Comparison of transport footprints

Fetch the average transport footprint for a person living in a given area. This can be used to compare footprints between areas, or look at the change in an area’s transport footprint over time.

All inputs, outputs and defaults can be seen in the Compare Transport technical API docs. Data can also be delivered as a CSV file, but please note there will be some differences when compared to API output.

Inputs

Required:

  • areaID: a single basic statistical unit  or municipality for which you wish to retrieve indicators. Documentation on valid areaIDs can be found here.

Optional:

  • dataFromDate: the date for which you wish to receive data from. Defaults to the current date, which will yield the most recent dataset we have available
  • timeRange: the time range the indicators should be returned for. The default is for a calendar month, with (calendar) year as an option. The yearly option returns the total footprint for the whole year.

Output

The endpoint returns:

  • Area information: areaID, name and parentID (the parent of the area)
  • Footprint,  in kgCO2e, divided by purpose
    • Boat: work & other
    • Bus: work & other
    • Plane: work & other
    • Private vehicles: work & other (note: excludes motorbikes)
    • Train: work & other

Calculations


The transport footprint of an area is calculated by multiplying the kilometres travelled per mode of transport and purpose, with emissions factors. The kilometres travelled are extracted from the transport indicator data, as specified in the Track Transport endpoint, which can be referred to for data source documentation. Emissions factor to compute the carbon footprint are  as documented in the Convert Transport endpoint - please refer to this page for more information on the sources.