Step 1: Sign in to your account
Cities need to confirm their participation, this provides an indication to CDP and partners that the city is going to be participating for this year.
Sign in to your account to access your city dashboard. Once signed in, you should see your city’s dashboard including the relevant questionnaire theme blocks.
Step 2: Get started
Navigate to the Cities 2023 block on your dashboard. Click on the ‘Get Started’ button in the block. This will begin the confirmation of participation and activation process. Any contributor can confirm participation.
Step 3: Confirm Main User
You will be asked to confirm if you are the Main User for your city. Read the provided information on the responsibilities of the Main User. If you are the nominated Main User for your city, tick you are authorized to be the Main User and click ‘Next’.
Note: when you get to the Main User screen, please make sure to scroll down the page to see the ‘Next’ button, which may be out of view in some browsers.
If you decline to be Main User by clicking the ‘I will not be the Main User’ button, you will be a contributor, which allows you to respond to the questionnaire. You will have to wait for the Main User to start the questionnaire before you can access it.
Step 4: Join additional projects and initiatives
This step allows you to join projects and to report to their associated authorities. Please note, additional projects have been added in 2022, you can find more information on projects in the appendix of the cities platform guide. Some projects have additional questions to report to in the ORS. You will see a summary of the projects you have joined on the dashboard in the program block.
To join any of these projects, click the “Report to” button next to the project you wish to join. You can click ‘Undo’ after joining. You can either scroll through the projects or click ‘Show all optional projects’. Click ‘more’ to learn more about each project or initiative. Then, click ‘Next’.
Step 5: Questionnaire pathway selection
A new step was introduced in 2022 that determines which questionnaire pathway will be presented in the ORS based on three indicators. The indicators are jurisdiction population, per capita emissions and the Human Development Index (HDI). There are three pathways, one of which will be recommended based on your selections to the indicators.
Once you get to this screen, the per capita emissions and the HDI indicators will be pre-populated based on the country your city is based in. Complete your jurisdiction population to get the recommended questionnaire pathway, which will immediately appear at the bottom of the screen. If you submitted your response last year, the jurisdiction population will be prepopulated.
Note that Cities part of the C40 project will not be presented with this screen and will go directly to the ORS from previous screen. These Cities will be presented with Pathway 3 of the questionnaire.
An error screen will pop up if any of the three criteria are left unanswered and you try to enter the questionnaire.
If you do not wish to respond to the recommended questionnaire pathway, you can change it by clicking “here” under the recommendation. This will allow you to choose from and preview the other two questionnaire pathways. Select the pathway you wish to choose for your city and click ‘Enter questionnaire’.
Step 6: Start Questionnaire
Clicking Enter Questionnaire is the last step to update your questionnaire and activate your response.
Your questionnaire will open in the Online Response System (ORS) in a new tab where you can begin responding.
For more guidance on how to use the disclosure platform, please see our guide on using CDP’s disclosure platform for cities.
You may also find the following articles helpful:
- New user access
- Access for cities, states and regions
- CDP request for cities, states and regions
- Timeline for responding
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