Data Collection for Understanding Urban Goods Movement - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 73

the reason for the data collection, the frequency of data collection, the type of data
collected, sample size and units of measurement used.
The responses provided by the freight experts were used to distinguish the types
of urban freight data collected in each of the eleven countries surveyed, and it was
possible to identify several key points:
• The range and quantity of urban freight data varies substantially between (and
even within) countries.
• The regularity with which urban freight data is collected also varies between
countries and between types of data. In some cases, data is collected on a
continuous basis as part of a national government survey while, at the other
extreme, data is sometimes only collected in a single one-off survey that is never
repeated.
• The body responsible for organising the data collection also varies depending
on the type of urban freight data in question. In many cases the data is collected
by the public sector (either by a tier of government or by academics as part of a
research project). However, in some cases (especially with data concerning
operating costs, the structure of the freight transport and logistics industry, thefts
from goods vehicles, freight activity using non-road modes, and goods vehicle
data from vehicle tracking systems) private sector organisations are responsible
for data collection. Such organisations can include individual companies, trade
associations, chambers of commerce, insurance groups etc.
• In the case of data collected by public sector organisations, the tier of gov-
ernment at which the data collection takes place can vary. Some data is collected
by national government (especially that data required to be collected by EU
legislation—such as goods vehicle activity data), some is collected by regional
government, and some is collected by urban/municipal authorities.
• It is not always the case, but urban freight data collected by national government
is often collected on an on-going basis, while some of the freight data collected
by urban authorities takes place on a one-off basis as part of a specific study.
• In some cases, freight data collected at an urban level is collected in all urban
areas within a country (e.g. traffic count data). However, in other cases it is only
collected in one or several urban areas (especially when it is collected as part of
a specific study).
• Urban freight data that is collected by national governments as part of contin-
uous or occasional national survey work needs to be disaggregated from the
overall dataset in order to be useful for urban freight analysis. The level of
difficulty involved in disaggregating urban data from national freight datasets
varies depending on how the data has been collected and coded. In some cases,
disaggregation is not possible.
Table 1 contains a summary and comparison of this information for all eleven
countries. There are two columns in the table for each country. The first col-
umn indicates whether or not such urban freight data is collected. The second
column indicates the level at which this data is collected (national, regional or
urban government, or collected by commercial organisation). In the rows showing