Data Hub Priority Plan 2021
For 2021, the Metabolism of Cities team has developed a priority plan in order to focus most of our energy on a specific project. After lengthy discussions within our team, we have decided to prioritize taking our Data Hub to the next level. Most importantly, after last year's focus on setting up the data collection and data processing tools and courses, we now want to look at the next phase. What do we do with data? How can we create analytical tools and academic applications that make the most out of the data hub? This is what we want to look into. The following core objectives have been defined.
MFA integration
Currently, the system allows for individual datasets to be uploaded. While it is technically possible to upload material flow analysis (MFA) data, the system does not yet provide the tools to classify data accordingly. We should be able to automatically calculate indicators, to identify data gaps, and to visualise the MFA as a whole (including sankey diagrams). Ideally, we would also allow people to create and manage their own private projects, where they can upload their own datasets without them necessarily becoming part of the public data repository (unless they want to). This is a bit like the OMAT system we had before.
Multi-scale integration
Our reference spaces can record data and information about any scale... from enterprise level to country level. It is now time to fully integrate a number of these different scales. The IRP has released a global material flows database at country-level. This can be used to add MFA data to all countries in our system. Secondly, we should load the economy-wide MFAs done on city level (many of which exist in the academic literature), and encourage our colleagues at Metabolism of Islands to also load these into their system. Once we have these different scales loaded with data, we can start connecting the scales, in order to record the relationship between e.g. a city, a province/state, a country, and a continent. Downscaling (or upscaling) should be possible, as a way to estimate numbers if accurate data is not (readily) available.
API and data export development
It should be possible to export data from our website into other applications. A low-hanging fruit is to export our data in a standard CSV format, and to integrate them with Jupyter notebooks, which would allow researchers to run more advanced analyses and modeling tools written in Python, using our data and this open source platform. We can also consider options for people to embed our charts, maps, and data onto their website (akin to how Our World in Data allows you to embed their charts).
NOTE: we will be adding relevant tasks in the list below over the coming weeks (April 2021). Please stay tuned for this.
Latest updates
Status change: In Progress → Completed
I've made a web page titled "Sources for reference space groups" and compiled the list there. I'm neither set on that name nor on the slug (@Paul, feel free to …
Status change: Open → In Progress
Task was assigned to Carolin Bellstedt
Hi Paul, Ok, great. Yes, that makes sense. I've made a new task for the setup of these pages, as this was a rather big side note ;) Also noted …
New task was created
Hi Aris, Let's use Munich as our guinea pig / storage "animal". Brussels is too busy with its own data and that makes it messy. No one is currently actively …
New task was created
Hey all, where should we upload proxy data (population, GDP, etc.) for countries. One specific city as our guinea pig? Brussels has plently of NUTS stuff but I don't know …
Task was assigned to Aristide Athanassiadis
New task was created
Small update, apparently there is a more detailed IRP dataset that I requested now. Hope we will get it ASAP so I can work on it.
So I'm having a look at the "Countries in the World" shapefile that was uploaded and processed to get a better sense of what are the available fields and what …
Status change: Open → In Progress
New task was created
Help us out!
We invite everyone to join in our Data Hub Priority Plan for 2021. Our entire project is an open-source, community-led effort, and you can help in small or large ways. Take on a specific task in our task list, add your comments and feedback to the ongoing work, or join our team on an ongoing basis to build our new tools.
Sign Up Log InTask list
Task | Details | Points | Last update |
---|---|---|---|
Compile authoritative sources for reference space groups
Metabolism of Cities Data Hub |
General Research Work Completed | Medium priority |
8 |
2 minutes ago
by Carolin Bellstedt |
Upload MFA data from paper: Energy and material flows of megacities
Metabolism of Cities Data Hub |
Upload Data Open | Medium priority |
15 |
1 week, 3 days ago
by Paul Hoekman |
Upload IRP global MFA
Metabolism of Cities Data Hub |
Upload Data In Progress | Medium priority |
15 |
3 hours, 28 minutes ago
by Aristide Athanassiadis |
Restructure Data Layer Tags
Metabolism of Cities Data Hub |
Programming work In Progress | Medium priority |
5 |
1 week, 3 days ago
by Paul Hoekman |
Set up economic data processing
Metabolism of Cities Data Hub |
Programming work Open | Medium priority |
5 |
1 day, 5 hours ago
by Carolin Bellstedt |
Add “data quality” indication for collected and processed data
Metabolism of Cities Data Hub |
Programming work Open | Medium priority |
5 |
1 day, 5 hours ago
by Carolin Bellstedt |
Upload population data for countries
Metabolism of Cities |
Upload Data Open | Medium priority |
15 |
1 hour, 5 minutes ago
by Carolin Bellstedt |
Upload employment per ISIC code for countries
Metabolism of Cities |
Upload Data Open | Medium priority |
15 |
2 hours, 29 minutes ago
by Aristide Athanassiadis |
Create / gather content for manual pages in the ABOUT section
Metabolism of Cities Data Hub |
Communication and engagement Open | Medium priority |
5 |
45 minutes ago
by Carolin Bellstedt |