How is the unit of observation formally/technically defined? How does it get defined in the data documentation?

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Martina Klausner's picture
February 19, 2024
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There is very little information on the definitions. Two points I stumbled over: In the sheet, there is a mention of a discrepancy of data coming from a different department - without any further explanations. So it would be interesting how this discrepancy happended and how there are different measurment logics involved. And the second point: on the website the data source is provided with the add-on: based on estimated quantity. So it remains very unclear how the measuring process is happening and how the data are generated.

It also only provides the average of water use for one year. In another graphic provided at the website, it shows the change of proportion of different clients between 1990 and 2021. The water use of households and small companies increased dramatically, but it does not state if the overall amount has increased or only the proportions have changed.

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Catharina Dietrich's picture
February 19, 2024
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The document doesn't give information on the definitions of the seven categories that are represented in the table. It might be interesting to find out, how the broad bundles of practices have been made -- why is the toilet flush not subsumed under body care, why is car cleaning in the same category as garden watering? The categorizations made might come from the urge to find broad enough categories to make graphics and tables readable (opposed to a fine-grained detailed table with hundreds of different practices that use water). But they might also emerge from contraints in measurment, if the spended water is measured with counters intstalled at different water valves in the house. That would fit very plausible to the categorizations as for example watering a garden and cleaning a car is most probably both done with a water valve outside, if existing and accessible. It would be interesting, wether queries have been made to configure the list of practices that are mentioned and how they are clustered or wether they result from mere considerations of what valve is most propably used for what. 

The category that evades my ways of making sense of the data and imagining their crafting-process is that of "small business" in the last row. If it would be different water valves, this would not make sense, unless this number just points to workshop-watervalves which would not include tea-cooking in the kitchen of creative workers in home office for example.

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