Traditional statistical classifications, whether industry or technology codes, often fail to fully encapsulate the nuances of bioeconomic activities, as the bioeconomy spans across all economic sectors. Consequently, data on bioeconomy activities frequently proves vague and comes with numerous limitations, particularly at the regional level. Against this backdrop, we have developed a unique dataset that captures bioeconomy activities by analyzing firms’ website text. This database was established as part of Lukas Kriesch's PhD thesis at the Department of Geography, JLU Giessen. Leveraging this dataset, we employ modern natural language processing techniques to identify bioeconomy activities within these texts, differentiating between general bioeconomy activities and those classified as high tech. We then aggregate the firm-level data to the NUTS-3 level, offering a comprehensive overview of the geographical distribution of biobased economic activities. Further details on data processing are outlined in the corresponding paper, where the regional dataset is also available for download. We encourage fellow researchers to utilize this data to address the various open research questions surrounding the bioeconomy. Kindly cite our paper when using the data. 

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Kriesch & Losacker (2024): Bioeconomy firms and where to find them. Region: the journal of ERSA. https://doi.org/10.18335/region.v11i1.523 

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The data explorer below (available in desktop view) enables tracking of bioeconomy activities for each region in Germany, considering both general activities and only high-tech ones.