Prior to the publication of the project, essential environmental data for the City of Helsinki was scattered throughout in several sources. Environmental researchers, educators and decision makers were not easily able to access real time information of the state of Helsinki’s environment.

As part of the Environment Centre, the project’s aim was to create a database that would ease the availability of real-time environmental data, and set benchmarks for the overall state of Helsinki’s environment, in order to facilitate future monitoring programmes.  

Data for several hundred environmental and sustainable development indicators was organised into 12 main themes including; traffic, water quality and air quality. The indicator data is presented in tables that can be modified by users. In addition, data for each of the 12 themes is presented in a professional summary table, that is linked to individual indictor data.  The data can be statistically modified on the site, or downloaded in several formats, such as Excel, for further analysis by users. The data is also available in graph and map form.

Comprehensive environmental statistics include twelve main themes with several hundred indicators in tables, graphs and maps. The main themes include traffic, waters and air quality and data includes all essential indicators of sustainable development.

The main result of the project was a publicly available, internet-based electronic database of environmental and sustainable development statistics for the City of Helsinki, with some comparisons to other cities. The database will be updated annually and will be partial translated into English and Swedish by 2008. The database can be found at www.helsinginymparistotilasto.fi

The main target groups are Helsinki City employees, politicians, experts, students and citizens interested in environmental matters.

In the year prior to the publication of the database, the project employed a full-time environmental planner and several experts from the Helsinki Urban Facts Centre were also employed on a part-time basis to solve the technical problems. The Environment Centre spent about €20,000 in consulting fees and will spend €3,500 annually to update the electronic database and internet application.

Helsinki Environment Centre
Helsinki
Finland
Phone: +358 9 310 28905
Petteri Huuska (Coordinator, Environmental planner), tel. +358 9 310 28905

20/03/2006

28/08/2007

case

Urban Policy > Urban environment

Environmental sustainability