Data sources & bibliography

Methodology

Amalur EIS is an environmental information system that integrates and transforms public emissions data into environmental impact indicators.

The system draws on various official records of emissions and socio-economic activity, which are harmonised and processed to estimate their potential impacts on the environment. To this end, registered emissions are translated into environmental impacts by applying characterisation factors from recognised Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods [1].

In this way, Amalur EIS enables a coherent and comparable analysis of the environmental impacts associated with different human activities, territories and time periods.

Scope

The analyses carried out in Amalur EIS cover various scopes, which significantly broaden the range of possible applications:

Geographic scope

The system is focused on the European context. However, through CAMS data it is possible to access information covering, in addition to the European Union, the Mediterranean basin, Eastern Europe and Turkey. Analyses can be carried out at different NUTS territorial levels, including country, region, province, Functional Urban Areas (FUA) and even municipality, depending on data availability (specific regions can be processed on demand).

Temporal scope

Amalur EIS allows analysis of the temporal evolution of environmental impacts, drawing on the historical time series available in each data register, facilitating the study of trends and changes over time.

Analytical scope

Impacts can be visualised and analysed according to different LCIA methods and specific impact categories, as well as by pollutant emitted or by the activity sector responsible for the emissions.

This diversity of scopes makes Amalur EIS a powerful tool for the integrated study of the environmental impacts of human activity, supporting territorial, sectoral and temporal analysis from a perspective grounded in data and recognised scientific methods.

LCIA Methods

The estimation of environmental impacts in Amalur EIS is based on well-established LCIA methods widely used in the field of environmental assessment.

Specifically, the system incorporates the methods included in the package provided by openLCA Nexus (version v2.2.1) [2], which cover a broad set of environmental impact categories.

Additionally, the Environmental Footprint (EF) method version 3.1 [3], developed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, is applied with normalisation and weighting steps [4], enabling the derivation of aggregated indicators and facilitating the comparison of environmental impacts across activities, sectors and territories.

The use of these LCIA methods enables the assessment of impacts across multiple environmental categories (such as climate change, acidification, toxicity, eutrophication, among others) arising from different human activities.

Data sources

Amalur EIS is fed by public registers and high-quality official databases. The data sources currently processed are as follows (the system is open to incorporating new sources in the future):

E‑PRTR [5]

European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register. Version v18 [6] of the database is used, which contains detailed information on emissions to air, water and soil from industrial installations and other relevant economic activities in Europe, disaggregated by pollutant, activity sector and geographic location, from 2007 to 2022.

ECCAD / CAMS [7]

Emissions of atmospheric Compounds & Compilation of Ancillary Data. In particular, the CAMS‑REG‑ANT [8] database version v8.1 [9] is used. ECCAD is the distribution platform for many emission datasets generated by CAMS, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service of the European Union [10]. This database provides inventories of anthropogenic diffuse atmospheric emissions with high spatial and sectoral resolution.

Eurostat [11]

Official socio-economic data that allow emissions and environmental impacts to be contextualised, as well as comparative analyses across territories and over time.

Bibliography

  1. Rosenbaum, R.K. et al. (2018). Life Cycle Impact Assessment. In: Hauschild, M., Rosenbaum, R., Olsen, S. (eds) Life Cycle Assessment. Springer, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-56475-3_10
  2. GreenDelta / openLCA Nexus, "openLCA LCIA Methods", Nexus — openLCA. Online. Accessed: 26 Jan 2026.
  3. Andreasi Bassi S., Biganzoli F., Ferrara N., Amadei A., Valente A., Sala S., Ardente F., Updated characterisation and normalisation factors for the Environmental Footprint 3.1 method. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2023, doi:10.2760/798894, JRC130796.
  4. Sala S., Crenna E., Secchi M., Pant, R., Global normalisation factors for the Environmental Footprint and Life Cycle Assessment, EUR (28984), Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2017, ISBN 978-92-79-77213-9, doi:10.2760/88930, JRC109878.
  5. European Environment Agency (EEA), European Industrial Emissions Portal — Industrial emissions data and information. Online. Accessed: 26 Jan 2026.
  6. European Environment Agency, Industrial Reporting under the Industrial Emissions Directive 2010/75/EU and European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register Regulation (EC) No 166/2006 — ver. 10.0 Dec 2023. Online. Accessed: 26 Jan 2026.
  7. AERIS/SEDOO, ECCAD-2 — Emissions of atmospheric Compounds and Compilation of Ancillary Data project. Online. Accessed: 26 Jan 2026.
  8. Kuenen, J., Dellaert, S., Visschedijk, A., Jalkanen, J.-P., Super, I., and Denier van der Gon, H.: CAMS-REG-v4: a state-of-the-art high-resolution European emission inventory for air quality modelling, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 491–515, doi:10.5194/essd-14-491-2022, 2022.
  9. Kuenen, J., Dellaert, S., Visschedijk, A., Jalkanen, J.-P., Super, I. and Denier van der Gon, H. Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service regional emissions version 5.1 business-as-usual 2020 (CAMS-REG-v5.1 BAU 2020). Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service [publisher] ECCAD [distributor], doi:10.24380/eptm-kn40, 2021. Available: ECCAD. Accessed: 26 Jan 2026.
  10. Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, About us. Online. Accessed: 26 Jan 2026.
  11. Eurostat, Database — Explore and download European statistics. Online. Accessed: 26 Jan 2026.