Measuring the Environmental Performance of Metropolitan Areas with Geographic Information Sources

This paper presents recent work undertaken at the OECD to produce environmental indicators at the regional level from geographic data sources. New indicators have been tested and produced in five different domains: a) land cover, b) forest ecosystems, c) urban density, d) CO2 emissions, e) air quality. The indicators measure the environmental performance of administrative regions (OECD TL2 and TL3 regions) and of OECD metropolitan areas. High-quality geographic datasets have been combined and harmonized with the objectives of producing internationally comparable results, and of achieving the largest possible coverage of OECD and non-OECD countries. The results show that geographic information data are a key and underexploited resource for monitoring the state of local environmental assets. There are still methodological and measurement challenges in the use of geographic data for the analysis of environmental changes at the local level. More coordination across national and international programs producing geographic data is needed to further increase their policy relevance.