Digital Upgrade of the UK’s National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory System Contract Modification

Tender description

DESNZ are procuring services to substantially upgrade & improve the software system used to generate annual estimates of Greenhouse Gas & pollutant emissions across the UK. Currently a set of XLS files, Access databases & SQL, with other software linking these, are used to store, process & report data. Outputs from this system are used by UK Gov to report against our emissions targets (inc. Carbon Budgets, Paris Agreement). Based on a requirement that will be provided you will develop a new software approach which streamlines the system, using standard architecture across all inventory sectors to store, analyze, and report emissions. Lot 1: The National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) quantifies national emissions of a range of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and air pollutants to the atmosphere from a variety of sources. The NAEI, which includes over forty different pollutants, is updated and published annually, and charts the history of the UK’s atmospheric emissions since 1970. The current digital architecture of the NAEI system has evolved across the last 20+ years in a stepwise manner according to the growth of the system and the increasing scientific and technical complexity of the emissions calculations. The system is made up of a mix of technologies (covering Excel, Access, MySQL, R and Python scripts) and is now in need of a wholesale rebuild to make the system more robust, consistent and up to date. This contract delivers the following: • Simplify the technology suite used in current system • Build the new system in a modular way • Ensure the end-to-end process for calculation of emissions is transparent and traceable