FP5 PROJECTS - JPods

4.4.1 Strategic approaches and methodologies in urban planning towards sustainable transport
ISHTAR (Integrated Software for Health, Transport efficiency and Artistic heritage
Recovery)
Project Reference: EVK4-CT-2000-00034 Start Date: 01-06-2001
Contract Type: Cost-sharing contracts End Date: 31-05-2004
Project URL: http://www.ishtar-fp5-eu.com/ Duration: 36 Months
Problems to be solved
European cities face common challenges concerning their quality of life: degradation of the urban
environment, significant risks for citizens health, traffic congestion causing stress and economic
inefficiency, progressive damage of the artistic and monumental heritage. Additional difficulties derive
from the lack of integrated tools that allow cities to make balanced decisions on a wide range of issues.
The aim of ISHTAR Project is to build an advanced software suite for the analysis of the effects of short
term actions and long term policies to improve the quality of the environment, citizen’s health,
conservation of monuments. The suite will include both existing and newly developed models, covering
the areas of citizen’s behaviour, transport, vehicles emissions noise and safety, pollutants dispersion,
buildings related atmospheric emissions, health, and monuments degradation. These tools will find
integration in the use of a GIS and user-friendly interface software. The models suite will be an
innovative tool for advanced urban management and will allow the integrated analysis of the various
environmental effects of technical and non technical measures. This will represent an attractive
alternative to the usual separated analysis of the effects of such measures on the various elements of
the urban environment.
Scientific Objectives and Approach
The integration of a large number of software tools and the creation of specific modules for the advanced
simulation of key processes such as transport behaviour and its direct impacts on the urban environment
will allow the build-up of an innovative and powerful decision support tool for urban policies optimisation.
The achievement of a high spatial and temporal flexibility in the use of the tool will maximise the
possibility of use from local short term actions to widespread long-term policies, thus being of interest for
different categories of users. A high level of technical innovation, in terms of both development of new
tools needed and balanced integration of these with existing and marketable tools, will create a new
method and an innovative software tool for assessing urban policies. Specific modelling efforts will be
performed in the representation of policies effects on citizens behaviour, in the integrated 24hr simulation
of traffic emissions, noise and safety, in the microscopic analysis of air pollution effects on health and
monuments. The maximisation of the European Added Value, deriving from a wide and geographically
representative consortium, the development of Stakeholders oriented activities, based on a thorough
organisation of dissemination, and the contribution to a widespread socio-economic issue, represented
by the decreasing urban quality of life, will originate a potentially huge market for results dissemination
and exploitation. The exploitation of the models suite will begin within the Project with the application of
the tool to the analysis of measures tested in the seven involved cities: Athens, Bologna, Brussels, Graz,
Grenoble, London and Rome. The designed strict coherence with EU Policies for Environment,
Transport, and Urban Life Quality, together with the proper liaison with relevant Projects in the whole 5th
FP, will guarantee the expected resonance of the project within EC research effort.
Expected Impacts
The key result of ISHTAR Project will be the realisation of a multi-impacts models suite for the
assessment of a wide menu of measures for urban life quality. The application of the tool to the
measures tested in the involved cities will provide indication of tool usefulness, accuracy, applicability
and estimation of impacts on health, environment, monuments. The users involvement will provide
evidence of the impact of the performed research. The availability of the ISHTAR suite will allow in future
public administrations and consultant companies to run integrated and advanced environmental
assessment of short-term actions and long-term policies for the improvement of the urban quality of life.
This twofold opportunity can bring environmental and health benefits on one side, and employment
opportunity and improved efficiency of the urban system on the other. The main immediate beneficiaries
of the new decision support tool will be the local authorities, having the chance of optimising integrated
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