/RoofisonFire

Green Roofs in Toronto: Diff of Diff analysis with Chicago as comparison city

Green Roofs in Toronto

Green Roof Energy Diff-n-Diffs.

  • Do nifty analysis
  • Put the project on Github
  • Build Github pages for the project
  • Have an interesting README about the project

This was Part 4 of Experimental Design coursework and intended to be an introduction to difference in differences analysis using open data sets to learn data science concepts. This was the final project in this course and required considerably more complex data engineering in order to perform its analysis.

Abstract

In this work, we have performed difference-in-differences OLS models to examine the relationship between 2018 policy to cancel existing renewable and green energy government contracts and the size, frequency, and neighborhood prevalence of green roofs in the city of Toronto. In order to run these models, we have used the city of Chicago, a leader in green roofing in the United States, as a control group. We have hypothesized that changes in green related policy, even if not directly associated with green roof permits, will lead to a decrease in both the number of permits and the size of the green roofs that are built. Our results have been limited by the relatively small number of permits issued since the policy change. Nonetheless, our results show a decrease in both permits and green roof area, although statistically non-significant. Additionally, applying this model to similar green roof permit datasets over time could help confirm the effect of policy changes or citywide trends that may emerge in the coming climate crisis.

See the corresponding GitHub Pages for data visualization and analysis

See the rmarkdown for full code