 Hi everyone, I'm Aristide from Metabolism of Cities and in this video I would like to share with you what is or what are our plans for 2021 for the Metabolism of Cities data hub. So in another video I have explained what the data hub is and how you can use it and based on the feedback we've had from people but also our own use of the data hub there is a number of elements that we would like to improve and add in 2021. So perhaps let me just give you a some contextual information. We are using the Metabolism of Cities data hub as a place, a central place to collect information on urban resource flows and urban pollution flows. We have been doing this type of data dashboards and data repositories for a number of years and we have been perfecting them as we go and of course you know there is some limiting factors such as our own time and our own capacity because we just don't have sufficient time to go ahead. I also want to mention that this is an open source and free data repository and data hub so we're doing this as much as we can on our spare time and if it can fit with you know some paid projects that's even better but in any case we are building this and many different updates are coming year after year so we are extremely happy that now we have a forum and we can directly, people can directly contribute as soon as they have a profile before we had to activate them in the back and now we can make some very nice visualizations as well in terms of maps, in terms of datasets so this is really exciting. However there is some elements are still missing and we're trying to figure out how to make them appear and in what order of priority. So for instance if you have ever done a material flow analysis or if you have ever looked at the study of a material flow analysis very frequently the steps are you collect the data then you analyze the data and then you start to, how you call it, well to visualize somehow the data and one of the central of course visualization technique to visualize a material flow analysis is a Sankey diagram so so far we have been most of the time collecting the data and then outsourcing the information for well the process of visualizing a Sankey diagram so we have many free tools that can do that and we have been using many of them. However we would like to see how is it possible to streamline this in our in our process so how can we within the data hub be able to collect the data and then be able to structure it in a way that semi-automatically or automatically does a Sankey diagram. So that is something that we really want to work on for for 2021. There are some other things that seem to be like very important for instance in the in the data collection perhaps in the future we would like to add like a private component so people can also upload confidential data because so far this whatever you add in the platform is open to anyone and you can only upload to the platform non-copyrighted datasets you can always make the link to where you can get a copyrighted data set but not included if that's available. There is also some other elements such as how can we downscale information from higher-up scales so a country scale or a regional scale something like that so we know very pertently that a lot of information exists at higher-up scales so if you take the country scale there is plenty of information there but at the seed scale many times this is missing and at the country scale you have the IRP data set so the International Resource Panel data set which is a material flow analysis for all of the countries in the world that go back to I think the 1970s and so we already have like a very promising data set that we would like to ingest and perhaps pre-fill some of the dashboards so it means that we know already that you know if you start your city sometimes it's a bit daunting to start this data collection task because you're facing with an empty dashboard and you need to start from scratch and you don't know where to start from and you can't even imagine what the end result is so we're thinking that perhaps if we manage to ingest some of you know a country level information and we find a way to downscale it so probably it will be either by GDP per economic sector or a number of employees or you know population whatever we know that the data of course is not going to be the most accurate possible we know that the data is what it is but at least it's a first step and then you can always find more accurate data and change it if need be or add on top or complement it so you can start with something that also would help us to you know make sure that this whole streamlining process from data collection to processing to Sankey diagram works because we know that the at the country level we have economy wide NFA data for all of the countries then we can make sure that this works so that is one thing that we would definitely would like to focus on which is you know downscaling including data data from countries and all of that another thing is well there are many cities that already have an economy wide NFA so we'd like to see what can we do with them and can we apart from our layering structure that we have now so we have context biophysical layers infrastructures and stocks and flows these help you to open up the black box so really jail spatialize information have concrete information of nodes of your system but are not structured like the economy wide NFA so we'd like perhaps to either cross these two or mix these two but at least be able to also offer you know what do you do once you have very structured information from economy wide NFA studies these exist in cities there are a couple of them and we have them in our in our library but we would like to also upload them in our system and see what can we do with it so this would be you know we have the countries we have the the economy wide NFA cities and we would like to merge this path in order to figure out what can we do with it how can we make a sanki how can we make better visualizations can we compare things as well between cities if they have used the same technique of collection or visualization so that's something else perhaps in the future there's going to be also a material balancing so far we haven't we don't have a material balancing element so ideally in the future we might be able to to include that something else that we really would like to to have is a vertical integration so what i mean with that you remember i mentioned about countries and be able to downscale things well we could also have something different which is we already have plenty of data and data sets at the city level we already have uploaded in our system many information at a provincial level or a regional level so in the case of europe that would be a nuts two or nuts three level in the u.s it would be the states or counties you know in in Switzerland it might be canton's or communes so you know many countries have different levels and you have data sets at all of these levels what we would like to do is to better integrate vertically all of this information so that you know that your city belongs to one region and then that your region belongs to one country and so once you have this either be able to visualize it or be able to draw from data from a higher upscales if that is the case so this intersection and integration a vertical integration we really help that this could enable multi-scale also analysis and comparisons but also downscaling information to closest to your city when you don't have data the last element that we would like to start mingling with is we call it an api but perhaps it's not concretely an api but find a way to collaborate with jupiter notebooks so for those who know what this is it's just a interactive way to code on python and the idea is how can we open the door to our data hub to researchers that do more you know profound and more detailed analysis so instead of you know building all of the analytical tools in-house and you know be able to do machine learning in-house and be able to do multi you know simple regressions or multiple regressions, multivariate regressions within our own tool or PCAs or whatever we would like to be able to outsource this information make the link the bridge between our data hub and you know programming so we will be this of course in the future will also help us to perhaps do some forecasting some modeling once you have the information for today perhaps you can forecast it for 2020 sorry 2030 or 2040 so we'll be able to start you know juggling a bit with this interface so these are the some of the things that we have thought more specifically there are three main things that we'll focus on so the vertical integration the MFA builder or the material flow analysis where you can really do a proper material flow analysis from collection to processing to visualization that also is you know the the sankey diagram in the integration there's also a possibility to have downscaling and lastly the API interface between you know our data hub and Jupyter notebooks so these are the three main you know construction sites that we have for 2021 what we will do is that we will have tasks for all of this small tasks big tasks there will be programming tasks they will be data collection tasks there will be data processing tasks there will be some coding uh in Jupyter tasks so in case this is something relevant for you or if you have some time we will be implementing all these tasks in the data hub so let me just show you here over here in our data hub well this is what you see in in the very beginning but we will be implementing many tasks so if you go to metabolism of cities website we have a place where we have all of the tasks that happen and these tasks can be design programming information creation etc etc so the idea is that we will be making these tasks and we'll make a link in this video in the description down below to tell you where you can find this information so if you want you can just jump in register so over here if you click you can register in case that you don't have a profile yet and you can take on board one of these actions and please help us in doing so if you have any questions as well you can leave them there if you want you can go to the forum and then just you know discuss what are some of the futures you would like to see in the future you can also tell us your feedback once using one of these tools so we're very eager to of course we're doing this not only for us but for you the the user the the citizen the the policy maker perhaps the consultant that is using our tools to to make a material flow analysis the researcher the academic that is teaching this for for students or for a master student that is seeking for a master thesis and want to use our platform so really encourage you to have a look what is there what exists already and how you can help us into building this data hub to to the next level so that's it for now and we'll see you either in the forum or in the data hub thanks a lot and see you soon cheers