Community Portal

Metabolism of Cities Data Hub is made possible by our contributors

Welcome! The data portal is under active development, and we are busy setting up a whole new system for processing, visualising, downloading, and extracting data from the portal. We're excited about it, and we are keen to involve you in the process. We are developing and managing this work in three phases:

Data harvesting (initial search and registry of where to find what kind of data) Available
Data processing (correctly labeling, sorting, and classifying of the information that was uploaded in the data harvesting phase) Available
Data analysis (write-up of data articles using visualisations and tools made available by the system) Early 2021

We publicly share our development roadmap and through the forum and task list you can monitor our progress. As of December 2020, we actively invite people to join the data harvesting phase as well as the data processing phase. By doing so, you can prepare your city or island for inclusion in the data platform, and you can explore and comment on new tools and features as they are being developed. Online courses are available for further guidance.

We now have implemented a new data structure, which involves a wider variety of information than we had before -- ranging from GPD and demographic information to material stocks and consumption data. The basic data structure is derived from work by Kennedy et al. (2014) and Musango et al. (2017) and it includes five information layers, which are subsequently processed, indexed and made available to the users in various formats when each data portal goes online. Each layer is described below.

Layers

Layer 1: Context Layer 2: Biophysical characteristics Layer 3: Infrastructure Layer 4: Stocks and flows

This layer is about providing context around the city: placement in the region, geodata, spatial boundaries, population numbers over several years, GDP, economic activities, etc.

Data and information to obtain:

1.1. Administrative boundaries
1.2. Economic activity - descriptions
1.3. Economic activity - figures
1.4. Population
1.5. Policy documents
1.6. Actors

View all instructions

This layer looks at the biophysical properties of the city, including soil, land, ecosystems, climatological characteristics, geology, and more.

Data and information to obtain:

2.1. Soil type and composition
2.2. Trees
2.3. Biodiversity
2.4. Bodies of water
2.5. Average temperatures
2.6. Rainfall
2.7. Mineral deposits

View all instructions

This layer looks at the physical infrastructure that is present in the city. From roads and transportation infrastructure to gas mains, and from bread mills to petrol stations.

Data and information to obtain:

3.00. Land Use
3.01. Agriculture
3.02. Construction
3.03. Electricity generation
3.04. Electricity transmission and distribution
3.05. Energy storage
3.06. Fossil fuel production and distribution
3.07. Fishing
3.08. Food service
3.09. Forestry
3.10. Hotels and lodging
3.11. Manufacturing: food products
3.12. Manufacturing: beverages
3.13. Manufacturing: textiles and clothing
3.14. Manufacturing: paper
3.15. Manufacturing: petroleum products
3.16. Manufacturing: chemical products
3.17. Manufacturing: plastic products
3.18. Manufacturing: wood
3.19. Manufacturing: basic metals
3.20. Manufacturing: rubber products
3.21. Manufacturing: electronics
3.22. Manufacturing: machinery, equipment, and other metal products
3.23. Manufacturing: non-metallic mineral products
3.24. Manufacturing: furniture
3.25. Manufacturing: vehicles
3.26. Mining
3.27. Transport
3.28. Storage
3.29. Retail and wholesale
3.30. Waste
3.31. Water and sanitation

View all instructions

This layer is all about extraction flows, consumption flows, emissions to nature, composition and addition to (artificial) stocks (e.g. Building stocks).

Data and information to obtain:

4.01. Extraction: Fishing
4.02. Extraction: Agriculture
4.03. Extraction: Forestry
4.04. Extraction: Mining
4.05. Production Flows: Manufacturing
4.06. Flows: Consumption
4.07. Household budget surveys
4.08. Stocks: Buildings
4.09. Stocks: Infrastructure
4.10. Stocks: Vehicles
4.11. Stocks: Livestock
4.12. Flows: Energy
4.13. Flows: Water
4.14. Flows: Imports and exports
4.15. Emission to air
4.16. Emissions to water
4.17. Dissipative use of products
4.18. Waste flows

View all instructions

Active cities to work on

For each activated city, there is a data management platform available. This allows all interested contributors to upload and work with data and information for this city. Click the links below to go to the relevant data management platform.

Would you like to work on another city that is not in the list? Please leave a message in the chat and let us know which city you would like to work on.

Discussion and questions

Kim Finlay 161 points

6 months, 2 weeks ago

This might be a useful data source for shape files and broad datasets World Bank Data Catalog

Kim Finlay 161 points

6 months, 1 week ago

Came across this tool called Tombolo – a visualisation tool which provides the functionality to pull together different place-based datasets and visualise them in one single place. Thought it might be interesting more here

Explainer video here

Aristide Athanassiadis 218 points

3 months, 3 weeks ago

Hello hello,
Would it be possible to activate Geneva as a new city of the hub?
cheers,
aris

Nicole Sophie Wiedmann 1560 points

3 months, 2 weeks ago

Hi!
I have some suggestions for the Data Hub...
It might be useful to add the country aside to the City name. It would simplify the search for information and get to the context faster.
I also think it may be useful to add the possibility of description in point 1.1 City boundaries. This because the system studied is not always a city, and for someone who has not collected the data it might be useful to know why a certain area has been chosen.

Thank you :-)

Thomas Lauwers 22 points

3 months, 1 week ago

Hello!
I would like to know if we could activate the city of Rio de Janeiro in order to be able to enter new information in the hub ?

Thank you !

Paul Hoekman Cape Town 1294 points

3 months, 1 week ago

Hi Nicole and Thomas, thanks for the messages!
Nicole: we have now changed 1.1 to "Administrative boundaries", and we are looking at adding the country for each city - thanks!
Thomas: we have added Rio de Janeiro. You can find the dashboard here.

Anders Wahlström 16 points

3 months, 1 week ago

Hello!
Is it possible to open a channel for Glasgow to enter new info on the city in the hub?
Thank you!

Paul Hoekman Cape Town 1294 points

3 months, 1 week ago

Hi Anders,
Thanks for your interest! We have activated Glasgow. It will appear in the public site a bit later today, that takes a few hours to sync. But you can already start working on the city if you'd like using the link:
https://data.metabolismofcities.org/dashboards/glasgow/

Regards,
Paul

Alexandre Rovere 36 points

2 months, 3 weeks ago

Hi, is it possible to activate Hong Kong in order to add info on it ? Air pollution ect...

Paul Hoekman Cape Town 1294 points

2 months, 3 weeks ago

Hi Alexandre,

We have activated Hong Kong!

Regards,
Paul

Nicole Sophie Wiedmann 1560 points

2 months, 1 week ago

Hello !
Just a small note, I saw that when you have a lot of data processed, you can't scroll down the legend in the master map.
Best regards,
Nicole

Paul Hoekman Cape Town 1294 points

2 months, 1 week ago

Thanks Nicole! It's a point we have on our radar, I just made a task for this and we'll look into it soon!

Jens Peters 110 points

2 months ago

Hi Paul,
could you check the diagram generated for the dataset "Emisiones de gases de efecto de invernadero (GEI), por sectores" for Madrid? The Legend (in the area graph) contains the content from the comment fields, but it should rather contain the segment. Or it could be an option to select in the graph settings.
Might be a general issue, did not check this out yet.
Thanks
Jens

Jean Paldanius Stockholm

3 weeks ago

Hello

I just discovered metabolismofcities.org and see now that Stockholm, Sweden is not yet on the list.

I'm working on a spectrum of development projects associated to the SDG's and would like to see my own home town on the list here.

There's several institutions, communities, networks and groups in Stockholm harbouring interests as well as competence to join into a collaboration around data collection, verification and maintenance for the Stockholm administrative area.

Adding Stockholm to the list would provide a great opportunity to prompt these interests into action on providing data for Stockholm.

If you have a pitch or argumentation to include in communications with local stakeholders, please also share that, else one may compose an all new one for the purpose of engaging local actors.

Thank you
/Jean

Paul Hoekman Cape Town 1294 points

3 weeks ago

Dear Jean,

Thanks for your message and interest! We have activated Stockholm. It may take a day for the city to appear on our public dashboard, but you can already start working on uploading data etc.

We don't have a generic pitch for local stakeholders. That may be something we should work on for sure, but I don't think anyone has done this yet. So feel free to reach out as you best see fit. And if you have any suggestions on this approach that you'd like to share with others, please do so!

Good luck!
Paul

Aristide Athanassiadis 218 points

1 week, 5 days ago

Hey Paul, would it be possible to activate Bordeaux (and/or its metropolitan area?).
Also, what do you think is the best approach when we want to study a city and its metro area. Should both be part of the same dashboard or should they have separate ones? I'm asking as I might want to start a Paris metropolitan area as well where Paris (the boundaries we already have) would be one of its MTUs.
Cheers,
a

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