Urban metabolism and open data: Opportunities and challenges for urban resource efficiency

Cities are responsible for approximately three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. Urban metabolism is a research field that studies resource use and pollution emissions of cities, which is reliant on an important process of data collection and analysis. Accessing reliable and recent data is one of the main challenges for urban metabolism studies as it can affect their accuracy and comparability to other cities. The emergence of Open Data at an urban level is an exceptional opportunity for the field. Nevertheless, Open Data also present a number of challenges before they are fully and more easily integrated in current studies. This chapter discusses the opportunities and challenges of using Open Data in urban metabolism studies and consequently to urban environmental policymaking.SCOPUS: ch.b