Data Sources

Most relevant data sources are on this one page, so that you can use the search function of the browser to look for specific keywords. (Data for proxy calculations can be found on this Handbook page). The data sources that are provided here are a collection of sources that Metabolism of Cities has come across and gathered in the process of assisting the cities or carrying out their own assessments.

As mentioned in other places, it is recommended that data on the local situation is used to avoid data quality losses due to disaggregation or downscaling. The usual data providers for the various material flows and stocks are environmental agencies (national/local), public and private waste companies, transportation agencies (national/local), chamber of commerce, national/regional statistical office, national associations (in a specific field, for example, vegetable growers) and open data portals.

Tip 1: In general, there is also the Eurostat grid (see Handbook part on it) and the corresponding Eurostat library that you can check.

Tip 2: In the case, where there is no data available on the city level, it is possible to use the data of the Economy-wide material flow accounts (EW-MFA), which give tonnes of materials flows (per EW-MFA codes & indicators) at a national level. You can then downscale them using proxies (see Downscaling).

• The EW-MFA comes with its own, very useful, Economy-wide material flow accounts handbook
• This file provides the MFA data structure, which has the EW-MFA as overview. It also has a CPA tab.
• Here the actual data can be found for the Material flow accounts (env_ac_mfa), while the metadata for it is here.
• The EW-MFA data and information exists in the EU languages. This can help you to better understand what those materials are and look them or flow diagrams up!

Tip 3: As a possible last resort, when you do not have local data and/or cannot find it here, is to get data where there is none or little through primary data collection or proxies from literature.

Extraction / Harvesting

MF1 Biomass: Crops

• Eurocrop
  • Goal: extract data for crops for all pilots with this publication
  • What: Eurocrop map > crops, see here which crops are included
  • How: Taking the crop data, determining its surface area and converting it with yield and FAO data.
  • Year(s) Data for 2018, so that could be also the baseline year for biomass.
  • Where: Data for the CityLoop cities, except for Bodo.
• Dynamic World
  • What: global 10 m land use land cover mapping
  • Year(s) near-real time (NRT)
• Spatial Production Allocation Model (SPAM)
  • Data: https://www.mapspam.info/data/
  • Year(s): 2010
• Soil data: https://inspire-geoportal.ec.europa.eu/overview.html?view=themeOverview&theme=so

MF2 and 3: Mining / Metals

• Fineprint: “Based on the visual interpretation of satellite images, this data set maps mining activities over the entire globe and estimates the area directly used for mining of coal and metal ores.”
  • The corresponding paper from 2020, A global-scale data set of mining areas
• https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/metals-mining
  • Table 1 List of commodities from active mines reported in the SNL database19. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-00624-w/tables/2
• https://www.mindat.org/
• https://thediggings.com/: ”The Diggings™ lists millions of claims across the United States to help identify where gold, silver, copper, and other materials are being mined or were mined in the past. With our interactive maps, discover mining activity in your area.”
• Mineral resources data: Inspire Geoportal >> Mineral Resources

Manufacturing

• Industry association reports, for example, the furniture or textile industry
• Production and industrial facilities data
• Prodcom data, Production (and related trade) data.
  • Units: Value in EUR (Statistics on the production of manufactured goods Value ANNUAL 2019), Sold volume in kg (Statistics on the production of manufactured goods Sold Volume ANNUAL 2019), Total volume in kg (Statistics on the production of manufactured goods Total Volume ANNUAL 2019), Unit value (Statistics on the production of manufactured goods Unit Value ANNUAL 2019)
  • Data: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/prodcom/data/excel-files-nace-rev.2
  • Scale: Only national level and EU27 etc.

Use

• Construction production index overview
• Can possibly be derived from income and household budget surveys on national level

Stock

Number of buildings

• Conventional dwellings by occupancy status, type of building and NUTS 3 region
• Building data from Inspire, for example, sources / shapefiles for:
  • Netherlands: Netherlands - Buildings (INSPIRE harmonised) and Publieke Dienstverlening Op de Kaart (PDOK)
  • Norway: Norway - INSPIRE Buildings core 2D
  • Finland: https://kartta.paikkatietoikkuna.fi/ >> NLS-FI INSPIRE Buildings Theme Dataset is a dataset depicting the Buildings covering the whole of Finland. It contains the following INSPIRE feature types: Building

Imports and exports

• NST - transport statistics data and customs data
  • Here is an explanation on the National Statistics of Transport (NST).
  • At NUTS 3, you have values (only for trucks and only for NST codes).
  • NUTS2 level for rail, maritime and air transport
  • NST data is data from outside of country into NUTS3, but not inter-NUTS3
• Comext data, only on national scale

Waste

Waste data should ideally really be local.

• Municipal waste by waste management operations