Comparing and presenting city-level transportation CO2 emissions using GIS

• New European GIS data can simply estimate transport CO2 emissions at a city level.
• Available data may be only appropriate at the ‘functional boundary level’ of city.
• CO2 emissions information could be presented with respect to policy targets.

In 2011, the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) inventory of diffuse emissions became available, providing data on a range of atmospheric emissions at a 5 km resolution across Europe. The data are produced from spatially disaggregated emissions totals for countries, and must be validated before being used at a sub-national level. The UK government maintains a 1 km resolution emissions inventory based on a bottom-up methodology by which a validation is possible. The UK National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory data are used to assess at what geographic scale the new E-PRTR data might be most useful. This paper compares the two data sets and estimates city-level transportation CO2 emissions for 149 EU cities. We find that at a functional boundary level the two datasets match well.