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Planning and research of policies for land use and transport for increasing urban sustainability

Deliverables

The PROPOLIS system comprises: - A set of urban sustainability indicators - The land - Use/transport model of Brussels and the suburban area, built with the TRANUS software - The GIS based RASTER method - GIS, Analysis and Presentation Tools - The economic evaluation module -The decision support tool. The system can be used for urban policy formulation and testing as well as testing for individual measures (investment, regulatory, pricing). The results are described in detail in the PROPOLIS final report. The effects of policy options are presented as indicator and background variable values and indexes for the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability. The land-use/transport model, which is the core of the PROPOLIS system, was originally built to evaluate the impacts of the implementation of the future Regional Express Railway Network (RER) and the impacts of accompanying measures to the RER. More generally, the model is able to assess the long-term impacts of a large range of transport and land-use measures.
The Raster Module is an add-on module for land use / transport models for modelling locally important environmental impacts and their social implications. The Raster Module uses zonal and link-based outputs from aggregate models, disaggregates it to raster cells of 100 x 100 m in size, applies grid-based analytical and dispersion models for assessing environmental and social impacts and aggregates the results to indicators. The results of the Raster Module are indicators such as emissions, land coverage, environmental quality, exposure of population to NO2, PM and traffic noise and graphical presentations in form of concentration maps for air pollution and of noise level maps. The Raster Module has been successfully implemented as part of the PROPOLIS system in the case study regions Bilbao, Brussels, Dortmund, Helsinki, Inverness, Naples and VizencaThe Raster Module is developed as an independent software package. It post-processes land use transport model output provided in a standardised ASCII format and GIS databases provided in MapInfo or ArcGIS ASCII output formats. It currently loads output of the PROPOLIS models (MEPLAN, TRANUS, IRPUD) and their corresponding GIS databases, but might be extended to other land use transport models.
The result is a decision support tool in the form of a computer software package working in internet environment. The tool is designed to help the decision maker to structure the decision problem, to give weights and value functions to the properties of alternatives, to make pairwise comparisons, consistency and sensitivity checks. The results are illustrated graphically and in forms of tables and graphs. Licensing of the software is made possible. Computer software requiring Microsoft NT 4.0 operating system. The tool can be used generally in comparing alternatives. Also four theories of justice are provided as options for the user for analysing the distributions of impacts e.g. among socio-economic groups.
The Economic Indicator Module (EIM) is designed to produce the indicators to assess the urban transport policies from the economic point of view. The EIM is based on a spreadsheet and loads data from the output of the Propolis case city models (MEPLAN, TRANUS, Dortmund model), from the raster model and from the user (city/country and policy specific parameters). For each policy under assessment, the output produced by the EIM includes: the values assumed by the economic indicators, the values assumed by background variables and the results of the standard cost-benefit analysis, including the IRR (Internal Rate of Return), which provide a synthetic index of the economic sustainability of the policy under appraisal. Input and output data are ASCII files. The EIM software works either in batch or in interactive mode and requires Microsoft Excel license.
The PROPOLIS system comprises - a set of urban sustainability indicators - the MEPLAN land use/transport model- the decision support tool - the GIS based RASTER method - GIS tools and Analysis and Presentation tools - Economic evaluation module. The system can be used for urban policy formulation and testing as well as for testing of individual measures (investment, regulatory, pricing). The results are described in detail in the PROPOLIS final report. The effects of policy options are presented as indicator and background variable values and indices for the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability. The aim is to exploit the result in forthcoming projects in Helsinki Metropolitan Region for the evaluation of new policies and investment plans.
The PROPOLIS system consists of: - a set of sustainability indicators - the land-use transport model (IRPUD model) - the decision support tool- the GIS-based RASTER method - GIS, Analysis and Presentation tools - economic evaluation module. The IRPUD model applied to Dortmund is a simulation model of intraregional location and mobility decisions in a metropolitan area. It receives its spatial dimension by the subdivision of the study area into zones connected with each other by transport networks containing the most important links of the public transport and road networks coded as an integrated, multimodal network including all past and future network changes. It receives its temporal dimension by the subdivision of time into periods of one or more years' duration. The model predicts for each simulation period intraregional location decisions of industry, residential developers and households, the resulting migration and travel patterns, construction activity and land-use development and the impacts of public policies in the fields of industrial development, housing, public facilities and transport. The system can be used for urban policy formulation and testing as well as testing for individual measures (investment, regulatory, pricing). The results are described in detail in the PROPOLIS final report. The effects of policy options are presented as indicator and background variable values and indices for the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability.
The system is based on the SPARTACUS system (background) for analysing urban land use and transport policies and comprises the state-of-the-art MEPLAN model and the new modules USE-IT (decision support tool), RASTER (to calculate disaggregated GIS based values for exposure to noise, pollutants and land coverage) and MEPLUS (to post-process data from MEPLAN in order to calculate values for a set of urban sustainability indicators). This system has been enhanced by further developing the Raster module, the decision support tool and by building new modules (GIS tools, Analysis and Presentation tools, Economic evaluation). The system has been used in connection with different land use/transport models to test a set of policies and policy combination in seven case cities. General conclusion was drawn about potential policies and policy combinations that are likely to improve all dimensions of urban sustainability. The effects of a set of alternative urban policies using the PROPOLIS system has been reported from the test cities Helsinki, Bilbao, Inverness, Dortmund, Brussels, Vicenza and Naples. Recommendations for the case cities and European cities in general have been made based on the test results. The following sub-modules have been developed during the project. The sub-modules are described in detail on separate forms: - Interactive decision support tool - RASTER, a GIS system to calculate exposures to noise and emissions and to estimate land coverage and other environmental indicators - Analysis and Presentation tools to illustrate the policy test results GIS tools to automate the policy tests and to provide post processing of the model results - Economic evaluation tool to make the economic evaluations from the model results and other parameters.
The PROPOLIS system comprises - a set of urban sustainability indicators - the MEPLAN land use/transport model- the decision support tool - the GIS based RASTER method - GIS tools and Analysis and Presentation tools - Economic evaluation module. The system can be used for urban policy formulation and testing as well as for testing of individual measures (investment, regulatory, pricing). The results are described in detail in the PROPOLIS final report. The effects of policy options are presented as indicator and background variable values and indices for the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability.
A land use/ transport model has been built of the Inverness and Inner Moray Firth area using the TRANUS software. This has been used by the Highland Council to run a series of scenarios for their own purposes. It has also been used by UCL to run the common PROPOLIS scenarios. The model will continue to be used by the Highland Council in the future. Development of the model was financed under a separate contract, not involving the Commission or UCL, between the Highland Council and Modelistica of Caracas (Venezuela), via Modelistica's European agents Rickaby Thompson Ltd of Milton Keynes (UK). The TRANUS package itself is the property of Modelistica. Use of the model for PROPOLIS has been allowed by kind permission of the Highland Council. All IPR rest with the Council. In addition, UCL has developed a GIS interface to the TRANUS land use and transport modelling system, as described in the Final Report section 3.3.1 'The TRANUS tools'. A more detailed specification is given in Evans and Steadman (2003) (see below). This software (as an extension to ArcView ArcGIS) has been supplied free of charge to the Highland Council in Inverness, to Modelistica and to Rickaby Thompson Ltd. It will be supplied free of charge - other than the costs of installation - to other users of TRANUS, provided they have purchased the necessary ESRI GIS software license(s) to allow the extension to run. The software can in this way find future application in the further development of the Inverness model and in TRANUS models of other cities and regions. Evans, S and Steadman P (2003) 'Interfacing land-use transport models with GIS: the Inverness model' in P A Longley and M Batty, eds, Advanced Spatial Analysis: The CASA Book of GIS, ESRI Press, Redlands, California pp.289-307
ME&P intends to exploit its investment in the PROPOLIS research project by developing a set of GIS-based tools derived from the deliverables in Work Packages 5 and 7. These will ultimately enhance and extend WSP's existing product range to provide a new generation of data management and analysis tools that will be integrated within the MEPLUS family of software. These will be offered to the market as specialist applications modules or extensions to support our main modelling products: MEPLAN (general purpose integrated transport and land use modelling framework) and MENTOR (UK context-specific land use modelling tool). The individual tools will be as follows: MEPLUS Scenario Manager. The purpose of Scenario Manager is to allow the user to define actions, which can then be combined into scenarios and policies in order to carry out model runs through time. The system stores the various definitions, which characterise a particular run and presents a visual summary to the User. MEPLUS Network Manager is designed to simplify and speed the process of multi-modal transport network building and editing. Network Manager will incorporate interactive on-screen editing facilities and will offer a number of specialist mapping capabilities including accessibility surfaces and inter-zonal desire lines (proportional flow arrows), together with standard features such as overlays. Standardisation of data structures will simplify data handling and storage and will facilitate comparisons between different model implementations MEPLUS Indicator Toolkit performs the original computation of indicators produced by the PROPOLIS system (economic, environmental and social). Toolkit operates within a controlled framework and calculates a set of standard, pre-defined indicators. It does however offer the User considerable flexibility to define and build their own indicators by selecting from standard model outputs and performing various mathematical operations on these. MEPLUS Analyst will provide customised GIS functionality for post-processing of the very large volume of model outputs produced within the typical PROPOLIS system. The module stores these outputs in a structured database, which is integrated with a set of procedures for analysing and displaying policy test results. As with other MEPLUS family tools the system is accessed via a simple menu-driven interface and presents the user with a choice of analysis facilities, which are based largely on pair-wise, or time-wise comparisons of policy results. The main functions of the module include: - Data capture - a set of procedures for reading and labelling files - Data storage - a relational database facility which enables run time analysis of results - Data manipulation and classification - including simple facilities for searching and selecting or filtering data, together with facilities for performing user-defined spatial and spatial classifications and aggregations - Analysis and display - a variety of procedures for analysing and summarising policy test results in the form of cross-tabulations, and charts - Mapping - spatial data display options for producing a range of thematic (land use) maps and network maps -Reporting - a selection of output options for screen-browsing of results, together with an automatic report generator which provides a permanent record of the policy analysis. MEPLUS Internet Analyst is an internet-based dissemination and analysis tool, which facilitates the presentation, analysis and comparison of model results across the internet. It is based on the latest Web- and Internet Map Server technology and offers selected GIS functionality and working environment. Users of Internet Analyst can view and compare indicators and background variable data from different city models, interrogate the maps presented to them and offer their own commentary or exchange views with other Users via a feedback mechanism. Within the context of PROPOLIS this module will be used to disseminate and compare information about the different European modelling applications. The development path for this product does however envisage a Client-Consultant communications environment or an environment in which several authorities are working with the same model or family of models (for example in a hierarchical planning system or one in which the transport and planning functions are organisationally or spatially separated).

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