1. Topic

2. Introduction

The planning activities within European municipalities have experienced a remarkable evolution along the past 20 years. During the 80’s transport planners used to focus on the capacity of the transport networks and their capability to avoid congestion situations.

In the 90’s environmental impacts have started to enter extensively the planning best practice and a number of cities were using transport emission models of different kind: several of those planners have been using also dispersion models for achieving impact results at the level of air quality.

At the beginning of the new millennium, integrated suites of models involving additional impacts start to be used by the most equipped administrations while the EC funds Research and Development R&D projects for the realisation of integrated systems of software tools for planning purposes. We are quickly advancing in the era of ‘advanced planning tools’.

These integrated tools should allow a more exhaustive understanding of the consequences of postulated actions, measures, policies for the urban environment and foster the cooperation among different ‘planners’ within the local administration. In fact the availability of multidisciplinary software tools requiring several technical competences should push municipal departments working on Land Use, Transport, Air Quality, Cultural Heritage protection, health protection to cooperate and develop more harmonised and less conflicting initiatives/plans.

3. Discussion

The various planning activities that city administrations have to run for their institutional roles (mobility plans, urban plans, transport plans, air quality action plans) require a number of different modelling tools.

Quite often these tools are used separately, by different units within the same administration, sometimes under a cooperation spirit and sometimes rather in competition, thus risking to plan conflicting scenarios for the future of the community, in particular as it regards air quality. It is now common perception that Air Quality targets can be reached if – and only if – the various planning activities are developed under a coherent and harmonising framework where the involved units-departments cooperate for achieving agreed results through short-medium and long-term measures.

This evolutionary process can be supported by the realisation of ‘integrated suites of models’ that the various actors of the planning activity can use. The common characteristic of such ‘suites’ will be the integration of a high number of models going from the behaviour of the local population (mobility demand models) to the traffic simulation, from the estimate of emissions and air pollution, to the final impacts on population health and monuments preservation.

In the frame of the 5^th Framework Programme the EC has funded a few projects aiming at building these kinds of integrated software tools.

Under the key action ‘City of Tomorrow and cultural heritage’ we can note two of these projects:

· ISHTAR (Integrated Software for Health, Transport efficiency and Artistic heritage Recovery) Project (2002-2005) coordinated by ENEA (Italy), and

· PROPOLIS (Planning and Research of Policies for Land Use and Transport for Increasing Urban Sustainability) Project (2001-2004) coordinated by LT (Finland).

Both projects cover the areas of mobility, transport, pollutant emissions, noise, air pollution, population exposure and health effects. ISHTAR also covers the area of damage to monuments.

The two projects are members of the LUTR (Land Use and Transport) Cluster under the mentioned Key Action, while ISHTAR is also a member of the CLEAR Cluster on Air Quality Research.

The two projects are producing two good examples of integrated suites usable for designing measures and policies for urban sustainability.

Under the Programme ‘Quality of Life’ of the 5^th FP the EC has funded another ‘linked’ project denominated HEARTS (Health Effects and Risks of Transport systems) coordinated by WHO. Also in this project partners are developing suites of models to be tested in a few European cities, but the integration scheme is less tight and the various models to be used in the upper part of the modelling chain are more flexibly defined.

The developing picture is extremely stimulating since we can observe the successful development of different types of more or less tightly integrated tools that will be shortly usable by European planners and will probably constitute a new niche market within the big market of the Planning Tools.

4. Recommendation / Conclusion

· A major recommendation from INTEGAIRE is for the future use of the integrated models suites that are being built in the EU. Such tools can foster cooperation among municipal departments devoted to various planning activities.

· The use of a single multidisciplinary tool by different actors can increase the coherence and credibility of the planned scenarios. Moreover, these suites bring the attention of the planners to the ultimate effects of pollution and of the measures decided for reducing it: the impact on people’s health and monuments-buildings.

· It is rather likely that these kinds of tools will become “reference solutions” for implementing the directives going to be originated by the current EC initiative Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment. In fact the integrated suites are suited for becoming elements of more complex Environmental Managements Systems or represent the tools for planning Sustainable Transport Systems and Sustainable Land Use policies.

5. Examples / Further Reading

Three example templates are available within the INTEGAIRE database for this topic:

- ISHTAR Project : building an advanced models suite for urban sustainable planning

- HEARTS Project - Modelling Health Effects and Risks of Transport Systems

- Integrated Land Use and Transport Planning tools

6. Additional Documents / Web Links

· Information on the activities of the Land Use and Transport cluster of the key action ‘City of Tomorrow’ can be found at www.lutr.net

· Details on the ISHTAR Project can be found at www.ishtar-fp5-eu.com

· PROPOLIS is described at www.ltcon.fi/propolis

· HEARTS Project web site is www.euro.who.int/transport

Last Updated

25th January 2005