TEMSIS - A Transnational Environmental Network

Bernd Hoffmann, Project Coordinator, TEMSIS
Schloßplatz, D-66119 Saarbrücken, Deutschland
behoffmann@aol.com

INTRODUCTION

This presentation concentrates less on the many technical aspects of the TEMSIS network operation but tries to show the regional basis and the working of the user group. The present Telematics Programme encouraged user-driven project initiatives and TEMSIS represents one such an initiative, undertaken by a group of cities in a transnational region.

Telematics and other European Programmes often involve diverse groups consisting of European regions or cities who will work on a common subject, but without real close cooperation at the regional level. TEMSIS tries to overcome this by not only cooperating within the bounds of this project but also in many other fields.

This presentation will begin by briefly introducing the Saarbrücken region and, after a short overview of the objectives of TEMSIS, will describe the user group. The central applications of TEMSIS, the administrative and public kiosks will be offered, followed by an outlook.

For those interested in more technical details, there are a number of public project reports available at the ANIMATE site on the EU servers.

THE REGIONAL FRAMEWORK

The SaarMosselle Region

The demonstration region for the TEMSIS project is the SaarMosselle Region, an area constituted by the trans-national urban agglomeration of Saarbrücken and Moselle Est. It has its origins in a common industrial history. For over a century the region's industry was shaped by coal, iron and steel. For the past 25 years, radical changes to the region's industrial structure have been taking place. This industrial past left the region with a number of serious environmental problems and the communities on both sides of the border have hereto been meeting for a number of years to discuss their common problems and development.

The communities represented by the Association "Zukunft SaarMoselle Avenir" cover an area of about 1000 km2, and have a population of more than half a million inhabitants. The ten German communities are counterweighted by over 50 French communities; although these are, as a rule, considerably smaller than the German communities. In keeping with this state of affairs, the installation of TEMSIS in the French part of the region is planned in larger communities and community associations.

figure 1

Figure 1. The SaarMosselle Region

Cooperation between French and German Communities

The Saar region and Alsace-Lorraine has had a varied history during the past 200 years. After the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71, Alsace-Lorraine belonged to the German Empire until 1918. This region returned to France after the first world war. The Saar Region was placed nominally under the administration of the League of Nations, but economically was placed under French rule - the most important example being the coal mines. This administration failed to make an impact and so in 1935 the region voted to return to Nazi Germany.

After the second World War, the Saarland once again returned to French administration for 10 years and a French governor general was installed. In spite of a weak administration, a vote in 1955 resulted in 70 percent of the inhabitants voting to return to German rule (compared with more than 90 percent in 1935). Nevertheless, it was still close to four years until the economic reunion with Germany took place in July 1959.

These experiences are not a very favourable basis for close cooperation, though a number of ties continued to exist. At the beginning of the 1960s, the so-called reconciliation process between France and Germany began under Chancellor Adenauer and President de Gaule. The early seventies saw new beginnings of communal cooperation, including the annual meeting of city mayors in border region. This laid the foundations for greater contacts between the administrations. But the French tradition of a strong centralised state and authority set a certain level of bureaucratic difficulties. With the arrival of decentralisation in 1982, these obstacles began to disappear, and real progress was achieved in French-German cooperation. The INTERREG I Programme of the EU promoted additional cooperative efforts.

Zukunft SaarMoselle Avenir

After a period of almost 20 years informal and low level cooperation, the Inter-communal working group got together in 1993. The basis for this cooperation was completely voluntary, however, more regular meetings took place than before the annual mayoral meetings. For the day to day operations sub-groups for a number of special projects were established. Many of these projects were developed within the framework of the INTERREG Programme.

During this period, a number of structures developed which proved essential for further developments toward closer cooperation. Though the voluntary and informal activities of the inter-communal working group worked well, there was growing concern for an institutional basis.

In November 1997, the Association Zukunft SaarMoselle Avenir was created, based on the local law of Alsace-Mosellan. With this foundation, it was possible to bundle the interests of both French and German cities under one umbrella. The statutes of the association promote more intense cooperation, thus actively shaping the future for their citizens in a united Europe. To improve the competitiveness of the SaarMoselle region, the Association members aim to realise;

Projects and initiatives of a common interest in the areas of economic development, infrastructure, tourism, culture and education, environmental protection, city planning, etc.

All projects meting this criteria are carried out by at least two members of the association, but where possible more members are involved. The functions of the Association are organised on a strictly mutual basis.

OBJECTIVES OF TEMSIS

A good deal of user based activities were considered when defining the objectives of TEMSIS, since these show communal concerns. In the areas addressed by TEMSIS, citizens also were considered with special interest. Some of these objectives are listed below.

figure 2

Bilingual operation does not only mean a translation of activities but also support for the different concepts and methods of both national sides. A good example is the support of the French and Germap coordinate systems, LAMBERT and Gauss-Krüger, in mapping. Because maps serve as an important basis for planning, another project in the INTERREG II Programme of DG XVI was established: a common basic map to a scale of 1:5000 for the border region of the SaarMoselle region. This is another example of cooperation in the SaarMoselle Region, where the partners in this project are bigger cities in the region and the national geographic services.

Content of the Environmental Information System

The list below serves to indicate the information content of TEMSIS' individual subjects which form a central part of the tasks of both citizens and administrations. From the beginning it was clear that the project could implement only a part of the complete environmental information system. The four areas covered were chosen to represent different kinds of data. Air quality data, for example, is taken almost directly from measuring stations and represents constantly changing information. The water quality data for surface waters is updated between periods of 3 to 5 years, while local and regional master plans stand for highly aggregated environmental data. This data can only be correctly interpreted when one looks at the population statistics for the different areas.

FNP/P.O.S.

Air Quality

Water Quality

Social & Economic Data

Basic Maps

THE USER GROUPS

TEMSIS is a user-driven project, whose interests were formed by a large and diverse group. Considering the users would be interested in different aspects of environmental data, the consortium suggested discussing the user requirements within three sub-groups: one for regional authorities as important data suppliers, one for local authorities as data suppliers as well as data users, and one for the citizen or citizen groups with the special task to design the public kiosk. All users agreed to this suggestion. The task of the regional authorities and data suppliers was to clarify what kinds of data they could make available, while the local authorities and citizen groups discussed their most important data requirements. The citizen groups concentrated on the funding of the public kiosk, while all users discussed the kinds of communication services that were to be made available. To ensure coordination, there was a plenary session for all groups after the basic decisions were reached.

For the formulation of user requirements, there were five sub-group meetings and two plenary sessions within the first six months of the project's course. This shows the high level of commitment from the user side. The community sub-group still meets every month to refine these requirements and to find practical solutions for the many problems that come up during their daily work. The other two subgroups are invited to the plenary sessions, which are scheduled on a yearly basis and which receive a positive response from the sub-groups. This underlines the fact that an environmental information system is a continuous task.

KIOSK CONCEPT

The communities of the SaarMoselle region practice an active and open information policy. This means that basically the same information is available to both administrations and to the public through the Internet and information kiosks. For persons without Internet access, information kiosks are also located at town halls and other central administration institutions.

The kiosks are different insofar as administrative kiosks allow the manipulation of data and telecooperation. Diagram 2 below shows this. For the data providers, however, there is no need to change their data for the uses of the separate kiosks, as data is delivered in one format. All further handling is performed by the TEMSIS server software.

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Diagram 2: Administrative (A) and Public (P) kiosk design.

The Public Kiosk

Citizen participation is required by national law, and so they should be informed about various projects and their environmental impacts. General interest in environmental problems has also been increasing and citizens are now becoming involved in the Agenda 21 process to support sustainable development.

Following the Directive on Access to Environmental Information, European citizens have the right to access information on any environmental issue they require. It was explicitly pointed out during the discussion of this Directive that there should be no restriction on the intended use of that information, therefore, the citizen requiring information does not have to justify his/her interest.

In addition to the Directive, it is increasingly becoming good practice (at least in some EU Member States), to actively provide environmental information to citizens, To date, this is usually done in the form of press releases and in regular publications by national, regional or local government authorities.

In promoting the active involvement of citizens, the public kiosk provides a discussion forum besides straight information. The information component, is not limited only to environmental data.

The Discussion Forum offers:

The Information Forum provides:

The Administrative Kiosk

Using the TEMSIS network, local and regional environmental authorities can easily discuss developments or incidents which require immediate action. Environmental viewpoints can be introduced into the decisionmaking processes as early as possible. Applying advanced telecommunication technology to environmental problems strengthens the decisionmaking process and thus creates a considerable social impact. The following diagram shows the properties of the administrative kiosk:

figure 4

The information delivered to the citizen can be produced by administrative experts. There are a number of automatic processes for data presentation.

An important component of the administration kiosk are the collaboration services provided based on the GroupWin system. This incorporates the following functions:

There is widespread suspicion that that the longwinded process involved in obtaining permission to build and extend premises e.g. for industrial operations result in economic loss (disadvantages). A regional networked environmental information system provides a quick overview of the possible problems related to the investment decision. At an early time, the planner can take these facts into consideration. This advantage lacks in most circumstances where a national frontier is involved. Data on a network can be more easily maintained and thus be more reliable and more up to date.

OUTLOOK

There are more then 60,000 communities in the EU with a potential for using Info Kiosks to distribute information to their citizens. TEMSIS is an exemplary implementation of the EU Directive concerning access to environmental information. Enterprises are increasingly devoting greater interest to Eco-auditing and can utilise info-kiosks to publish their results, thus reaching a wide sector of the public, and improve their "green image."

Experiences gained in transnational networks can be valuable in all regions within and beyond the EU. For those regions with environmental problems, TEMSIS can offer help for administrative and political decisionmaking. The multi-media presentation in the form of maps, pictures etc., can easily clarify complicated facts. A comparison between similar or different regions will be made more obvious.

Many cities in the SaarMoselle region are now considering Agenda 21. TEMSIS offers a good basis for citizens involvement in this process, especially if transnational aspects are also taken into consideration.

The causes for environmental problems are sometimes of a community-based local nature. Most frequently, common industrial standards of production, consumption habits of societies, and deficiencies in regional, national and international regulations can be traced as the cause of environmental hazards. Thus, local noise problems depend on global transport and traffic policy, air pollution depends on international legislative standards of emissions on power utilities, heating, vehicle emissions, and industrial processes.

Local environmental policy is trying to cope with this diversity of environmental problems. Following the subsidiarity principle, environmental issues are treated locally or regionally wherever possible. But the transboundary nature of the environment and its problems forces local policy to act in the spirit of global responsibility. And this forces international cooperation in environmental issues.

Good environmental policy is built on three pillars:

In all three areas there are great differences between the EU Member States. TEMSIS has begun to have an effect in the first of these three issues, and thus aids closer cooperation in our region. With growing integration of Europe, the next two subjects will also see progress.

The communities of the SaarMoselle Avenir Association are committed to continuing TEMSIS following the official close of the project. Though financing the project will be rather difficult, the benefit in realising cooperation is essential.

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