Climate measures are the building blocks of any climate plan. Futureproofed allows you to choose from a library of predefined measures to help you get started with your climate plan. This article explains how standard measures are calculated for the Futureproofed library.

We use the following 3-step journey to calculate new measures:

The journey starts with finding relevant and impactful climate measures that have the potential to help your city to reduce its emissions. We scout these kinds of measures (policies, technologies, projects, ...) in specialised reports such as the Rocky Mountain Institute handbook. We also look at what works in our own online community.

Before spending time on developing a measure, we first investigate its compatibility with our current library of measures. We also describe the generals of the measure such as the mitigation sector, description and Key Performance Indicator (KPI). A key element here is identifying the impact of the measure versus the Business-as-Usual scenario. We also note down potential synergies or tradeoffs with other measures.

Once we got the "big picture" of a promising measure, we proceed to calculate the carbon and financial savings. The KPI defined previously is used as a basic calculation unit.

The calculations focus on determining the difference between implementing the measure and the Business-as-Usual scenario. For example the measure "Modal shift to biking/walking" is calculated by assessing the reduction in energy use by replacing usage of cars with cycling or walking. The assumptions made for this measure, such as considering a reduction of mileage in petrol and diesel vehicles only, are written down in the background section of the given measure.

As you might imagine, we use a diverse type of parameters. Some measures need more specific data points. We record the source and location of each parameter, which is helpful for you to get transparency. As a good practice, we also make sure that somebody audits every calculation so that the risk of errors is minimised.

Once we have calculated the carbon and financial impact of the measure, we're ready to code it in Futureproofed and make it available for your city. Relevant measures are coded in the tool so that the impact in carbon and financial savings is adjusted to the geographical location of your city.

When coding, we also make sure to add a background section, add the relevant co-benefits and translate the measure to the supported languages. We also add the measure to a suggested profile of cities, so next time you want to add a measure we will suggest the suitable ones for your city size.

Remember, you can always fine-tune the measure to fit your specific context once added to your plan. Curious how to discover the current library of measures?

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Do you need help to adjust a measure and follow up on it? This Help Centre article will tell you how.

Do you want to create your own measure from scratch? This Help Centre article will guide you though it.