Tekja built the Airport Tracker, an online tool that illustrates the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and local air pollutants generated by passenger, freight and private jet flights departing from 1,300 airports worldwide. Created for a collaborative client team of ODI, T&E and the ICCT, the interactive platform helps the public, researchers, industry specialists and policymakers understand geographic trends and airport-specific rankings for aviation’s emissions and air-quality impact.
The driving editorial principle was to tell the detailed story of individual airports performance, placed firmly within a global emissions narrative. The design highlights every airport’s global and country rank, and enables users to compare specific airport data agains the global average and an airport of their choosing.
The narrative journey was designed for a varied user base, from journalists and the general public to scientists and aviation industry experts. It begins with an accessible, engaging homepage, through to a map that shows global trends and context, and concludes at individual airport and country pages with detailed statistics, data provenance information and comparison features, allowing more expert users to interrogate the large-scale emissions and air traffic dataset behind the application.
“Some of the world’s largest airports are equivalent to yearly emissions of entire cities. For example Paris Charles de Gaulle airport’s total emissions are equivalent to 1.31 times the annual emissions of Buenos Aires.
They also enable aviation – the most climate-intensive form of transport – traffic and emissions to rise. From 2005 to 2019, aviation traffic in Europe grew 67%, causing its emissions to grow, and emissions are projected to grow by a further 38% by 2050.”
– Transport and Environment (T&E)
ClientODI, ICCT, T&EOutputWebsite and Map DashboardYear2019-2026Linkairporttracker.org
