Step 3: Analyze Historical Trends
Analyze the collected data to identify key targets for sustainability goals tailored to your community’s specific needs.
Why This is Important
Using the historical data you collected in the previous step is key to understanding trends, enabling us to craft impactful climate action plans that target the biggest climate drivers. By analyzing these trends, we can develop strategies that are not only scientifically sound but also highly relevant to the specific challenges and opportunities within your community. This ensures that our efforts are focused where they will have the greatest impact, helping to maximize the effectiveness of our climate action plans.
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Questions to Ask When Analyzing Data
When analyzing historical data, it’s crucial to ask the right questions to identify key trends and areas of focus. Here are some important questions to consider along with some example graphics.
The Importance of Local Data
Local data is incredibly powerful for crafting precise and impactful climate action plans. Here are some examples of valuable local data and how they can inform your strategies:
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Building Energy Use: Understanding the type of renewable and non-renewable energy used by local homes can make it simple to design solutions to convert more homes to renewable energy.
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Building Stock Age: Understanding the age of buildings can inform whether to prioritize new construction regulations or retrofitting existing buildings. If a significant portion of the building stock is old, energy efficiency retrofits could be prioritized to achieve quick emissions reductions.
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Resilience and Adaptation Efforts: Tree canopy coverage data can identify areas at risk of extreme heat, guiding where to plant trees or install cooling centers. This data can also inform the placement of green spaces to enhance urban resilience against heatwaves.
Sample Exercise: Addressing Air Quality Concerns Through Tree Canopy Expansion
Here’s a sample exercise we’d walk through with our clients:
We know from community outreach and historical data analysis that the biggest climate concern is air quality concerns resulting from the increase in temperatures. From the GIS database, we know that the total tree canopy cover is 8% of the city and only 2% coverage in low-income neighborhoods. How do we address this? From our CIW data, you can also find data that helps develop a targeted campaign to affect real change.
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Blanket outreach efforts limit your ability to customize messaging. Based on the information we collected, we can zoom in on the 2,000 single family homes that are located in low-income neighborhoods or the 2 square acres of downtown that people spend the majority of their time in. Those messages and delivery tactics can be very specific and will be far more successful engaging folks to action.
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Target by average income in neighborhood:
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$20,000 - $40,000 per year = 2% tree canopy cover
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$40,000 - $80,000 per year = 8%
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$80,000 per year = 15%
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Target by where people spend time:
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8,000 people live and work in the downtown circle everyday
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5,000 people go the town park every week
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Other factors for an engagement/outreach campaign:
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What rebates/incentives currently exist in your area to promote green infrastructure?
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What opportunities or volunteer organizations exist for tree preservation and replanting?
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What resources exist that you can point people to? Often times these programs are not reaching all community members or they are super complicated to understand how to apply. How can you make it easy for them.
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By thoroughly analyzing historical trends and using local data effectively, we can develop targeted and impactful climate action plans that address the specific needs and challenges of your community. This approach ensures that our efforts are data-driven and community-focused, maximizing the potential for meaningful and sustainable change.
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Next Steps
In the download below, you’ll find our template for tracking your city's historical GHG emissions and co-benefits. We have provided some example charts and data tables as a starting point for your climate dashboards and reports. Use these charts as the beginning foundation of your climate dashboard and reports before moving on to more complex analyses.
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