► The implementation of ESDAC emerges the future development of national soil data centres. ► The importance of ESDAC for policy makers both in European level and in national/regional level. ► The ...analysis results related to the application (use) of ESDAC datasets have given some interesting conclusions. For example, there is a high number of researchers that use ESDAC data for modeling, research projects, PhD thesis and other relative research purposes (Master dissertation, Postdoc, undergraduate).
In the context of the European Union's Soil Thematic Strategy, policy makers require easy access to soil data and information of various types and scales to assess the state of soils at European level. To satisfy this need, the European Commission and the European Environment Agency (EEA) decided to establish the European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC), located at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.
The ESDAC is one of ten environmental data centres that have been established during the last 4 years in support of policy development, implementation and monitoring by the European Commission's Directorate General for Environment. The ESDAC, located at
http://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu, has become the focal point for soil data and information at European Union level by hosting a series of soil products and web-based tools that allow access to the data. The ESDAC acts as the primary data contact point for the Commission and EEA to fulfill their information needs. The establishment and the evaluation of harmonised databases should facilitate improved soil protection measures.
•The choice of the methodology conditions the narrative produced by an analysis.•For this reason, a broad canvass of approaches is advisable when tackling complex and conflicted topics.•Pooled ...methodologies are proposed here to tackle uncertainties and ensure quality in sustainability integrated assessment.•We combine six lenses and illustrate their applications both in isolation and combined.•The lenses are (i)Post-normal science (PNS), (ii) Controversy studies, (iii) Sensitivity auditing, (iv) Bioeconomics, (v) Ethics of science for governance, and (vi) Non-Ricardian economics.
How to tackle uncertainties and ensure quality in integrated assessment for sustainability? To what extent does the choice of the methodology condition the narrative produced by the analysis? The present work argues that the two questions are tightly coupled. The technique is never neutral. If we are the tools of our tools, as suggested by Thoreau, then it can also be said that language is not only a vehicle for communication, it is the driver as well. For this reason, in sustainability assessment it is not unusual to discern a close relationship between arguments made and methods adopted. In the present work a set of six reflexive analytical tools – we call them lenses – is suggested which could be pooled to the effect to appraise and improve the quality of integrated assessment and the resulting sustainability narratives, and to alleviate the constraints of the method-argument dependency. None of the lenses is new and each has been used before. Never have they been used together. The lenses are (i) Post-normal science (PNS), (ii) Controversy studies, (iii) Sensitivity auditing, (iv) Bioeconomics, (v) Ethics of science for governance, and (vi) Non-Ricardian economics. The six lenses are illustrated together with a set of case/narratives/arguments. The lenses allow some narratives – or methodologies – to be shown as either implausible or inadequate, and new narratives to be developed to tackle pressing sustainability issues, which expand the horizon of possible strategies for a solution.
The article reveals the theoretical foundations, types of pollutants, classification of monitoring and visualization systems of air pollution. A description of the design of the structure of the ...system is described, its components are described in detail, and the justification of the selected technologies is given. In general, the system consists of two parts: a device for collecting air pollution data and a site that displays these data in user-friendly form. Graphic images that display the appearance of a software product are also added.
•Agglomeration effect increases the intensity of land take.•Extensive urbanization and planning codes should be effective in saving-up non-artificial land.•A balanced accessibility of regional cities ...and towns and a comprehensive regional policy concerning protection of nature should be effective as well.
Land take is a process of significant relevance in the countries of European Union (EU).
Land take is the “Change of the amount of agriculture, forest and other semi-natural and natural land taken by urban and other artificial land development” (European Environment Agency, 2013a).
In 2011, the European Commission (EC) put in evidence that an important milestone for the EU should be to reach the goal of no net land take by 2050, and to take under strict control the impact on landtaking processes of the EU policies in the new Structural Funds programming period (2014–2020) (Communication of the EC to the European Parliament COM(2011) 571 of 20.9.2011).
In this paper we analyze the Sardinian land-taking process as related to factors which are identified as relevant variables in several studies concerning land take, such as area size, accessibility, proximity to regional and local cities and small settlements, natural risk, proximity to nature conservation areas.
The development of the energy policy of the European Union (EU) has been accompanied by organizational reforms of the EU’s energy bureaucracy. Much attention has been paid to Commission President ...Juncker’s reorganization of the European Commission, including how this has influenced the Energy Union initiative. The establishment of EU agencies has also expanded the EU administration and the capacity for developing new initiatives and coordinating implementation of EU legislation. However, recent research has not been sufficiently connected to policy studies on energy, climate and environment. This article analyses the extent to which two EU agencies—the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators, and the European Environmental Agency—augment the policymaking capacity of the Commission by providing information that aids its work. The article ends with a discussion of the potential implications of agencification.
The European Environment Agency has started the implementation of a programme of land use and ecosystem accounts, following the System of Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA) guidelines of the ...United Nations. The purpose is to integrate information across the various ecosystem components and to support further assessments and modelling of these components and their interactions with economic and social developments. This programme reflects the increasing demand for environmental policy integration in Europe, both vertically through thematic policies as well as horizontally across policies in those sectors that contribute most to environmental impacts. The construction of land and ecosystem accounts is now feasible due to continuous improvements in monitoring, collecting and processing data and progress with the development of statistical methods that facilitate data assimilation and integration. The accounts are based on explicit spatial patterns provided by comprehensive land cover accounts that can be scaled up and down using a 1 km
2 grid to any type of administrative region or ecosystem zone (e.g., river basin catchments, coastal zones or bio-geographic areas). Land cover accounts have been produced for 24 countries in Europe and first results published in the European Environment State and Outlook2005 report of the EEA.
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European Environment Agency, 2005.
The European Environment State and Outlook 2005. Copenhagen. Detailed methodology and results are to be published in forthcoming EEA, 2006,
Land Accounts for Europe, 1990–2000, Towards integrated land and ecosystem accounting. Copenhagen.
It is common knowledge that if we continue our current dependence on fossil fuels, we are headed for global economic, environmental and societal disaster. With around a third of the world's primary ...energy consumed in the operation of commercial and residential buildings, architecture has a major role to play in averting this. After setting out the dangers of the status quo, Graham S Wright – a building scientist and Chair of the US Passive House Institute's Technical Committee – explains how passive building techniques can help us to turn away from fossil fuels without compromising comfort or functionality.
This article asks how the EU as a regional organization manages to learn and adapt to policy challenges. It investigates the evolution of one regional level and one national environmental agency (the ...European Environment Agency and the Environment Agency of England and Wales) which have distinct roles in influencing EU environmental policy performance. The article examines the role of agencies and bureaucracies more generally, investigating some of the assumptions made in the bureaucracy literature, particularly concerning principal-agent models. The focus on agencies helps to illuminate two potential dimensions of the EU process: overcoming the original institutional design and the role of organizational and policy learning.
The estimation of pollutants from road transport systems is examined, by comparing emission factors (EFs) calculated with static and dynamic methods. Information technology is used to test currently ...operational assessment models in the European Union. The negligibility of the effects of variation in speed is questioned: acceleration/deceleration imply use/dissipation of energy, and directly affect pollutants release. An investigation based on drive simulation is conducted, proposing increasing traffic flow conditions. Two scenarios are simulated: an existing highway before and after major modernisation works. Benefits and detriments of its renovation are also examined. Results are processed through recent European Environment Agency models and a system that continuously computes the operations of an engine. The correlation found between average speed and EFs is not representative. Instead, a good correlation is observed between increases in speed variation and increases of EFs. Synthetic parameters are proposed to support the analysis, based on intensity and duration of acceleration/deceleration events. EFs are substantially lower if calculated through the static models. The assumption that the effects of speed variation can be neglected is rejected: driving cycles due to traffic flow conditions are identified as crucial for realistically evaluating emissions. A need is detected to formulate correcting parameters.
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