There are, after two years of work, six principal results of the BlueSCities project, which constitute an effective methodology in order to facilitate the creation of a global urban strategy for the creation of a sustainable community.
The City Blueprint, which is essentially a spider graph, is a visual description of information taken from the assessment of 25 indicators. It is a simple, yet tremendously effective tool, given that, expert or layman alike, can contemplate the result and at a glance and understand the situation in relation to water and waste within the context of a specific municipality. In order to complement the City Blueprint, the City Amberprint was also created. Designed by the BlueSCities partners at De Montfort Universit, the City Amberprint is a spider graph, the information for which is obtained by the study of 22 indicators related to energy, transport and the application of ICT within a given town or city.The baseline analysis capacity of BlueSCities was further enhanced by the production of the Independent Analysis Software which permits municipalities or indeed any public administration at any level, to effect their own study of their specific local situation. The Independent Analysis Software has been designed to be user friendly so that the procedure is simple and the final results, easy to understand. A system exists whereby the results of the study can then be verified by external experts in order to guarantee the exactness and fidelity of the information produced before it is made public.
In order to ensure that the user is fully informed, a detailed Practical Guidance Document was written. The publication is not only a source of detailed information concerning those aspects studied by BlueSCities but is also a manual which methodically permits one to employ the previously described tools. BluesCities, in collaboration with the DG Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and the Network for Water in European Regions and Cities (NETWERC H2O) has produced ‘The Urban Water Atlas of Europe'. The book features contributions from over 40 collaborators from 30 countries. It describes urban water management in 46 cities from 14 different professional perspectives. The book itself has 160 pages and has been launched with a first edition of 2,500 hardcopies, which have been disseminated through the EC Delegations in the Member States and the online EU Bookshop.
In September, 2015, BlueSCities organised a workshop on water in Dubrovnik, at the end of which, the Dubrovnik Declaration of Intent was agreed upon. The Dubrovnik Declaration was the embodiment of a clear form of SCIENCE-ART Diplomacy within which cities from Greece, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Croatia, Serbia, the United Kingdom, Romania and Spain had come together for a common cause, despite often tense national or regional differences.
