Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

This dataset presents patent statistics and indicators that are suitable for tracking innovation in environment-related technologies. They allow the assessment of countries and firms' innovation performance as well as the design of governments' environmental and innovation policies.

The OECD Environment Directorate, in collaboration with the Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation, has developed patent-based innovation indicators that are suitable for tracking developments in environment-related technologies. The indicators allow the assessment of countries' and firms' innovative performance as well as the design of governments' environmental and innovation policies. The patent statistics presented here are constructed using data extracted from the Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT) of the European Patent Office (EPO) using algorithms developed by the OECD. Consistent with other patent statistics provided in OECD.Stat, only published applications for "patents of invention" are considered (i.e. excluding utility models, petty patents, etc.). The relevant patent documents are identified using search strategies for environment-related technologies (ENV-TECH) which were developed specifically for this purpose. They allow identifying technologies relevant to environmental management, water-related adaptation and climate change mitigation. An aggregate category labelled "selected environment-related technologies" includes all of the environmental domains presented here.

The OECD Environment Directorate, in collaboration with the Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation, has developed patent-based innovation indicators that are suitable for tracking developments in environment-related technologies. The indicators allow the assessment of countries' and firms' innovative performance as well as the design of governments' environmental and innovation policies. The patent statistics presented here are constructed using data extracted from the Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT) of the European Patent Office (EPO) using algorithms developed by the OECD. Consistent with other patent statistics provided in OECD.Stat, only published applications for "patents of invention" are considered (i.e. excluding utility models, petty patents, etc.). The relevant patent documents are identified using search strategies for environment-related technologies (ENV-TECH) which were developed specifically for this purpose. They allow identifying technologies relevant to environmental management, water-related adaptation and climate change mitigation. An aggregate category labelled "selected environment-related technologies" includes all of the environmental domains presented here.

Although there are clear definitions for all the terms used in this survey, countries might have different methodologies to calculate tonne-kilometre and passenger-kilometres. Methods could be based on traffic or mobility surveys, use very different sampling methods and estimating techniques which could affect the comparability of their statistics. Also, if the definition on road fatalities is very clear and well applied by most countries, this is not the case for road injuries. Indeed, not only countries might have different definitions but the important underreporting of road injuries in most countries can distort analysis based on these data. 

Data are collected from Ministries of Transport, national statistical offices and other institutions designated as the official data source. The survey used for this exercise is the "Investment Spending in Transport Infrastructure". The original data is collected in national currency, current values. Data are converted and published in euros, both current and constant (2015 prices). The variables collected include investment, maintenance spending and capital value of road, rail, inland waterways, maritime ports and airports. Data are published annually on 31 March. Data series start in 1995 and continue until the current year-2, or the most recent available data.