Core terms
Organization
Your company's workspace in Measure. All of your data belongs to one organization, and data never crosses between organizations. When you upload a file, it goes into whichever organization you are currently working in.
Tag (Custom Group)
A reusable label used to group and describe activities, such as a facility, a business unit or a fuel type. Every tag has a type (for example facility) and a name (its identifier, for example denver-office). It can also have a title, which is the display name shown in the app (for example "Denver - Office").
Trait
A piece of information (or metadata) attached to a tag, such as a facility's country, street_address or facility_type. Traits pass down to every activity that carries the tag.
Determinant
A tag or trait that Measure needs on an activity to pick the right emission factor automatically. Required determinants may vary for several reasons:
by category
e.g. an electricity activity needs a
country, and a stationary combustion activity needs afuel_code
by emission factors dataset
e.g.
countryandus_egridare required for assigning from the US EPA eGrid dataset, butcountryandca_provinceare required to assign emission factors from the Canada NIR dataset
Activity
A single source of emissions, such as a facility's electricity, a fleet vehicle, or a waste stream. Each activity has a unique ref_id, a human-readable label and a GHG category.
Category
The GHG Protocol scope and category an activity falls into, written as a code. For example, s1.1 is Scope 1 stationary combustion, s2.1 is Scope 2 electricity and s3.6 is Scope 3 business travel.
Consumption
A quantity an activity used over a date range, such as 500 gallons of diesel from January 1 to January 31. Each consumption records a magnitude, a unit and a resource.
Resource
What a consumption measures, such as electricity_purchased, volume_fuel_combusted or distance_traveled. Each resource requires a certain kind of unit. For example, electricity_purchased needs an energy unit like kWh.
Emission factor (EF)
The rate that converts a consumption into emissions, such as 2.68 kg CO2 per liter of diesel. Measure assigns most factors automatically. You can also upload your own.
Reporting method
How an emission factor is applied. Most categories use default. Electricity and chilled water are reported two ways, location-based and market-based.
Metric
A quantity used to calculate emission intensity, such as square footage, production volume, full-time employees or revenue.
Renewable
An energy attribute instrument, such as a bundled or unbundled energy attribute certificate (EAC) or a power purchase agreement (PPA), that reduces market-based emissions.
ref_id
The unique identifier for an activity, consumption, emission factor or renewable. It is how Measure tells whether an uploaded row is new or an update to an existing record.