Summary

This report is a manual for the Quality Control and Quality Assurance of greenhouse gas emission inventories performed by the Danish National Environmental Research Institute (NERI). This version 1 will be tested during 2005 and 2006. Major changes in the procedure may prove necessary for the next version after the testing period. The manual is in accordance with the guidelines provided by the UNFCCC and the Good Practice Guidance and Uncertainty Management in National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (IPCC) with some extensions. The ISO 9000 standards are also used as important input for the structure of the manual. The work with quality is sub divided into the following elements:

1. Quality Management, that co-ordinates activity to direct and control with regard to quality.

2. Quality Planning, in where quality objectives are defined including specification of necessary operational processes and resources to fulfil the quality objectives.

3. Quality Control, that secures fulfilling of quality requirements.

4. Quality Assurance that provides confidence for fulfilment of quality requirements.

5. Quality Improvement that increases the ability to fulfil quality requirements.

In the ISO 9000, the term quality relates to the fulfilment of requirements, where the requirements are generated from need or expectations as stated by either organizations, customers or interested parties. The organizations can be seen as the international community. The requirements from the international community are assumed to be reflected in the UNFCCC and The Good Practice Guidance and Uncertainty Management in National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (IPCC).

A solid and clear definition of when the quality is sufficient is an essential platform for the Quality Management. However, such a definition is missing in the UNFCCC guidelines. The standard of the inventory result is defined as being composed of the accuracy and regulatory usefulness. The goal is to maximise the standard of the inventory and the following statement defines the quality objective:

The quality objective is only inadequately fulfilled if it is possible to make an inventory of higher standard without exceeding the frame of resources.

This statement does not secure that the inventory provides results of a sufficient standard for the end-user. If the standard is judged to be unsatisfactory by the end-user on one hand while the Quality Assurance shows the quality to be sufficient on the other hand, then a demand for additional resources for inventory work exists. If this is the case the resource responsible authorities should to be consulted.

The Quality Planning is based on the data flow in the inventory. The flow of data has to take place in a transparent way by making the transformation of data detectable. It is important that it is easy to find the original data background for any calculation and easy to trace the sequence of calculations from the raw data to the final emission result.

The objectives for the Quality Management, as formulated by IPCC Good Practise and the UNFCCC guideline, are to improve elements of transparency, consistency, comparability, completeness and accuracy. Two other factors are included in this manual as important: (1) Robustness of the inventory in relation to change in conditions like staff and external data availability. (2) Correctness of the data handling by elimination of miscalculation.

The means for the Quality Planning have to be detailed measurable checkpoints imbedded through out all activities in the inventory and they are denoted Point of Measurements (PM). A first version of a PM listing is reported in this manual. A database for PM’s is under construction. The database will test, where specific data and reporting is stored and visualised on line during the progress of the inventory work.

It may be meaningful to combine inventory reporting and the quality documentation reporting in one single report every year. It is, however, still open how the Quality reporting will be performed. One idea is to develop a database that yields output in report format every year or as a written reporting. The database solution may be an attractive way to minimise the additional work associated with the quality reporting.

The IPCC Guidelines recommend using higher Tier Quality Control for key sources in particular. Thus the key source identification is crucial for the planning of quality work.

 

Full report in pdf-format (296 kB).