OpenGeoScales

Goal

Aggregate and standardize GHG emissions data at various aptio-temporal scales.

Context

Greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions from human activities are considered as the most significant driver of observed climate change since the mid-20th century. In order to better mitigate climate change impacts, policy makers, scientists, carbon and environment consultancy specialists, data journalists and citizens need easy and free access to relevant and accurate data on GHGs emissions at various spatial scales.

In accordance with the Paris Agreement, countries are required to submit transparent, comparable and complete reporting of GHGs inventories based on the methodologies developed by the IPCC. In addition to these Top-Down approaches, Bottom-Up methods are being used for completing emissions estimates based on satellite imagery and carbon monitoring stations at different spatial scales. At subnational scales, important efforts and specific protocols are deployed providing methodologies for measuring city-scale emissions since they represent a large percent of energy-related GHGs emissions.

Pain points

While several open data platforms and portals are engaged in publishing relevant collected GHGs emissions data (Carbon Disclosure Project, World Resources Institute, EDGAR database,UNFCCC…), the use of this data remain often complex and time consuming due to their different formats, schemas, standards, scales, protocols, units,spatio-temporal coverage, data definitions…

Identification and mapping of the appropriate sources as well as various data processing treatments (cleaning, recoding, normalization, cross-referencing, aggregating…) are often necessary before being able to use the available data and combine it with other indicators.

Our solution: CarbonGeoScales

The main goal of CarbonGeoScales consists of providing a centralized access point to updated, accurate, harmonized, and aggregated GHGs emissions data at multiple geographical scales.

As an open source and collaborative project, different data processing treatments are accessible in order to provide users with transformation processes implemented on raw collected data. The resulting compiled database is accessible by download and through specific API for querying and integrating aggregated data into potential applications. Resulting harmonized GHGs emissions data are completed with consistent documentation, articles and dashboards for exploring its content.

By facilitating access to GHGs emissions open data, CarbonGeoScales is participating to help policy makers to build more effective emissions reduction strategies at different territorial scales and to track their progress more accurately. Standardidzed data facilitates data use for carbon analytics specitalists (scientists, NGOs and carbon consultancy offices) in order to combine it with external datasets.