There are two ways to edit building data: by uploading new data in the spreadsheet template or by editing data on the platform.
Using the Spreadsheet
Carbon Signal uses the Building Name as a unique identifier for each building. If a building in your spreadsheet has the same name as one already in your portfolio, the uploaded row arrives in the Review buildings queue flagged as an existing record to update. From there you can accept it, which updates the existing building, rename the row so it is created as a new building instead, or remove it from the upload.
Selecting this option will create a new version of the building model based on the data in the spreadsheet. Using the spreadsheet is ideal for updating buildings in bulk.
Editing in the App
Editing Data for a Specific Building
If you need to edit the data for a specific building, you can open the building details page (clicking on a row in the data table on the Buildings page will open up the details for a single building).
Building Info
On the Building info tab, you can edit general information about the building including the building name, floor area, tags, building type, notes, ownership and hold period, discount rate, and location. Location is entered through an Address search field, with City, State/Province, Country, and Postal code alongside it.
Editing the Floor area, the Building type, or the Location creates a new model version and re-runs the analysis, since all three feed the calibration. Editing the name, tags, notes, or the financial settings does not.
Utility Data
You can edit reported energy on the Utility data tab. Energy is held per calendar year, and each year you have records for gets its own tab, so a building can carry several years at once.
Within a year you can provide monthly readings per utility, a single annual energy use intensity, or no energy data at all. The Model calibration year selector decides which of those years is actually used to calibrate the baseline model; the other years are kept for reference and reporting. Selecting None (don’t use reported energy use) tells Carbon Signal to ignore reported energy altogether and build a modeled baseline instead.
When Carbon Signal has had to fill gaps in the measured data, a Missing or incomplete energy data callout appears on this tab with a Use modeled data for baseline toggle.
Emission Factors
On the Emission factors tab, you can select the source of emission factors for the various utilities, or define your own custom emission factors for each utility. The sources of emission factors that the platform currently supports are NREL Cambium, CRREM, and Our World in Data (OWID).
Editing Data for Multiple Buildings
From the main Buildings page, you can quickly apply updates to selected buildings instead of editing each one individually.
Select the buildings to be updated. Then, click More Actions to open the bulk actions menu and select one of the available updates listed below:
- Adjust baseline data – Select whether to use modeled data when measured utility data is missing or incomplete.
- Set emission factors – Set the data source for utility emission factors to CRREM, Cambium, Our World in Data, or a custom emission factor (if specified). Emission factors are only updated when the selected data source is available.
- Update reduction pathway - Apply or remove interventions from the reduction pathways of the selected buildings. Select the interventions to apply and their implementation year. If the implementation year is specified, this year will be used as the implementation year for all applied interventions.
- Update guest access – Add or remove guest users from the selected buildings. Guests do not need to be members of your Team.
- Edit emission factors – Edit the custom emission factor values for the selected buildings, rather than switching which dataset they use.
- Edit utility costs – Set the price and annual escalation rate for each utility across the selected buildings.
- Update model refinements – Add or remove model refinement targets across the selected buildings.
- Retry baseline – Restart calibration for buildings that ended in the Failed baseline state.
The action bar also carries Export data and Delete outside the More actions menu.