Germany's Pilot Activity: Climate City Dash 2.0
Background
Dortmund, Heidelberg, and Munich have independently explored and identified the ClimateOS platform as a promising tool to advance their transition to climate neutrality. While the cities differ greatly in regards to size, history, urban, and economic fabric, they share a common challenge around data governance as a key issue for implementing the EU Cities Mission with local stakeholders. Therefore, leveraging ClimateOS as a common tool, each city publicises their current climate data, planned actions, and pathways to climate neutrality in a user-friendly and interactive manner at the start of the pilot activity (Dashboard 1.0). Each city then implements an intensive, scenario-based backcasting and governance process with key stakeholders to identify high-impact climate action.
Description of Activities
- Iterative development of data dashboards as a backbone for governance in Dortmund, Heidelberg, and Munich, based on a phased approach: data entry, dashboard design and stakeholder-based enhancement.
- Stakeholder engagement and data governance process to map and engage stakeholders in the data governance process. A key target group in all three cities is private sector stakeholders and local businesses.
- Capacity development for data governance, project preparation, and finance to capacitate and empower stakeholders to use data governance for climate action. Participants will be trained in project preparation, funding and financing, as well as project management.
Objectives
The German Mission cities Dortmund, Heidelberg, and Munich join forces to create data-driven climate governance processes with stakeholders and change agents from the private sector and civil society around user-friendly and interactive climate dashboards.
Are cities building upon or part of a previous and/or existing activity?
Dortmund, Heidelberg, and Munich independently decided in the last few years to test and implement the ClimateOS platform, developed by ClimateView (a project partner), as a tool to accelerate their transition to climate neutrality.
The platform stands on a science-based framework underpinning the algorithms and data configuration. The framework builds on a harmonisation of science, IPCC models, and physics. Its components, called Transition Elements, enable society-wide scenarios through an outcome-focused logic, integrating studies of behaviour, and economics. This enables quantifiable and measurable strategies, monitoring, and reporting. The core of the platform, which will also be applied in the Climate City Dash 2.0, is the outcome logic. It provides city planners and stakeholders with a robust methodology to define impactful interventions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create other co-benefits, supporting the vision of a liveable, sustainable, and net carbon-free city.
Which emissions domains will the pilot activity address?
Systemic transformation – levers of change the pilot activities will exploit
Stakeholder types that cities would like to engage in the pilot activities
Transferable features of pilot activities to a Twin City/ies
- Climate City Dash 2.0 will provide invaluable experience in creating an effective interface between data monitoring in local governments and the wider ecosystem of business, civil society, research, and citizens.
- The co-created climate actions and project ideas resulting from Climate City Dash 2.0 in Dortmund, Heidelberg, and Munich would be transferable to any European city developing climate action plans and seeking effective and measurable climate mitigation ideas.
This answer is not exhaustive and simply an indicative one.
Enabling conditions that will support the successful replication of your pilot activities in the Twin City
- Cities planning to establish a data-driven governance process, and willing to build strong mandates for local stakeholder ecosystems to co-create climate actions by establishing a common, quantitative knowledge basis, empowering engaged stakeholders as agents of change. Since the approach of the pilot is not dependent on a specific digital infrastructure solution, all cities in a similar development stage are potential candidates for peer exchange.
- Transferability will vary by commitment to climate neutrality, geography, ecosystem of stakeholders, and other factors. However, the specific climate actions created via Climate City Dash 2.0 will demonstrate effectiveness along the NetZeroCities standardised indicators in quantitative and measurable terms, providing inspiration to communities that lack the means to set up their own quantitative impact measurement.
This answer is not exhaustive and simply an indicative one.
What do cities want to learn from Twin City/ies?
- How to best setup dashboards with actionable information, relevant to private businesses and, in particular, SMEs.
- How to deal with imperfect and unavailable data and comparing the impact logic and data models embedded within the dashboards.
- Concrete offers and value proposition for private sector stakeholders to participate in data governance and to act on decarbonisation.
- The biggest barriers to private sector engagement and how to overcome them.
This answer is not exhaustive and simply an indicative one.