Reporting tools and format for the 2012 data collection on WStatR (reference year 2010)

Transcription

1 EUROPEAN COMMISSION EUROSTAT Directorate E: Sectoral and regional statistics Unit E-3: Environment and forestry Doc. WASTE WG 01(2012) Original in EN, available only in EN Point 3.2 of the agenda Reporting tools and format for the 2012 data collection on WStatR (reference year 2010) Eurostat Unit E3 Environment and forestry Meeting of the Working Group "Statistics of the Environment" Sub-Group "Waste" Joint Eurostat/EFTA group Meeting of 29 and 30 March 2012 JMO Building M1

2 Contents of this document This document addresses different aspects of the format and standards according to which reporting countries are asked to submit their data and quality reports on reference year 2010 by 30 June There have been various changes of tools and formats. The following chapters of this document give an overview of the new or changed elements. Eurostat will provide the data transmission tools (web forms, SDMX converter) that will enable reporting countries to send the 2010 data in the required format. The new data transmission tools cannot be used for data revisions for reference years 2004 to A pragmatic solution using Excel will be suggested. NUTS 2010 is the newest version of the classification of territorial units. All regional data reported to Eurostat have to be in line with this version since 1/1/2012. There are some minor changes that affect a few Member States. There is a new template for the quality report to be submitted with the 2010 data. Changes compared with the previous quality report template will be explained. SDMX for data transmission for reference year 2010 Tables and tools for data transmission At the previous Working Group meeting in March 2011, Eurostat announced new tools for data reporting following the general strategy to introduce the SDMX standard for the exchange of statistical datasets. Eurostat offers three ways to Member States to generate the required SDMX-ML files (XML files compliant with the SDMX standard). 1. Generating the files directly from a database, using own software programs, 2. Generating data files e.g. in comma separated (CSV) or tab separated (TSV) format and converting them to SDMX-ML using the "SDMX converter", a software application available for free from Eurostat, 3. Entering data in an edamis web form where the data volume allows it. In spring 2011, Eurostat designed the metadata definitions for the new datasets, i.e. new standard code list, based on which the DSDs (data structure definitions) for the SDMX datasets were defined. These DSDs formed the basis for the development of edamis webforms

3 To make the regional table on waste treatment facilities and their capacities readable in a web form, it has been split into two for this purpose. "REGIO1" covers recovery and incineration and "REGIO2" covers landfills, on which different data are collected according to the Regulation: Recovery and Incineration: number of facilities, capacity in tonnes Landfill sites: number of facilities, closed facilities, rest capacity in cubic metres. According to the file naming convention of the edamis datasets, the webforms now have the following names: WASTE_GENER_A2 WASTE_TREATM_A2 WASTE_REGIO1_A2 WASTE_REGIO2_A2 As the breakdown by waste category is now identical for all treatment operations, one table for the treatment data (WASTE_TREATM_A2) now replaces the three tables used before with different breakdowns. As an alternative to the web forms, reporting countries can use the tool SDMX Converter, which is available for download. This tool converts flat files in CSV or tab-separated format to SDMX-ML file, which can then be sent to Eurostat via edamis. A guidance document on how to report the WStatR data to Eurostat using either the webforms or SDMX Converter is available on CIRCA, as well as other relevant document and manuals: reporting/2012_collection&vm=detailed&sb=title Reporting on the population served by a waste collection scheme The revised WStatR requires that the percentage of the population served by a collection scheme for mixed household waste and similar waste is no longer reported at regional level, but only at national level. When Eurostat designed the code lists and structures of the new reporting tables, it became evident that this single value was difficult to integrate into the "REGIO" tables, where they had been reported previously. The SDMX metadata structure requires that code lists, which define the 'dimensions' (rows, columns) of our reporting tables, are based consistently on one concept. A geographical code list describes only countries and regions; the NACE code list describes only economic activities, etc. The population coverage however does not fit into any of the concepts / dimensions used in the WStatR data collection

4 The solution to this problem is that reporting countries are now asked to provide the percentage of the population served by a waste collection scheme in table 8 (item 1.7) of the Quality Report, with the title "Determination methods for waste generated by households". Workshop on data transmission and SDMX in November 2011 On November 2011, Eurostat offered a workshop on data transmission and the use of the SDMX standard for the WStatR data collection. The purpose was to explain the basics of the SDMX standard and the related tools, to show the newly drafted web forms to country delegates and to obtain feedback on the suggested data transmission tools. The design and functionality of the webforms were well received. There was a tendency among participants to use webforms rather than SDMX converter for the data transmission. However, both options are equally possible and data providers can choose the tool that best fits their preferences. Workshop participants made the following suggestions concerning the automatic calculations of totals in the webforms. A column "NACE total" should be added to the table on waste generation (GENER). As values in rows cannot be added up automatically to fill the "NACE total" column, data providers will be able to fill in the NACE totals and have them checked in a validation rule. A column "treatment total" should be added to the table on waste treatment (TREATM) for optional use. Data providers will be able to fill in the totals, but there is no obligation. In both tables, GENER and TREATM, "hazardousness totals" will remain in the webforms for automatic calculation. Revision of the webforms The first two suggestions above were based on the limitation that totals of the columns in a row could not be calculated automatically at the time of the workshop. An update of the web form software now offers this functionality. Therefore, the revised webforms now calculate the NACE total (including households) in GENER and the treatment total in TREATM, without the possibility to edit them. This should ensure that these sums are always correct and that no inconsistencies as in previous data collections can occur. In the REGIO tables, it has been decided not to aggregate the NUTS 2 values to the NUTS 1 level and the NUTS 1 level to the national level automatically. Reporting countries will be asked to fill in these results themselves. The reason is that there are known cases where inconsistencies between the regional and national level exist and are accepted. However, the correctness of these aggregates is checked, and inconsistencies, if any, have to be explained in a short justification, for which a text field opens automatically

5 Participants of the Working Group meeting are invited to comment on these changes. Revision of data for reference year 2004 to 2008 The new table formats in the webforms, which are also implemented in SDMX Converter, are based on the changed reporting requirements and breakdowns according to the new Waste Statistics Regulation. The changes have already been presented and discussed in the previous Working Group meetings. The new reporting tools no longer offer the possibility to report revised data for reference years 2004, 2006 and 2008 in the format according to the old WStatR. The question arises how data revisions, if necessary, for these reference years should be reported to Eurostat in the future. One theoretical option would be to use the new reporting format also for revisions of previous reference years. Even if reporting countries can provide revisions in the new format, the problem would be that this practice would lead to an inconsistent availability of data in the different breakdowns. Revised data would be available in the new format, while the data for countries that do not revise any data from 2004 to 2008 would remain available in the old breakdowns. This would make the database confusing to the user and would limit comparability of data across countries. Another option would be to keep using the old "Edawaste" data entry sheets in Excel. This option however has turned out to be cumbersome. In case of revisions, the last previous version of the Excel file has to be found; once it is filled in, a complicated reading and transcoding program has to be run in Eurostat's production database to convert datasets to the valid code lists and to convert data from NACE Rev. 1.1 to NACE Rev. 2 for the years 2004 and The suggested solution for managing revisions up to 2008 is that Eurostat will extract simple Excel tables from the WStatR database that correspond to the design of the old WStatR and that contain the current data. Reporting countries will be able to modify these Excel tables and send them back to Eurostat, where the table contents can be copied and pasted back into the database. This solution would not be in line with Eurostat's general policy to use SDMX tools for data transmission. It would however be a pragmatic solution to make revisions before 2010 as easy as possible, on the assumption that revisions are the exception rather than the rule. Participants of the Working Group meeting are invited to comment on this suggestion

6 NUTS 2010 classification for regional tables Since the last WStatR data collection there have been some changes to the NUTS classification of territorial units. Member States are supposed to use the last version NUTS 2010 for all reporting to Eurostat since 1 st January Changes to the NUTS classification can affect the regional tables (REGIO1 and REGIO2 in the webforms), where NUTS level 2 is used and where reporting countries are asked to provide data also at NUTS 1 and national level. NUTS 2010 will be implemented already in the web forms REGIO1 and REGIO2, so that data can be reported only in the currently valid version of NUTS. There are a few splits, mergers, boundary shifts or label changes at NUTS level 1 or 2, which affect the following countries: Germany Italy Finland The United Kingdom These four Member States are invited to examine whether the data on waste facilities are available in the NUTS 2010 breakdown for the data delivery to Eurostat. The annexed Excel table documents in detail all NUTS codes and labels and their changes from version 2006 to version There is a code change for Greece, whose country code GR is being replaced with EL, representing instead of Greece. As this is only a code change but not a structural change, it can be neglected at least if the web forms are used for reporting. The web forms will use the correct codes, because NUTS 2010 has already been implemented there. Quality Report: Word template Eurostat has modified the template for the quality report, which reporting countries are asked to submit with the WStatR data on The new Word template is annexed to this document. The template has been extended or changed as follows: Following the workshop on mining waste of October 2011, there is 1 NUTS 2010 is available in the form of a publication ( EN.PDF) and on the classification server RAMON (

7 o a new section in part 1, chapter 5, on the coverage of specific extractive waste material (topsoil, overburden, waste rock, tailings) and o a question on the allocation of waste from mining and quarrying activities to NACE sections B or C. The percentage of the population served by a collection scheme for mixed household waste and similar waste is to be reported in item 1.7 of table 8, as it does not fit into the SDMX structure of the data tables (see above). Part 1, chapter 6, on major changes now gives a few instructions on what kind of changes should be reported. In part 1, chapter 7, on specific issues concerning the data collection on reference year 2010 reporting countries are asked to describe problems that may have resulted from the revision of the annexes of the Waste Statistics Regulation taking effect from reference year 2010 onwards. The former questions on the implementation of NACE Rev. 2 have been dropped as they concerned reference year Various corrections and alignments have been made in codes and labels used in the tables of the quality report. Reporting countries are asked to send the quality reports to Eurostat via edamis as usual