This database was made possible by the Arctic Partnerships in International Research and Education (PIRE) research collaboration, a National Science Foundation-funded project focused on promoting urban sustainability in the Arctic.
By making this database open and accessible to the public, we also hope to share the knowledge gathered and produced from Arctic PIRE as well as gain input from Arctic residents, public officials, and researchers in order to improve upon the data where more sound metrics and sources exist and are available to us.
By making this database open and accessible to the public, we also hope to share the knowledge gathered and produced from Arctic PIRE as well as gain input from Arctic residents, public officials, and researchers in order to improve upon the data where more sound metrics and sources exist and are available to us.
About the Data: Domains
The database is organized by 19 domains of sustainability along the guidelines of the International Standard ISO 37120:2018 Sustainable cities and communities - Indicators for city services and quality of life. The domains include:
The database is organized by 19 domains of sustainability along the guidelines of the International Standard ISO 37120:2018 Sustainable cities and communities - Indicators for city services and quality of life. The domains include:
About the Data: Methodology
Our database revolves around the aforementioned international standard (ISO 37120:2018). Over the course of two and a half years, our researchers on our team have collected and calculated data to populate this ISO framework and produce urban sustainability indicators for 46 cities. Sources of these indicators include local and national statistical databases, municipal reports, journal articles, and in some cases, we got data from personal outreach. Where city-level data was not available, we looked for county, regional, and as a last resort, national-level data. While these factors, among others, bring up concerns on data integrity and scale, we hope our dataset contributes to the growing discussions of Arctic urban sustainability in the global context.
The Current Situation in the Arctic
The Arctic is rapidly changing across the natural, built, and social environments in ways that are demanding a response in order to preserve and promote the sustainability of the cities in which the largest and growing proportion of the Arctic population lives.
Natural environmental changes include thawing permafrost, increasing wildfires, more flooding, growing health concerns, warming oceans, and threatened wildlife. These changes are putting intense stress on the existing populations as well as governance systems that are attempting to ensure prosperity for the increasingly diverse populations.
Arctic communities and their leaders need sophisticated measures to understand the changes taking place in the natural world and reliable techniques to transform that data into effective design solutions. Arctic communities need a database that demonstrates the sustainable development of Arctic cities.
What's New
One of the most important features of the Arctic Urban Database is that we encourage the broader public to let us know, via the Contact Us page, of holes or inconsistencies within the data. Our goal is to ensure the data is efficient, accurate, and reliable! Through the What's New page, users can keep track of new updates made to existing data, new data that is added to the Database, & any significant updates to the website .
Our Partners
