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EU Food System Monitoring Dashboard

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The EU Food System Dashboard is a tool developed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) to monitor the sustainability of the EU food system from an environmental, economic and social perspective, based on a set of indicators.

This tool will evolve over time, in line with scientific, technical and policy developments.

Indicators in the dashboard, or the data used to calculate them, come from publicly accessible official data sources (such as statistics), or peer-reviewed scientific research. When analysed together, these indicators can improve understanding of the state of play and trends in food system sustainability.

The selection of indicators has been synthetised through:

a rigorous review of existing frameworks and scientific evidence participatory processes involving relevant European Commission departments consultations with stakeholders and Member States.

The accompanying technical report describes in detail the process and methodology used for developing the dashboard.

The dashboard aims to give a comprehensive and cross-sectoral overview of the food supply chain. This includes all the chain’s components – primary production, food processing, distribution and consumption – and different sustainability aspects such as: (i) climate; (ii) pollution; (iii) biodiversity; (iv) economic viability of business; and (v) food environment.

This highlights the inextricable links between healthy people, healthy societies and a healthy planet.

Importantly, the process for selecting the indicators unveiled knowledge gaps (described in the technical report) that are inadequately covered by existing data, confirming the need for further work.

Methodology

The development of a framework to monitor the sustainability of the EU food system required a systematic approach that involved creating a robust methodology, as described below.

Review of scientific literature and existing monitoring systems

To understand the sustainability of the EU food system, the JRC thoroughly reviewed the scientific literature and the related European acts, particularly the European Green Deal and the farm to fork strategy. We also examined other existing monitoring systems and adopted suitable concepts and components to strengthen semantic and technical interoperability.

Developing the conceptual model

Inspired by the ‘reuse of existing’ principle, the JRC collated information on food system sustainability from many different sources while ensuring consistency with the original datasets.

The conceptual model, on one hand, contains primary food production, food processing, distribution and consumption as components of the food supply chain. On the other, sustainability aspects are captured in a hierarchical manner through:

3 dimensions (environmental, economic and social, with the latter including health aspects of diets) 12 thematic areas 38 domains.

This structure allows indicators to be anchored to the elements of the model and identify knowledge gaps.

Harmonising metadata and quality assessment of indicators

To improve comparability of the harvested indicators, we needed to harmonise their metadata. The metadata schema applied in the monitoring framework includes the:

name definition description the related supply chain components and sustainability domains unit of measurement description of methodology geographic and temporal coverage.

To evaluate the fitness of indicators, a rigorous quality assessment framework was established with specific criteria and scoring rules.

Selecting the indicators

More than 300 indicators that monitor existing policies were screened and assessed to reflect their relevance and continuity of data supply. Indicators that were irrelevant to EU food system sustainability, as well as duplicates (indicators with different names but same data content) were removed from the database. The remaining pool of indicators was subjected to the selection process, based on:

the quality scores assigned during the quality assessment the analysis and comparison of indicators within a specific domain a cross-check of the domains to define the final designation and the role of the indicators in the dashboard.

This process resulted in the following categories of indicators.

Headline indicators, which respond to the most prominent policy targets and objectives. These indicators are currently the only ones reflected in the dashboard. Secondary indicators, which further detail a headline indicator or provide information on other, less prominent aspects of sustainability. Placeholders for potential indicators that would address the identified knowledge gaps (i.e. domains and/or supply chain components not covered by suitable data).

Denomination

The dashboard includes two types of indicators.

Extensive: the indicator is expressed in natural measurement units (kilograms, euros, etc.). These values often depend on other variables, such as a country’s area, population, or economy size. Extensive indicators do not account for performance or efficiency (i.e. measuring outputs relative to inputs). Intensive: intensive indicators are expressed as a unit of natural measurement in relation to another internal property (e.g. GDP (euros), population). Intensive indicators are useful to compare the performance of countries.

Extensive indicators can be transformed into intensive indicators by dividing them with suitable denominators (for example, a country’s food waste in tonnes divided by its population = food waste per capita).

Defining direction

The values of indicators have a desired trend of changes. A positive direction means that the growth of the indicator value reflects the improvement in food system sustainability (for example, in self-sufficiency rates, indices of biodiversity). A negative direction means that a decreasing value of the indicator is beneficial for sustainability (for example: accidents at work, food waste, emissions).

Food-System Model

One key step in this project has been the definition of the Food System Model hierarchy, you can navigate it in the below interactive sunburst diagram.

EU overview

You can visualize here data of one indicator at a time for all EU in the form of map or bar chart, with manual or auto-play options to change the year.

Select indicators grouped by the dimension, thematic area and domain.
Select indicators grouped by the dimension and supply chain component. Please note that some indicators fall into several chain components.
    Please select an indicator.

    Here you can visualize the time series of one (sub)indicator at a time, for a focus country.

    Click on the tabs above the menu to select the top-down approach.
      Please select an indicator.

      Country Profile

      Here you can visualize set of indicators belonging to dimension, thematic area or domain for a focus country.

        Please select country and indicator group (dimension, area or domain).

        Help

        The EU food system monitoring dashboard consists of 5 tabs: 3 descriptive and 2 data tabs.

        The descriptive tabs include the Home, Methodology and Help sections. The Home and Methodology tabs explain the idea and the approach behind the monitoring framework. The Help tab aims to help people navigate through the dashboard.

        The 2 data tabs are the EU overview and the Country profile. The EU overview allows for one indicator at a time to be viewed for the whole EU. The Country profile depicts a domain, a thematic area or an entire dimension and displays time series of indicators related to one or two countries at the same time.

        Navigating the Food System Model

        The dashboard is based on the EU Food System model that is organised in a hierarchical multilevel structure:

        the first level is related to the dimension: Environmental , Economic, Social and Horizontal in the second level, each dimension encompasses thematic areas; in the third level, each thematic area encompasses domains; in the fourth level, each domain encompasses indicators.

        The vertical drill down menu of the 2 data tabs allows users to progressively expand and collapse the submenus. At first it presents the 4 dimensions of the food system model (in different colours): Environmental (green), Economic (blue), Social (yellow) and Horizontal (grey).

        Click on the downward arrow on the right of the bar to expand and show lower levels. Click on a dimension to show the thematic areas. This allows you to click on a thematic area and reveal the domains that, in turn, can be expanded to display the indicators.

        Full screen dashboard

        You can view both the EU overview and the Country profile in full screen by clicking the button at the top right of the page. Click it again to return to the compact view.

        Saving the data

        To save the indicator values that you have selected for viewing, bring the cursor over the graphics (or table) to display the specific icons in the upper right of the graphics. Select the option to take a snapshot or download the data.

        EU overview

        This tab enables an indicator to be shown for all EU countries.

        Select an indicator (fourth level) to view the related data in a map, bar chart, timeline, or table, according to the options displayed on the top of the map.

        The bar chart contains the same information as the map, plus the EU median.

        The timeline allows you to see all the available years at a glance, specifying one or more countries.

        Above the data viewing options, when available, the EU value is shown, as originally indicated by the data provider.

        When an indicator comprises sub-indicators, you can select them from a drop-down list.

        Some of the indicators can be displayed based on both extensive (default) and intensive values. To obtain the intensive value, switch denomination on.

        Above the EU value, there is a time navigator. The chart, by default, shows the values of the latest available year. Nevertheless, other years can be selected. The ‘play’ button makes it possible to ‘animate’ the years, which automatically starts progressing with a timer from the oldest to the most recent data values.

        In addition to the sustainability aspects, a second hierarchical navigation, according to the ‘Supply chain component’ is also available. It is placed on the top of the menu.

        This second option groups the indicators according to supply chain components within each dimension:

        primary food production food processing food distribution food consumption.

        Furthermore, you can search for an indicator by typing part of its name in the search box. The indicators’ metadata can be accessed by clicking on the info (i) icon on the right side of every indicator.

        Country profile

        The Country profile visualises all the indicators included in a dimension, a thematic area, or a domain. The idea is to depict the selected country’s profile, by showing a group of coherent indicators at the same time.

        To start, select a country of interest and an item from the multilevel menu in the Food System Model, on the left side of the page.

        Expand the menu to show the lower hierarchical levels, from dimensions to thematic areas to domains, as described in the navigation section. Click the arrow pointing to the right to show all indicators that belong to the selected level.

        After choosing a country and an item, a flag-chart is displayed for all the indicators belonging to the selected level. It shows a blue bar for every indicator, with a circle flag of the selected country placed between the minimum and maximum values of all the EU countries.

        If an indicator has a positive direction, the higher values are displayed in the right of the bar. However, when a negative direction is desired, the lower values are in the right. The indicators displayed in the country profile report data from 2020. If data from that year are not available, the latest available year is shown.

        To compare EU countries, all extensive indicators have been denominated (see Methodology tab for more details). They show a * symbol.

        In this tab, you can select a second country for comparison.

        The flag of the better performing country is closer to the right end of the bar, regardless of the direction of the indicator.

        On the right side of each flag-chart, the icons below are displayed. Click on them to view the timeline chart of the indicator and see the whole time series (i.e. data for all available years), or to access the indicator metadata. In addition, the magnifying lens icon appears to make a selection when an indicator consists of sub-indicators.

        If you are comparing countries, the indicator values of the selected countries are displayed in blue and orange. The diagram also shows two yellow lines, which represent the minimum and maximum value in EU countries, and a yellow dashed line, representing the EU average.