COST 356 EST - Towards the definition of a measurable environmentally sustainable transport CONTACTS Dr Robert Joumard, chairman, INRETS, tel , Dr Henrik Gudmundsson, vice-chairman, DTF, tel , COST 356 website: OBJECTIVES The main objective of the action is to design harmonized methods to build better environmental indicators for sustainable transport by using existing European indices. The action builds methods to be applied to the decision making process of the transport sector in the different European countries. This contributes to a systemic approach to environmental and transportation issues. Besides and beyond the previous COST 350 action more focused on the user's point of view, action 356 deals with the scientific analysis and design of tools for environmental impact assessment. COST 356 focuses on the representativeness of the methods, either for evaluating sub-impacts such as health impacts, or for aggregating by a multi-criteria analysis the different sub-impact indices. The final users should be mainly forecasting (or back-casting) analysts of the impact of the transport system and transport planners. Finally the objectives of the action are: To analyze the methods applied and the results obtained To make a synthesis of the available data and to develop appropriate tools To co-ordinate research The duration of the action is October January 2010 INTRODUCTION Most of the present strategic environmental assessments do not take into account properly the variety of the environmental impacts, or are using markers, indices and more generally tools which do not represent the impacts. A correct representation of the whole range of impacts is necessary to ensure that sustainability takes into account environmental issues to a satisfactory degree. This is especially important for the transport sector where the concerns and the stakes are important. WORKING GROUPS WG n°, titleTask titleTask purposeTask output 1. Network building and methodological guidance 1.1. Network building To develop a network of researchers working on environmentally sustainable transport assessment Lists of persons and events 1.2. Methodological guidance Detailed definition of the Action structure and of the tasks Report 1.3. Transport and environment in the concept of sustainable development Critical analysis of the concept of sustainable development in relation to transport and environment Report 2. Environmental assessment (indicators as measurement tools) 2.1. Analysis of the chain of causalities for each environmental impact Analysis of the chain of causalities from the driving parameters to the final impacts Report 2.2. Defining criteria for environmental indicator quality assessment To identify operational quality criteria needed for assessing indicators from a scientific perspective Working note 2.3. State of the art of building indicators per individual impact To review the different scientific approaches for each impact category Report 3. Integration in decision making (indicators as decision making tools) 3.1 Requirements of EST indicators from the planning and decision making point of view To define functional criteria for indicators to be used in various policy making frameworks, and to identify factors that matter for making indicators actually useful Report 3.2. Options for integrating EST indicators To analyse options and methods for aggregation, or selection to create integrated measures of EST Report 3.3. Case studies To analyse in each study case the potential application of relevant indicators Report 4. Integrative synthesis, research needs and dissemination 4.1. Further research needs Identifying white spots and research needs Final report 4.2. SynthesisSynthesis of the whole Action 4.3. DisseminationDissemination of the results Papers, web, CDROM, syntheses, etc WHO CAN PARTICIPATE TO COST 356? The participants to the action are mainly scientists from signatory countries. Others may participate on an ad hoc basis. Different types of participation are possible: Active participation through the working groups, by providing data, analyses, comments... As user, providing user's demand, and mainly interested by the outputs of the action By participating to the management committee (signatory countries only) The present signatory countries are the following 19: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom. More countries are still welcome to sign.