The ABCD 2025 Report - The making of

I am thrilled and delighted to see this group’s ABCD report announced on the ECCAN website. Please see our new Publications page where you can find it. The report is in HTML format for accessibility, but there is also a PDF version available for portability, and a DOI for long-term discoverability.

The report describes a bunch of data about climate action and climate impacts affecting Edinburgh. Six months’ work has gone into this fairly exhausting but far from exhaustive document! I want to thank all the friends and volunteers who kindly provided input and feedback, resulting in a much higher quality overall, and without whom it most certainly would never, ever have gotten finished. Ever!

The main goal was to showcase what D4CAE can do for the climate action groups working in Edinburgh. This group exists to help groups working to reduce the city’s carbon footprint, or to help the city adapt to climate change, including those working to support biodiversity in and around Edinburgh. The report is an illustration of our capabilities in things like:

  • data storytelling (you asked, and we answered!)
  • data visualisation (eg the bicycle wheels scatter plot drawn with R, and the graphite grey carbon footprint line graphs produced with Excel; NB we have volunteers who use Python, Power BI and Tableau Public too)
  • data analysis (yes we found, sifted and commented on infographics from the Met Office and University of Reading)

bicycle wheels plot

Another aim was to make climate change feel relevant to people in their local area, to things they care about. Today 5th of June, UN World Environment Day, I think this finished report will do that. Some of the eye-catching points:

  • the city is one degree warmer than it was in the 1980s
  • the council’s own carbon footprint was falling, but progress has slowed to a standstill
  • the flood risk in the area around Waverley station is high
  • the flood risk around Leith shore area is high
  • the city has suffered a dangerous, severe weather event in the shape of Storm Eowyn

I wanted to start conversations, and encourage people to get involved in climate action. This approach was totally inspired by Professor Katharine Hayhoe’s work (and particularly her excellent book: “Saving Us”). Oftentimes conversations about climate change can quickly turn gloomy. But the antidote is the focus on the good climate action that individuals, groups, businesses and public sector are taking around the city. ECCAN is boosting the skills base for that action to happen, and gives us a window to see it, and take inspiration from it.

I can confirm that my plan now is to carry on, with this as an annual report. Potentially in next year’s report we may:

  • get more volunteers involved (top priority, phew!)
  • add a biodiversity element
  • look at more of the available Edinburgh data, to get a fuller picture
  • try to complete the report a bit earlier in the year

It would be cool if we could do more mapping (this was a significant technical challenge, as we’ve documented, so it’s certainly an area for potential upskilling).

However, an even higher priority is to make a concrete difference by providing help to climate action groups. We always see an ebb and flow of new members joining with skills they want to apply, and groups asking us to help with projects. And we usually manage to match them reasonably well. We can offer help with everything from calculating a carbon footprint to drawing up a data sharing agreement. This annual report provides lots of new options for volunteers as to how they can contribute to the group and stay engaged. I’d be delighted to get some help with the gathering of data, number-crunching, comparing, mapping, drafting, editing, and potentially covering different aspects of climate. And some of the analyses can be done in advance, as stand-alone projects, resulting in blogposts. Or even, in an ideal world, a dashboard. Not making any promises! I myself want to learn more RShiny, so that’s a big motivating factor for me. And there’s no shame in volunteers building skills along the way, that’s the name of the game nowadays. But if anyone wants to help me with it, give me a shout!

Speaking of socials, I’ve created a new BlueSky account for D4CAE. Give us a follow!

If you’re part of a climate or biodiversity voluntary group or charity in Edinburgh, and you’d like us to provide some data support, please email me on data4climateactionedinburgh@gmail.com . We’d love to hear from you.

If you’d like to join the D4CAE mailing list, and/or volunteer to help with any of the kind of activities I’ve talked about, please drop me an email on data4climateactionedinburgh@gmail.com you’ll be most welcome.

Finally, 2024 was a tough year for me. I’d really like to thank my friends, family and volunteers for sustaining me and D4CAE through it. I’m very glad to be back, permanently settled in beautiful, inspiring Edinburgh. Carrying on the climate effort feels tough sometimes, but always worth it, for the camaraderie and the sense of hope. We must keep the light of optimism in our hearts.

Pauline Ward
Founder, Data 4 Climate Action Edinburgh

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Image credit: adapted from work by PixLoger on Pixabay https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red-Heart-vector-2731436.svg