mboura/UCB: High Resolution Urban Carbon Balance (UCB) Model

Authors: Marlène Boura and Geoffrey Caruso With the High Resolution Urban Carbon Balance (UCB) Model, we propose a method to obtain disaggregated estimates for CO2 emissions, sequestration and balance. The method is built on three types of data: land use, sectoral emissions and sequestration parameters. In addition, factors of temporal decomposition are applied. It aims at being easily replicable for a large number of areas (for instance cities) at one or multiple time periods. We developed estimates of anthropogenic carbon emissions and natural carbon sequestration at a spatial resolution of 1 ha and with annual, monthly and daily temporal resolutions. The European UBC dataset is available for 802 European functional urban areas (FUAs). The High Resolution UCB Model allows to: (1) downscale CO2 emissions per sector over space and time, (2) simulate the spatial dispersion of CO2 molecules over a day, (3) simulate the sequestration which has been estimated for a year and then downscaled over time. Urban carbon budgets are then computed for each dispersion parameters. The carbon balance is then expressed in two ways: in absolute terms (total amount sequestered over a given period) and in relative terms (percentage of emissions sequestered over a given period)