Data Charged: Empowering Cities With Smart Climate Data | Futureproofed
- Credible city climate data is critical for city teams to plan effectively, but getting reliable and actionable data (& having that data centralized within one resource) is difficult.
- Not all data sources are equal. We dive deeper into what quality data to source and where to find it.
- Data-driven tools are playing an essential role in helping cities drive climate action.
Our cities are responsible for more than 70% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Reducing those emissions will be a huge task, but with it comes a great opportunity to transform our cities. If investments in carbon reduction measures are made intelligently, cities can profit from many additional societal benefits, enhancing city livability for citizens. A data-driven climate action plan is key to city transformation. But getting reliable and accurate climate data to help city teams structure their plan well is complicated.
Finding climate data isn’t easy 💻
Data is a common obstacle that city teams must overcome-finding quality, relevant, and regional data to name a few — to support their city’s climate action plan.
Finding quality data
The data needed for a climate action plan can have a broad scope. Obvious examples of climate data can be carbon emission or energy usage statistics. This data is used to assess the role of clean energy or energy efficiency in a climate action plan. It will usually be of high quality with granular annual tracking. Less obvious examples of data would be food waste or recycling levels for a particular city or region. This data could be used to analyze if there are benefits to conducting environmental awareness campaigns surrounding waste and recycling. But it may be difficult to come by quality data for these measures. It could rely on infrequent household surveys with low participation levels, for example.
Finding relevant data
The multi-varied nature of data can make a city team’s life difficult. The time needed to research all the datasets relevant to their climate action plan is hard, and it’s unlikely that a city has all the resources to carry out the task effectively. Also, datasets are usually extensive, so finding relevant and valuable data is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Originally published at https://blog.futureproofed.com.
