Selection and calculation of indicators

Goal: Select and calculate your sector's indicators.

Approach: See in the two sections below. If you want to better understand the indicators, you can consult their background and glossary in this Handbook.

Select indicators

There are 8 mandatory indicators for the construction sector and 9 mandatory ones for the biomass sector. You can choose additional ones however.

  1. To do the selection, make sure you have selected your city in your account profile so that you are able to see the “select indicators” button for your city.
  2. Go to your city > Analysis > Indicators > choose the sector for which you want to select indicators > click the button “select indicators”.
  3. On this new page, scroll down to “3. Closing material loops and reducing harmful resource use” (from indicator 34 onwards) and turn on the indicators in the sector column on the very right. You can see that the mandatory indicators are already pre-selected.
  4. Press save. (You still have to click on save at the bottom of the page, even if you don’t choose additional indicators.)

Calculate indicators

  1. Be sure to have filled in table 1 and 2a.
  2. On that same sheet under table 1, you will find the indicator components and the formulas of the mandatory indicators. See for construction sector indicators sheet and biomass sector indicators sheet.
  3. Table 1 will add up the single materials to a total. It will then also automatically calculate the indicators with the indicator components of table 1 and 2a. In case you have chosen optional indicators, you can find the respective formulas in the methodology part of each of the indicators, see indicators metadata. You can add those indicators to your own table.
  4. Make a sanity check of the values of the indicator components and the actual indicators.

Outline of the video

  • Indicators are one of the main outputs of the SCA and therefore also one of the main reasons that you have collected and processed all of your data.
  • In the SCA, only Vision Element 3 of the circular city definition and sector level are relevant for the SCA. Only the strategic objectives displayed under that definition are therefore relevant and their related indicators, which can be found on the indicators metadata page. That means that only indicators 34-62 are taken into account.
  • Construction sector - 24 indicators in total; 8 mandatory ones for construction, 16 additional ones
  • Biomass sector - 24 indicators in total; 9 mandatory ones for biomass, 15 additional ones
  • 6 of the mandatory indicators are the same in both sectors.
  • Select indicators: The indicator selection takes place on the same page, as the one you did for the evaluation plan, except it is limited to Vision Element 3 and the sector, and you do not have to fill in metadata.
    • To do the selection, make sure you have selected your city in your account profile so that you are able to see the “select indicators” button for your city.
    • Go to your city > Analysis > Indicators > choose the sector for which you want to select indicators > click the button “select indicators”.
    • On this new page, scroll down to “3. Closing material loops and reducing harmful resource use” (from indicator 34) and turn on the indicators in the sector column on the very right.
    • You can see that the mandatory indicators are already pre-selected.
    • Press save. You still have to click on save at the bottom of the page, even if you don’t choose additional indicators.
  • M5:42, Calculate indicators: Based on the table that you have previously filled in with your data sources, and where you made the data gap analysis, you should be able to easily locate the actual data points.
    • The goal is to fill in your values into a second table, your Data Points Table, to calculate the indicators. This table can be seen as a summary or total per lifecycle stage (LCS), or per “node”, the boxes of the Sankey diagram.
    • If you have differentiated the material by NACE activities, then you can now add up all NACE activities for one material to produce a total value of material per LCS; For example, to determine the total manufacturing of bricks, you can add up the two NACE codes “23.20 - Manufacture of refractory products” and “23.32 - Manufacture of bricks, tiles and construction products, in baked clay”.
    • If data doesn’t exist on the NACE level and you have already found it as a total for the LCS then you can add that number.
    • Once all LCS stages are filled in per material, the table then adds up all materials per LCS to form the sector LCS. For example, the total extraction of the biomass sector is made up of the extraction of cereals, extraction of vegetables etc.
    • The table will then automatically calculate the mandatory indicators on that same sheet.
  • Having this table also creates the central piece for the Sankey diagram. So while this may seem like a big task, it will be a very valuable investment of your time, because it will help you get the indicators and the Sankey.