This page answers a question "Why it is happenning?", explaining the main causes of problems related to the ISSUE. This may be information about related human activities as such which are the Driving Forces of environmental change, e.g. the development of industry or transport, and/or about the ways these activities affect the ISSUE in a form of direct Pressures on the environment, e.g. through the emission of pollutants or the destruction of habitats. (The page corresponds to the "D-P" parts of the DPSIR framework.)

Many Driving Forces such as economic sectors will likely be described in separate chapters of the report, e.g. a report may include a separate chapter on Transport. Therefore presentation here should rather concentrate on aspects directly relevant for the ISSUE. Afterwards a user may be referred to e.g. the Transport chapter for a more comprehensive description and discussion of Transport in the City.


Presentation on this page will normally consist of text explaining the situation, and (preview) graphics such as trends, maps, diagrams etc. displaying specific indicators. For each indicator, a preview can be linked to a separate page where a full-screen graphic and information about this indicator are, ideally with links to related data tables and sources of information.

It is a challenge to reach here a balance between the amount of text and graphics (not too much or too little of either), as well as to make sure that text and graphics are not separate from each other but are used in a complementary way to explain each other.

At a later stage, a list of possible indicators for each ISSUE will be included into this tool to help CEROI cities to select or develop their own indicators for their reports. Below is an example of how a list of possible "pressure" indicators may look for the Air Quality chapter (here for illustrative purposes only):

• fossil fuel consumption (WRI 98)
• fossil fuel supply (OECD 98)
• urban traffic density as measured by car holdings per capita, vehicle miles travelled by lane mile, average travel times and number of vehicle trips (OECD Environmental indicators 97)
• economic growth (OECD 98)
• road traffic (OECD 98)
• emissions of SOx, NOX, VOCs,CO, PB,SO2 and particulate matter less than 10 microns in diameter, by source (OECD 97)
• pollution loads (ESD 95)
• air emissions from private transport (as a share of total emissions, and related intensities in kg per capita or per passanger-km and per vehicle-km) (OECD 98)
• air emissions from residential energy use (as a share of total emissions in %, and related intensitities in kg per capita and per GDP) (OECD 98)