Objective
The concept of environmental budgeting emerged from the definition of sustainable development stated in the Aalborg Charter. The concept involves the setting up of an environmental budget (ecoBudget) plan for a single year, passing it through the council, executing it, and evaluating the actual environmental spending in an environmental budget balance.
The objective of the DESTINY project is the development of a unified computer-based decision support system (DSS) designed to enable local authorities to implement the ecoBudget concept. It allows environmental priorities within the principles of sustainable development to be determined, the monitoring of progress against environmental plans, and the communication of results. The DESTINY target users are the local authorities, regional authorities as supervising users, and industries with an environmental impact.
Objectives:
The objective of the DESTINY project is the development of a comprehensive computer-based decision support system (DSS) designed to enable local authorities to implement the eco Budget concept. It allows setting of environmental priorities for sustainable development; monitoring of progress against environmental plans and dissemination of outcomes to others via Internet.
The DESTINY target users (and customers) are:
1. Local Authorities, as the direct user of the DESTINY tools
2. Regional Authorities as supervising user
3. Industries, for evaluating their environmental impact.
A key element of DESTINY will be the facility for access by both elected representatives and the general public.
Work description:
The DESTINY project will be performed in four phases:
PHASE 1: Preparation & system specification. The tasks are: Overall requirements for DESTINY including user requirements and the international framework on legal and procedural pre-conditions for environmental budgeting; Theoretical basis for environmental budgeting and setting up of environmental indicators and targets, and their interaction and harmonisation with financial budgets; Functional specification and design for all the components of DESTINY; Communication between all the modules;
PHASE 2: System development. This phase will cover development of all DESTINY components and will be executed in two stages. The first stage will develop a prototype and 1st demonstrator version. The second will update DESTINY in line with experience from the verification trials.
Tasks are:
- Development of interfaces to users and external databases, GIS and EIS;
- Development of environmental budget module including interfaces to the financial budget;
- Development of the decision engine, system rule base and decision making protocols, together with modules for risk assessment, scenario generation and cost benefit analysis;
- Development of an Internet Forum module to provide communication tools for sharing of information about environmental budgets;
- Development of training aids; Design and implementation of a DESTINY prototype to provide early feedback from the users;
- Integration and testing of the DESTINY system, and review of the system against requirements and users experience.
PHASE 3: System trials and evaluation. DESTINY will be verified by trial application in Germany, Greece and Italy, followed by evaluation of the trials.4th Phase - Dissemination. This will include generation of exploitation plans and dissemination material which will be updated as the project develops.
Milestones:
Month 3: Website and project controls;
Month 6: System requirements and theoretical basis;
Month 9: Software specification;
Month 15: Delivery of prototype version of DSS;
Month 18: Delivery of first demonstrator version of DSS;
Month 26: Release of second demonstrator version of DSS;
Month 28: Sites report;
Month 30: Final report, Destiny system release and exploitation plan.
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
OX14 1RA Abingdon
United Kingdom
Participants (6)
85105 Kalythies Rhodes
16129 Genova
79115 Freiburg
16121 Genova
67653 Kaiserslautern
4800 Arendal