The IAMC timeseries data format
Background
The Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC) developed a standardised tabular timeseries format to exchange scenario data related to energy systems modelling, land-use change, demand sectors, and economic indicators in the context of climate change mitigation pathways and the the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Previous high-level use cases include reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and model comparison exercises within the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) hosted by Stanford University.
Refer to https://data.ece.iiasa.ac.at/ for a selected list of projects using the IAMC data format.
An illustrative example
The table below shows a typical example of integrated-assessment scenario data following the IAMC format from the Horizon 2020 CD-LINKS project.
The scenario data is usually saved as xlsx or csv files in wide format (years as columns), but other types are also possible (e.g., via the pyam package).
Illustrative example of IAMC-format timeseries data from the IAMC 1.5°C Scenario Explorer
Naming conventions and standards
Read more about guidelines and naming conventions for Variables in the IAMC format and Common and native regions.
Project “templates”
Each project using the IAMC timeseries data format defines a list of “variables” and regions for comparison and scenario analysis, commonly known as a “variable template”.
The IAM community is developing a shared resource of variable and region definitions. The aim is to provide a central location to facilitate reuse of definitions and mappings across projects.
Visit https://github.com/IAMconsortium/common-definitions for more information.