Carleton Geothermal Data

Final Results

Carleton Geothermal Data

Advisor: Amy Csizmar Dalal
Times: Fall-Winter 1,2c

Background

Carleton maintains a treasure trove of data from its geothermal system. Distributed temperature sensing cables within the borefields and metered sensors along the geothermal piping continually record data on system temperature and flow conditions over time. This data is used by a number of people. For instance, Dan Maxbauer in Geology uses this data for research with students and sometimes in his courses. In addition, this dataset is of interest to scientists at the Minnesota Geological Survey, the engineering groups that helped to design the system, Carleton alums, and conceivably broader communities both on and off campus, for energy-related research and planning purposes.

Bruce Duffy, Technical Assistant in Physics and Astronomy, administers the data collection system as a side / passion project. Over time, Bruce developed a system that collects and stores data, translates the raw data into additional measurements of interest, accounts for idiosyncrasies in the system, converts the data to a more usable format, and dumps the data as zipped CSV files to a shared Google Drive.

To analyze this data, Dan downloads all of the CSV files to his own computer and filters the data there. As you can imagine, this takes up a lot of disk space — and a lot of “prep” time before Dan can actually get to the analysis. Currently, Bruce is migrating this data from CSV files to a database. The database will allow Dan and others to access and filter the data more easily and efficiently, allowing them to just grab the data they need so they can get to the data analysis and interpretation faster. Doing so changes the “upstream” workflow — stakeholders used to dealing with CSV files will now need to get up to speed on accessing the data differently. This opens up a ton of opportunities: the potential to disseminate geothermal information to more parties of interest; the potential to attract more faculty, staff, and students to work with the geothermal data on various projects; and so on. This “upstream” part of the system will be our focus for this Comps project.

The project

In this project, you will create a new upstream workflow for the geothermal data that interacts with the new geothermal database. The workflow will primarily consist of an API and a dashboard, along with other supporting tools and documentation.

Your tasks will include the following:

Perform a thorough requirements analysis. Through observations, interviews, contextual inquiry, and other mechanisms, you will determine what the goals, workflows, and various pain points are for the different stakeholders in accessing and using the data. You will use this information to co-develop user stories and requirements for the dashboard, tools, and API. (As part of this process, Bruce will provide an overview of the “downstream” portion of the system, i.e. how the data is measured, collected, and stored in the database.)
Iteratively design, implement, and test a geothermal data API. This API will allow stakeholders to easily query the data without having to be expert programmers.
Iteratively design, develop, and test user-facing queries for researchers. What queries do researchers most often perform on the data? Can we create “question portfolios”, or predefined queries so that researchers don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time, and to help them acquire the data they need more quickly and efficiently?
Iteratively design, implement, and test a geothermal data dashboard. The purpose of this dashboard is to present geothermal data, and visualizations of that data, to a broad audience. The makeup of the dashboard (what data to present, the nature of the visualizations, the amount of end user interaction, etc.) will be determined by your requirements analysis.
(possibly) Integrate the geothermal data with other sources of energy data on campus. It may be possible to integrate other data sources with the geothermal system data. If so, you will study the feasibility of combining multiple data streams for use by the stakeholders and potentially integrate these streams into the dashboard and/or API.

This project is an Academic Civic Engagement (ACE) project. You will be collaborating with our campus partners and co-creating the dashboard, API, and other deliverables with them.

Deliverables

A dashboard displaying and visualizing various aspects of the geothermal data.
A suite of tools to help interested potential stakeholders — students, alums, staff, faculty — better utilize and understand the data. This will likely include an API the stakeholders can use to ask questions of the data, along with a “portfolio of questions” that model different things stakeholders can do with the data.
Documentation on the tools and the dashboard, that will be included in the larger project documentation

Recommended experience

CS 344, Human-Computer Interaction, or equivalent experience is recommended but not required.