Objective
The EU White Paper "Towards Sustainable Development" (Com92/23) clearly identified improvement of the urban environment as a priority field of action, particularly in terms of reconciling the conflicting political, social and economic demands of modern commerce and transport with the desire to provide a good quality environment. This concerted action will establish a common EU understanding of sustainable urban development through a multi-disciplinary network of researchers and professionals involving 14 partners from Austria, Finland, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal and the UK. Previous work by these partners has identified differnces in terminology, approach and understanding between differing cultures and importantly, between those working at the city and those working at the scale of individual buildings. A key objective is the development of a set of decision support tools which will integrate the wide range of built environment quality assessment methods.
The objectives of this concerted action are to:
- Develop a decision support tool-kit that bridges theortical thinking and practical action and encourages the integration of environmental evaluation at the city and building scales.
- Extends trans-disciplinary, trans-European and cross cultural understanding in this area
The action will make extensive use of IT, communications through existing networks and the Internet, as networking, concertation and dissemination are key to the project's success. Regular dialogue with a wide range of actors, professionals SMEs who can use the research outcomes, will be undertaken using a variety of means, including multi-disciplinary, interactive workshops and electonic questionnaires with rapid follow up via the Internet.
To ensure industrial relevance, the concerted action will be steered by a committee which includes representatives of local and regional authorites, as well as the demand and supply sides of the development and infrastrucutre industries.
The primary outputs will be a catalogue of environmental assessment techniques currently in use and emerging accross the EU, together with a set of decision support tools which will:
- provide guidance on the use and usefulness of assessment techniques - Assist in selection of appropriate methods and techniques
- Assit in reconciling quantifiable, objective techniques with softer, more subjective value analysis techniques
- Provide a means for wider multi-criteria analysis bridging political, social and technical factors
- Reduce the environmental uncertainty facing decision makers in the development and infrastructure industries.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CON - Coordination of research actionsCoordinator
M5 4WT SALFORD,MANCHESTER
United Kingdom