Spatially and temporally resolved outputs from spatially and temporally resolved activity data and modeling approaches - getting more out of land sector data with the Full Lands Integration Tool (FLINT)

The land sector has a pivotal role in mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at global, national and local levels. These include policy instruments such as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), and emissions offsets markets. Many organisations are participating in land sector mitigation and need GHG estimation and monitoring systems systems that can support action to advance rapidly. Improving the spatial and temporal resolution of emissions estimates can support numerous policies and provide certainty that emissions mitigation activities are real and verified. This increases the credibility of mitigation actions, and drives further investment in the land sector's mitigation role. The remote sensing community has responded by making imagery available and developing numerous new products and methods for mapping land. However, there has been less focus on using this data in operational systems that can produce spatially and temporally resolved emissions estimates. The Full Lands Integration Tool (FLINT) is an open-source platform developed specifically to take advantage of the fine spatial and dense temporal activity data from remote sensing by integrating it with a range of emissions estimation methods to provide spatially and temporally resolved emissions estimates. The FLINT is a flexible, modular framework that does not lock users to any specific data or emissions estimation method. Users can start with basic methods such as global emission factors and progress to advanced empirical or process-based models as needed, allowing them to continuously improve and develop their system within a single framework. FLINT has been tested in numerous countries as both open source and hosted implementations. A community of developers and operators is building around the open source code, and is beginning to form a sustainable and constantly improving system that benefits all users. Through the application of the FLINT and implementations such as the FLINTpro, we demonstrate the ability to operationalize the current advances in data collection, including remotely sensed imagery, and convert this to actionable information to support decision making and leverage the land sector in global climate change action.