Chapter 6: Quality Assurance/Quality Control and Verification (2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories)

An important goal of IPCC inventory guidance is to support the development of national greenhouse gas inventories that can be readily assessed in terms of quality. It is good practice to implement quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) and verification procedures in the development of national greenhouse gas inventories to accomplish this goal. The procedures as described in this chapter also serve to drive inventory improvement.

The guidance is designed to achieve practicality, acceptability, cost-effectiveness, incorporation of existing experience, and the potential for application on a worldwide basis. A QA/QC and verification system contributes to the objectives of good practice in inventory development, namely to improve transparency, consistency, comparability, completeness, and accuracy of national greenhouse gas inventories. 

QA/QC and verification activities should be integral parts of the inventory process (see Section 1.6.3 of Chapter 1, Volume 1). The outcomes of QA/QC and verification may result in:

•  improvements in the estimates of emissions and/or removals;
• reassessment of inventory compilation processes and category uncertainty estimates.

For example, the results of the QA/QC process may point to particular variables within the estimation methodology for a certain category that should be the focus of improvement efforts. The terms ‘quality control’, ‘quality assurance’, and ‘verification’ are often used in different ways. The definitions of QC, QA, and verification in Box 6.1 will be used for the purposes of this guidance.

This document is the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.