Mirko Gregor | 17.06.2019 | DG Regio, Brussels Meeting of National Urban Audit Coordinators Environmental data and indicators as potential support to city statistics

Structure About EEA and Eionet Past history of urban assessments using city statistics in EEA Products, data, indicators and activities Land use/land cover Air quality Noise Urban (waste) water Urban adaptation

About EEA Agency of the European Union, whose task is to provide sound, independent information on the environment through the provision of timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information to policymaking agents and the public

About Eionet Eionet is a partnership network of the EEA and its member and cooperating countries that helps to bring together environmental information from individual countries concentrating on the delivery of timely, nationally validated, high-quality data Knowledge is made widely available through the EEA website and forms the basis of both thematic and integrated environmental assessments

Urban assessments using city statistics in EEA ‘Urban sprawl – the ignored challenge’ report (2006) ‘Quality of life in cities’ report (2009) ‘Urban adaptation to climate change’ (two reports 2012 and 2016, map book, viewer on Climate-ADAPT) Series of 3 reports on resource-efficient cities (2015) SOER urban briefing (2015) Land recycling report (2016) ‘Rivers and lakes in European cities’ report (2016)

Urban assessments using city statistics in EEA ‘Air Quality in Europe – 2018 report’ ‘Europe’s urban air quality – re-assessing implementation challenges in cities’ (2018) ‘Unequal exposure and unequal impacts: social vulnerability to air pollution, noise and extreme temperatures in Europe’ (2018) ETC/ULS report on urban typologies (2018) Urban waste water treatment (indicator and map) Forthcoming ‘Environmental Sustainability In Cities’ (ESIC) report 2020 (cross-cutting)

LULC indicators: (net) land take change in the amount of agricultural, forest and other semi-natural and natural land taken by urban and other artificial land development balance between taken and recultivated land is net land take – the concept behind the EU ’no net land take’ target Currently based on CLC, i.e. 6 year intervals CLC+ will increase update frequency substantially Planned to use Urban Atlas for higher resolution https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/land-take-2/assessment-1 Complement to SDG15 indicator “Artificial land cover” (sdg_15_30)

LULC indicators: Imperviousness and change yearly average imperviousness change between two reference years, as measured by imperviousness change products Based on Copernicus HRL Imperviousness layer, i.e. with a 3 year interval Time series available since 2006 https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/imperviousness-change-1/assessment

LULC indicators: Land recycling indicator addresses the use of urban land for further urban development, whether that urban land is currently in use or not comprises two concepts of urban development: land recycling and land densification. Currently based on Urban Atlas, i.e. 6 year intervals

LULC indicators and data Landscape fragmentation pressure (indicator) , currently in update Urban sprawl indicator in discussion (method published in 2016) Share of green urban areas/N2K sites within FUAs (e.g. the urban GI map viewer)

Air quality – indices and indicators EEA European Air Quality Index (https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/air/air-quality-index) provides information on the current AQ situation (up-to-the minute data) based on measurements from more than 2 000 AQ monitoring stations across Europe EEA indicator on exceedance of air quality standards in urban areas (CSI 004, AIR 003) shows the fraction of the EU-28 urban population that is potentially exposed to ambient air concentrations of certain pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, O3, NO2, SO2 and BaP) that are in excess of the EU limit or target values (EU, 2004, 2008) and WHO Guidelines (WHO, 2000, 2006).

Air quality – reports (1) “Air Quality in Europe – 2018 report” provides an analysis of progress towards meeting the quality standards in the EU Air Quality Directive, as well as the WHO air quality guidelines “Europe’s urban air quality – re-assessing implementation challenges in cities” (EEA Report No 24/2018) analyses the implementation of EU air quality legislation at the urban level and identifies some of the reasons behind persistent air quality problems in cities

Air quality – reports (2) “Unequal exposure and unequal impacts: social vulnerability to air pollution, noise and extreme temperatures in Europe” (EEA Report No 22/2018) draws attention to the close links between social and environmental problems across Europe explored the exposure of socially deprived communities to multiple stressors in urban areas, using indicators of social vulnerability from the Urban Audit cities data for 2011-2012  data was not sufficiently fine  improved access to timely socio-economic data at higher resolutions is required

People exposed to noise inside agglomerations Information reported by Member States under the Environmental Noise Directive /2002/49/EC) Number of people exposed to different noise sources Road (major roads are also differentiated) Rail Airport Industry Reporting frequency (every 5 years) 2007, 2012, 2017 Agglomeration “agglomeration shall mean part of a territory, delimited by the Member State, having a population in excess of 100 000 persons and a population density such that the Member State considers it to be an urbanised area” Environmental Noise Directive (2002/49/EC) In practice, about 63% of agglomerations have the same delineation as Urban Audit. Major differences in CZ, FR, HU, LV, MT, NO, SI and UK.

People exposed to noise inside agglomerations https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/human/noise/noise-story-map

Urban (waste) water Several data collections/indicators exist or have been produced/are being provided, such as Water data centre Waterbase (water quantity) WISE WFD reference spatial data Urban waste water treatment indicator (CSI 024, WAT 005, based on Eurostat data “t_env_wat”), statistics/data in relation to various sizes of agglomerations Rivers and lakes in cities report But none of those information is city-specific

Urban adaptation “Urban adaptation in Europe” reports (2012 and 2016), development of urban adaptation data and parameters C3S work on climate change impact related indicators for urban areas (e.g. http://urbansis.climate.copernicus.eu/urban-sis-climate-indicators/) Intensity of UHI (micro-scale mapping) Tested for around 100 urban Audit cities So far planned as 1-off project

Urban adaptation Climate-ADAPT Urban Adaptation Map Viewer (https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/knowledge/tools/urban-adaptation): Physical parameters of cities (e.g. time series of share of green urban areas, sealed surfaces) Exposure to risks of flooding (based on JRC LISFLOOD) and forest fires (based on JRC EFFIS data) Socio-economic parameters/social vulnerability (e.g. share of elderly people)  mostly based on Urban Audit data, combined with EEA data Status of adaptation planning/preparedness (e.g. adaptation plan existing, signatories and participation to CoM, DRR initiatives)

Thank you for listening! For further questions: Andrus Meiner, Andrus.Meiner@eea.europa.eu Eva Ivits, Eva.Ivits-Wasser@eea.europa.eu Mirko Gregor, gregor@space4environment.com