Understanding Edinburgh’s Environment Through Data: Rain, Walking, and Cycling
Launching the D4CAE Dashboard
By Ebrahim Makhoul
Edinburgh is a city shaped by its environment. From its historic streets to its growing active travel network, daily life here is closely linked to weather patterns and how people move through the city. Pauline Ward and I have developed a dashboard that brings together key statistics on rainfall, walking, and cycling activity across Edinburgh in one accessible place, allowing us to better understand these connections.
We started when Pauline found perfectly suitable environmental data provided by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and Cycling Scotland. The data was processed and used for building the dashboard.
Why does this dashboard matter?
Environmental data is often scattered across multiple sources and difficult to interpret. This dashboard aims to change that by bringing together data specific to Edinburgh and presenting clear, visual insights that can help residents, planners, researchers, and policymakers understand for example how weather and active travel interact over time. Our intention is to add all the datasets that are presented in the D4CAE annual report onto the dashboard, so that updates will be available more often than once a year. So the data will be fresh! By combining rainfall data with walking and cycling activity, we can start to look at interesting questions, such as:
- How does rainfall affect active travel levels?
- Are there seasonal patterns in walking and cycling across the city?
- How do trends change year by year?
These insights could be crucial for designing healthier cities and more resilient transport systems. Understanding rainfall patterns helps contextualise changes in outdoor activity and could inform planning decisions related to infrastructure, drainage, and climate resilience. Moreover, walking and cycling are central to Edinburgh’s vision for a greener, healthier city. The dashboard highlights:
- Trends in walking and cycling activity over time
- Seasonal fluctuations in active travel
- Yearly rainfall summaries
- Long-term trends showing rainy and drier periods
The dashboard is designed to be interactive, by allowing the user to explore data by time period and activity type, transparent by being clearly sourced and regularly updated, and accessible by making it understandable for both technical and non-technical users. Whether you are a local resident, a data analyst, or a decision-maker, the dashboard offers a clear window into how Edinburgh’s environment and mobility patterns evolve over time. As data continues to grow, this dashboard can be expanded to include additional environmental and mobility indicators, helping Edinburgh move towards a more sustainable and climate-aware future. Please watch this space for more technical details on how the dashboard works. By turning data into insight, we hope this tool supports smarter decisions, healthier lifestyles, and a city that works better for both people and the environment.
We would like to issue an invitation to local climate groups - send us your data, and we’ll pop it onto the dashboard for you, in a snazzy data visualisation.
If you have any questions, ideas, or even suggestions, please get in touch as we are very open to ideas that help us understand Edinburgh’s environment better. Please contact us on the following email address: Data4ClimateActionEdinburgh@gmail.com