D5 Annex report WP 3: ETIS Database methodology ... - ETIS plus

D5 Annex WP 3: DATABASE METHODOLOGY AND DATABASE USER
MANUAL – FREIGHT TRANSPORT DEMAND
7 OBSERVATIONS UP TO PHASE 2
7.1 Introduction
This chapter describes the observations up to phase 2 of ETIS reference database on legal
aspects and organisational aspects. These descriptions will be extended along the course of the
project based on experiences.
7.2 Legal aspects and organisational aspects
EUROSTAT has provided data to ETIS free of charge for use within the project. No
arrangements have been made yet on future use of the data by third parties outside the
Commission. For now the data have to be considered restricted.
Some data available at EUROSTAT (for instance international interregional road transport data)
cannot be provided due to the statistical law or because of confidentiality reasons. For other data
available at EUROSTAT (for instance the port­to­port data) a license has to be signed in which
it is expressed that the data will only be used in this project.
The conditions of data delivery from national statistical offices also differ from country to
country. For some countries the data can be downloaded from the internet without any
restrictions (for instance trade data of Spain), the only restriction is that the statistical office
should be mentioned as source (for instance transport data in the Netherlands), a price has to be
paid and a contract has to be signed for restricted use (for instance transport data in Germany) or
in addition an official letter from the European Commission is required (for instance transport
data France).
As has also been discussed at the second open conference of ETIS it is recommended that a
discussion is opened on how this data collected can be streamlined in the future as a follow up
of the current ETIS projects. Should this be done through EUROSTAT or is a less formalised
approach more appropriate. In any case it should be attempted to come to long lasting
agreements on data delivery to avoid time consuming data collection procedures.
7.3 Other remarks
It has been observed in chapter 6 that the resulting OD matrix is very detailed which requires
caution in its use. In case the most detailed level is used the reliability of the figures is in some
cases relatively low due to the fact that some elements have been estimated. The user therefore
has to be guided. One option is to provide only sub­matrices that do not contain all the variables
in one matrix, to be used by the common users. The complete matrix can be used by expert
users only which need to be trained to make the proper selections and interpretations.
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