scheduling will almost certainly need a second phase to add refinement and extensions.
- It would be very useful to have an iPhone/mobile app for the volunteers to use while “offing” to report what lights they turned off.
Technical information
Database = Oracle (table structure is already created)
Scheduling piece programming language = ColdFusion
Mobile app programming language = to be chosen
Scheduling Overview
Background/existing functionality
- Volunteers register with NetID, days of week available, frequency to volunteer (weekly, quarterly, etc.), duration of availability (date range), affiliation with a particular organization.
- Groups enter group name, contact name/NetID, days of week available, frequency to volunteer (weekly, quarterly, etc.), duration of availability (date range).
- Buildings are grouped into groups of three.
New functionality needed
- Two volunteers or an organization are assigned to “off” a building group each night:
- groups are responsible to make sure that two individuals from their group go to each scheduled event (every individual must register too and indicate they are part of the organization).
- When an event is scheduled, an email is sent to individual volunteers or group contact with a link to confirm.
- If declined, event must be reassigned.
- A reminder email is sent the day before the scheduled event.
Mobile App Reporting Overview
Background
- The database includes a table of buildings, floors, numbered switches, fluorescent and incandescent lights controlled by each switch; and a table to report the action taken for each switch for each event and calculated fields to determine energy and greenhouse gas emissions saved.
- Currently volunteers record information on a paper sheet, then log in to the system to enter their data.
- When they log in (via Cornell's Kerberos authentication), they are presented with a list of all events they were scheduled for as an individual, and all events the group they are associated with were assigned to. They click on the appropriate event to enter the data.
Functionality needed
- A mobile app is needed so volunteers can enter data into the system as they go – eliminating the paper and an extra step for the volunteers
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