An ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine will develop a framework for evaluating global anthropogenic greenhouse gas information to support decision making. Specifically, the committee will:

• Describe approaches used to develop global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions inventories, including the use of surveys, continuous emissions monitoring systems, monitoring fuel sales, self-reported data, ground- and airborne-based measurements, satellite-based remote sensing data, artificial intelligence and computer vision, proxy and activity data, crowd sourcing, inverse modeling, additional sources of emissions information, and data fusion approaches.
• Discuss the potential uses and limitations of these approaches, including issues related to:
  • developing global emissions inventories for all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions;
  • the independence, transparency, granularity, internal consistency, comparability, and completeness of data sources;
  • measures of accuracy and uncertainty of the modeling and analytic tools used to interpret and extrapolate available data;
  • potential biases introduced by limitations in data availability, model design, or analytic frameworks; and,
  • synthesis, integration, and dynamic updates of the best available information.
• Provide a framework to evaluate emissions information and inventories, including guidance for policy makers about their use in decision making.
• Present several case studies to demonstrate how the framework could be applied to evaluate emissions information and inventory approaches and identify strengths and opportunities for improvement for each case study.
• To the extent possible, identify ways to improve methodological transparency, sustainability and continuity of relevant observations, and product confidence in global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions inventories, including key data gaps that could be addressed, improvements needed in models and analytical tools, and opportunities for collaboration among data providers, researchers, regulatory agencies, and decision-makers.