Contract award information - The purpose of the call for tender on "ESPON Update of Indicators and Maps (2011-2014) - Harmonised Datasets on Local Units (LAU 2)" was to support the scientific platform and tools under Priority 3 of the ESPON 2013 Programme. This call aimed at selecting a service provider that will perform the service contract with the purpose of enlarging ESPON's knowledge base on data comparability from different years and sources. A secondary and equally important focus was on expanding the work developed by ESPON 2013 and thereby responding to the increasing demand for EU-wide harmonised analyses.

The objectives of this service contract were as follows: developing guidance to the ESPON research community on the main issues that users have to deal with when collecting and harmonising data at LAU level 2; further expanding the ESPON 2013 Database at LAU level 2 with data for EU28+4 (i.e. EU28 plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein) on thematically-oriented topics on the basis of the 2001 and 2011 population and housing censuses; improving data comparability over time and across data sources at LAU level 2 by applying the methodology developed in the framework of the ESPON 2013 programme and, ultimately, demonstrating the capability of the methodology to be replicated more broadly by the ESPON research community.