• Course 1B: Data collection for circularity assessment of biomass sector (WP3)
• M0: Welcome to course 1B
• M1: Urban Context - Part A
• M2: Urban Context - Part B
• M3: Sector Economic Activities - What
• M4: Sector Economic Activities - Who
• M5: Material flows and stocks - Extraction and Manufacturing
• M6: Material flows and stocks - Use (incl. Stock)
• M7: Material flows and stocks - Waste
• M8: Material flows and stocks - Imports and Exports
• Participant list
• Syllabus
• FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How many hours do the courses take in total?

The time that it takes to carry out the SCA is something that can momentarily only be estimated, until it has been trialed by the CityLoops cities. Based on the courses that were given by Metabolism of Cities, the workload was estimated to take a total of 290- 350 hours for all three steps (120-150 hours for data collection, 120-150 hours for data processing, and 50 hours for data analysis).

How long is the course?

The course duration is for 8 weeks with classes/sessions every Tuesday (1 hour per session). You should have between 5-10 hours available per week to do the homework.

Why is the course so long?

Feedback from the course participants revealed that continuous drips of time were better than one intense sprint. Moreover, it takes time to contact data providers and get data from them, so it is better to stretch the course out.

Is there anything that I need to do before the course?

There is nothing that NEEDS to be done, but if cities want to do some preparatory work, they can try to find out (1) how waste data is reported in their city? By EWC codes? Other codes? Per NACE activity? Who reports this?; (2) who collects the waste reporting from single companies?; (3) if city uses NACE codes at all or how do they report on the economic activities? (Perhaps the chamber of commerce or an economic department would know.)

Can I already take another course?

There are already 3 courses that will be similar to the ones that the cities will take. There is a Spanish data collection course that was given in Aug-Sep 2020, an English data collection course, and a Spanish data processing course. Amongst other things, these courses were created to test out this platform with some volunteers from around the world. However, do note that these courses are available outside of CL and are not CL specific (those will be created very soon). If you wish to follow any of them, you will do so on your own and we will not have the time to support you. We would actually prefer that you don’t take this existing course, because things will change until then and we don’t want you to be confused (when taking the course with us) or have any unnecessary work.

Do I need any type of software or program for the course and coursework?

It depends on what type of data you’re processing. You most likely will need software to work with spreadsheets, programming software or geolocation software. However, you can choose what type of data you want to work with and we will provide open source software that you will be able to use free of charge for the course. Some of the software we can recommend, depending on your data include QGIS, Python, LibreOffice and Pandas.

In what language will the course be?

In English

Will each session be recorded so they can be seen later?

No, each session will not be recorded, but if you can’t attend a session you can still follow the course through instructional videos and tasks that are posted on the Metabolism of Cities Education Hub. You should watch every video within each module and complete the relevant task before the next session since the homework will be discussed during the sessions.