The JRC has developed, with the Basque Centre for Climate Change Research (BC3) and the University of Groningen, a user-friendly computer tool called Trade Supply Chain Analysis (Trade-SCAN).
Trade-SCAN is an activity under the AMADEUS project.
The latest version allows, through a graphical user interface, to quickly and easily disentangle the relations between trade and its various contributing factors by using multi-region input-output table (MRIO) databases (FIGARO, OECD ICIO, WIOD and EXIOBASE).
Users can control industries and countries in each step of the value chain and summarise according to their needs the results on the impacts on value added, employment, emissions and subcategories of each of them (labour/capital compensation, skills/age groups, different gasses, etc.). This makes some calculations easier than ever before, like tailored footprints or domestic/foreign value added and double counted components of bilateral gross exports.
The objective of this tool is to facilitate global value chains analysis, allowing the user to focus on the research questions and the analysis of the results instead of on the coding of the model.
This allows non-specialists to quickly access input-output analysis results and therefore expand its field of influence, as it introduces these non-experts to the topic. That is why the tool can be used not only for research but also for teaching and policy advice where reactiveness is critical.
The tool is currently only available for the European Commission, although general access to the tool is under exploration. The use of Trade-SCAN by the JRC has produced the following publications: