Total And Environment-related Patents - FUAs

This dataset provides indicators on total and environment-related patents in Functional Urban Areas (FUAs). The indicator is defined as the fractional count of (environment-related) patent applications.

Data sources and methodology

The indicator uses patent applications filled under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) at the World International Property Organisation (WIPO) from the OECD, STI Micro-data Lab Intellectual Property Database, http://oe.cd/ipstats.

Patents are allocated to FUAs based on the postal addresses of inventors. The year refers to the date the patent application was filed.

Patents are classified as environment-related following their technology domain, obtained from the methodology of the Environment-related technologies patents national-level dataset (database documentation). Environment-related patents include patents on climate change mitigation, environmental management, sustainable ocean economy and climate change adaptation technologies.

Defining FUAs and cities

The OECD, in cooperation with the EU, has developed a harmonised definition of functional urban areas (FUAs) to capture the economic and functional reach of cities based on daily commuting patterns (OECD, 2012). FUAs consist of:

1. A city – defined by urban centres in the degree of urbanisation, adapted to the closest local administrative units to define a city.
2. A commuting zone – including all local areas where at least 15% of employed residents work in the city.

The delineation process includes:

• Assigning municipalities surrounded by a single FUA to that FUA.
• Excluding non-contiguous municipalities.

The definition identifies 1 285 FUAs and 1 402 cities in all OECD member countries except Costa Rica and three accession countries.

Cite this dataset

OECD Regions, cities and local areas database (Environment-related patents - FUAs), http://oe.cd/geostats

Further information

• OECD Local Data Portal
• OECD Regions and Cities at a Glance

For questions and/or comments, please email CitiesStat@oecd.org