The Role of Telematics
in Sustainable Development

Using Integrated Solutions
To develop a sustainable environmental approach variable spatial boundaries should be considered for an integrated management of water and air resources. Actually, such an integrated management is influenced by the geographical zone to be protected, the pollution type, socio-economic factors, the action needed and the legislation. From the point of view of a decision maker, for example, the interdependencies among the above mentioned factors are also important to be indicated at local/ regional/national and international levels.

There is an increasing tendency of the local authorities for taking more responsibility in environmental management and strategies, due to their increasing role in the national policy. Therefore, local environmental policies will have to cope with this diversity of environmental problems at different scales by implementing solutions at the local or regional scale wherever possible. Additionally, local authorities have also to consider the transboundary nature of the environment and the need to take measures and decisions together with the neighbouring communities.

Recommendations National, Regional and local authorities should support activities helping the transferability of telematics applications such as: demonstration activities, on scale levels such as watershed, clusters of cities and communities the setting up of a series of fora for environment management with special focus on telematics applications. I n such fora different stakeholders will discuss: the review of policy measures and incentives, the experience with development and application of innovative management tools, the lessons learned with community participation.

Information and yearly reports on the status of the environment at regional and local levels, supplied by the European Environmental Agency (EEA) and by the EIONET network, can stimulate adequate actions by the local authorities for further compliance of the legislation in environmental protection.

Some of the proposed telematics tools have been adapted to a particular geographical scale (spatial) which often suits rather well the long-term management of resources such as those for air in a city and its industrial zone and for water in a watershed. The use of GIS to support spatial information at different scales and the integration of different data has helped enormously to support decisions at every level.

The level of specific decisions and their scaling in space and time is, thus, a crucial factor in the implementation process, i.e. the management of water resources is of interest to local and regional authorities, but also river watersheds and transboundary rivers. The case of the Waternet project shows how the warning tools developed are very well suited to decisions at municipality level and could be adapted very well also at a lower resolution scale (regional and watershed). Conversely, the case of the Danube AEWS project, which provides telematics applications for environment warnings for the National Centres (PIACs) in nine riparian countries, demonstrates that its decision/ operability scale is on national level by establishing common protocol languages between the countries involved.

Recommendations (continued) to develop codes of good practices for the management of water and air resources by means of telematics on regional basis, which allows adoption and implementation at local level in a diversity of settings. The codes should also be considered at national level to promote long and short term strategies for environmental protection. The local authorities (LA) should set up clear strategies for implementing the existing env i ronmental legislation or indicate on regional and national levels, the specific needs for an improvement of the legislation. LA should consider the transboundary nature of the environment and the need to take measures and decisions together with the neighbouring communities. LA should ensure that decision taking mechanisms in environmental management exist at all levels necessary to be compatible with the nature and scale of the problem encountered. The National authorities should also reinforce the available legislation, if necessary, with respect to the European Directives for the envirnment, and strengthen actions for environmental legislation compliance, considering the needs of local and regional authorities. EEA should ensure that information and reports on the status of the environment should reach promptly regional and local authorities to stimulate further actions in environmental protection. Unity of actions and strategies between groups of cities may have a higher impact on a national level in pursuing national environmental decisions.

Data Standardisation
Many projects demonstrated a clear need for reliable software tools addressing data standardisation. The benefit from the implementation of standardised data is the ability of environmental managers to improve data and information sharing among different public bodies involved in complementary administrative and technical procedures.

Recommendations The European Commission and national governments should pursue to: Support activities to develop standards and harmonisation for environmental data and IT technology.

A higher level of information sharing is a means to perform administrative procedures in a more effective way and make faster decisions.

The need of data harmonization is indicated, for example, by the definition of vulnerable zones for nitrates, as indicated by European Directives. Such a definition implies that the monitoring of these areas between regions or transboundary regions, should consider and face suitable solutions according the different national standards on water vulnerability to nitrates. In this case, harmonization of data and of standards should be tackled more at the European level. At this level decisions have to be taken and agreed by each country on which formats and data exchange tools have to be used for environmental data. A tool developed for data standardization and information exchange is given by the project REMSSBOT. The system uses a common standardised data model EEA-ETC/CDS, provided at European level for describing and storing data and information. This feature allows the use of a standard model to describe data at a common European level. Through the system developed by REMSSBOT, each public body/data provider is able to keep control of its own data, made available through the information system, because the user accesses only the proffered information service at the provider side, and is not allowed to access the data base itself.

Cross-discipline Working
Local authorities are the first level of decision makers to manage air pollution, notably caused by traffic and industry. In this case, the development of environmental protection strategies requires the integration of separate disciplines and cross discipline working (environment –air quality- and transport).The key to success is the integration of environmental thinking with the day-to-day activities of the transport sector activities. Projects such as EFFECT, EMMA, EUROAQ and SIMTRAP have coped with such multi-sector issue (transport and environment). Inter-authority collaboration was also involved between neighbouring authorities. They also explored how to interact with the community to achieve a change in attitude tow a rds the environment by exercising sensible environmental friendly choices.

The multi-sector and crossboundary issue is also tackled in the Danube-AEWS project.The warnings of water pollution incidents we re transfe rre d t h rough the PIACs to the central and local Authorities in the countries responsible for water pollution control. Important water users – belonging to different sectors such as industry, agriculture, municipalities, public health, or tourism – are alerted if necessary by the local authorities.In this way the system can provide services in cases of emergency for different sectors of the society in the Danube countries.

Recommendations The European Commission and the National governments should pursue: The promotion of actions to enhance free flow of information promoting actions to integrate environmental management tools with day-to-day activities such as transport, tourism, agriculture, etc.

Transboundary Working
For the air pollution management, however, in the case of dense urbanization and/or of high concentrations of industrial plants, the level of decision may be scaled up to a regional or crossborder level.

The example of JAMS project, in investigating cross border sulphur air pollution in an area between Poland,Czech Republic and Germany, shows that the monitoring of levels of atmospheric pollution has led to a development of national and international a g reements on air pollution standards and data exchange. Perhaps more importantly, the project has resulted in greater co-operation between the research establishments involved.At the beginning of the project all the groups were separate entities, unused to working as a members of a larger group. Now they have shared information on a regular basis, visited each others test sites and have developed an active network for the broadening of their knowledge throughout Europe. The Eastern European partners have also gained an appreciation of the need to work closely with their colleagues in order to support scientific policy on reducing emissions.

Recommendations The European Commission and the National governments should pursue: incentives for telematics applications which deal with cross-border environmental problems notably between EU and CEE countries.

Working in Partnership
Another key of success is the co-operation between the administrations of cities, regions, countries and tools which can help to exchange information and to take decisions on common environmental issues.

TEMSIS provides a rather simple system, which can be used by a small community without requiring massive investments. The project is geared for cooperation rather than as a stand-alone application. Small and medium sized communities will gain many benefits by cooperating and participating on a regional,national or transnational basis. Experiences acquired in transnational networks are valuable in all the regions. For the decision making process, the multi-media presentation offered by the project TEMSIS in the form of maps, pictures etc., can easily clarify complicated facts.

Recommendations Regional and local authorities should: improve their internal communication, define clear responsibility within the administration for the system and the data management enhance co-operation between the different authorities responsible for environmental protection decisions. The setting of regional fora may provide a good mechanism to enhance co-operation, between authorities on regional and cross border levels.

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REC * ENWAP * VIRTUAL GALLERY

The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe