Statistics

These statistics are based on self-reported data collected per participant at registration. Participants were asked to name their affiliation, primary conference/workshop they attend, and (optionally) their origin and primary mode of travel.
Anonymised data and scripts are available at https://github.com/CONFEST-2026/statistics.

Conferences

Below are the relative sizes of conferences/workshops at CONFEST, using two proxies: The first is based on participant’s responses to which conference/workshop they primarily plan to attend. These do not overlap, so “Workshops” just counts the number of people who attend only the workshops. The second (bar) chart shows the number of papers published in the proceedings of the three conferences.

Travel

Include events in the travel analysis

CONCUR QEST+FORMATS FMICS Workshops

Where participants travelled from

We associated one country with each participant. This is derived from their stated travel origin, or, where not given, from their affiliation. The data contains 17 local participants from Liverpool; among the rest, 86 (62%) travelled primarily by plane, 52 (38%) primarily by train.

On the map, each marker is a distinct origin city (excluding local participants, who did not travel); size reflects the number of participants from that city, colour reflects the fraction of those participants whose main travel mode was flying (blue = all train/bus, red = all plane).

CO2 emissions analysis

Estimates are based on each participant’s travel origin (explicit or, where missing, deduced from their affiliation) and travel mode (explicit or, where missing, deduced as described below).

The estimated grand total is 104 t of CO2e, averaging 673 kg per participant (median 347 kg) and 756 kg per non-local participant (median 407 kg).

Methodology

• Distances and emissions are round-trip (out+back).
• Travel-mode inference (fallback only, applied when not explicitly stated): train for participants from the UK or France, plane otherwise.
• Train routing: UK-origin journeys go directly to Liverpool, using exact rail route mileages (from the RailMiles Mileage Engine) hard-coded for every British origin in the data. Continental European rail travel is routed via whichever Eurostar hub (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, or Paris) is closest to the origin, then via London to Liverpool.
• Long-haul origins are modelled as flying to London Heathrow, then continuing by train to Liverpool.
• Other flying participants are modelled as flying to Manchester, followed by a short, fixed round-trip bus transfer to Liverpool.
• Detour factors: any distance computed from coordinates is a great-circle (“as the crow flies”) distance, which understates the real journey. Flight distances are therefore multiplied by 1.10 to account for airway routing, holding and taxiing, and rail distances of unknown exact length by 1.20, calibrated against the exact UK route mileages above (whose rail/great-circle ratios range from 1.10 for London to 1.41 for Edinburgh, median 1.16).
• Emission factors:
  • Train: 0.041 kgCO2e/pkm.
  • Plane: distance-banded, to reflect that short-haul flights are less fuel-efficient per km than long-haul cruise: 0.258 kg/pkm up to 1000 km, 0.187 kg/pkm between 1000 and 3500 km, 0.152 kg/pkm above 3500 km (all one-way leg distances).
  • Bus: 0.028 kgCO2e/pkm.

Leg-based data for cross-conference comparison

participants.csv contains one round-trip estimate per participant.
For cross-conference comparison, trips_by_leg.csv reshapes those estimates into one row per travel leg (mode and distance), with two identical legs for each modelled round trip. This format is directly comparable with the datasets and scripts for HIGHLIGHTS, that record independent arrival and departure legs.