Climate Action

Transforming Climate Awareness into Action

Overview

The climate crisis is intensifying, and while awareness is rising, there is a persistent gap between understanding and action. To address this, we are developing two key services:

A dashboard displaying high-resolution spatial climate action indicators, designed to support communities, organizations, and decision-makers with tailored data and information.

A high-resolution greenhouse gas inventory built on Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), offering precise, actionable data for targeted mitigation efforts.

Together, these tools aim to drive effective climate action across all levels.

The Climate Action Dashboard

The Climate Action Dashboard delivers climate action indicators tailored to specific cities. Using a framework of high-resolution spatial indicators, it provides actionable insights through data, maps, and reports co-developed with our partners. The dashboard integrates multiple data sources, including OpenStreetMap (OSM), openrouteservice (ORS), satellite imagery, and scientific research, ensuring comprehensive and reliable insights for decision-makers.

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The full functionality of the dashboard is available to our partners.

Contact us to become a partner now!

Launch Date: Spring 2025

Actionable Data

We cooperate closely with stakeholders to develop indicators, which are displayed on the climate action dashboard. Each plugin on the dashboard showcases the current state of a certain climate action indicator for an area of interest. Several indicators can be combined to calculate a comprehensive index, e.g. walkability.

High Resolution Greenhouse Gas Inventory

The High-Resolution Greenhouse Gas Inventory with VGI (Volunteered Geographic Information) is a research initiative aimed at creating detailed, localized greenhouse gas emissions on a neighborhood level. By integrating data from various sources, including VGI, this project seeks to provide a more accurate and granular understanding of GHG emissions at the neighborhood level. Currently in the research phase, the project focuses on harnessing the power of open data to fill data gaps and enhance the precision of climate action planning.

Minimizing Our Own Footprint

Lazy Computing

We see lazy computing — an approach that optimizes workflows by avoiding redundant data processing and minimizing energy use — as vital to climate action. By streamlining computation, we reduce our carbon footprint while delivering actionable data. Acting responsibly in our computational practices is a key part of our mission, ensuring that our tools for driving climate solutions are as sustainable as the outcomes we aim to achieve.

Measuring Our Own Footprint

In a first step towards minimizing our footprint, we measured electricity consumption during machine learning model training for our Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) utility, to understand and reduce our carbon footprint. By adopting sustainable practices at every level, we can ensure that our technological advancements align with our commitment to climate action and environmental responsibility.

Resources

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Geldsetzer, Pascal, Marcel Reinmuth, Paul O. Ouma, Sven Lautenbach, Emelda A. Okiro, Till Bärnighausen, and Alexander Zipf. 2020. “Mapping Physical Access to Health Care for Older Adults in Sub-Saharan Africa and Implications for the COVID-19 Response: A Cross-Sectional Analysis.” The Lancet. Healthy Longevity 1 (1): e32–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2666-7568(20)30010-6.
Ulrich, Veit, Josephine Brückner, Michael Schultz, Sanam Noreen Vardag, Christina Ludwig, Johannes Fürle, Mohammed Zia, Sven Lautenbach, and Alexander Zipf. 2023. “Private Vehicles Greenhouse Gas Emission Estimation at Street Level for Berlin Based on Open Data.” ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 12 (4): 138. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi12040138.
Foshag, Kathrin, Johannes Fürle, Christina Ludwig, Joachim Fallmann, Sven Lautenbach, Saskia Rupp, Patrick Burst, Marco Betsch, Alexander Zipf, and Nicole Aeschbach. 2024. “How to Assess the Needs of Vulnerable Population Groups towards Heat-Sensitive Routing?” ERDKUNDE, 1–33. https://doi.org/10.3112/erdkunde.2024.01.01.
Ulrich, Veit, Michael Schultz, Sven Lautenbach, and Alexander Zipf. 2023. “Carbon Fluxes Related to Land Use and Land Cover Change in Baden-Württemberg.” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 195 (5): 616. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-11141-9.
Bayer, Anita D., Sven Lautenbach, and Almut Arneth. 2023. “Benefits and Trade-Offs of Optimizing Global Land Use for Food, Water, and Carbon.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 120 (42): e2220371120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2220371120.

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