4. Sustainability Impact Assessment Tool (SIAT)
an engineering perspective
Peter Verweij
Alterra, Wageningen-UR
www.sensor-ip.org
28/05/2010 http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI/ 4
5. SENSOR project
Develop cross sectoral ex-ante Impact Assessment Tools
to support decision making on policies related
multifunctional land use in EU
Consortium with 39 Research Institutions
15 EU Countries
China, Brasil, Argentina and Uruguay
>100 researchers
Project duration: Dec 2004 – May 2009
Regional scale with European coverage
Constraint: use existing pan-European data
Main product: SIAT for discussion support
http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI 5
6. EU – Impact Assessment
Ex-ante SIA is a procedure accompanying policy development at
European Commission. It is to analyse sustainability impacts and
side effects of an intended policy option
Identify the problem
Define the objectives
Develop main policy options
Analyse their impacts
Compare the options SIAT focus
Outline policy monitoring and evaluation
http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI 6
7. Impact assessment
Ex-ante analysis of impacts of potential policies
Involves determining economic, environmental and
social impacts of policy options
Policy Outlook
Policy Concerns a Impact Carried out for a Possible
objective Assessment (number of) future
Is defined
Can be reached by Compares by a
several
Policy option Indicators Baseline
drives (scoring varies per drives
(defined by policy
spatial entity)
scenario
instruments)
http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI 7
8. Policy
Potential policies are grouped in policy cases
around a number of central themes that are
important in multi-functional land use
Bio-energy
Promotion of production and consumption
Bio-diversity
Conservation of nature areas and in relation to agriculture,
forestry, tourism, etc.
Common Agricultural Policy financial reform
Continuation vs promotion of knowledge economy
Forest strategy
http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI 8
9. Outlook
Extrapolating scenarios for exogenous
parameters (e.g. climate change, or population growth)
Expert judgement to tweak possible trends
Baseline A
Baseline B
Baseline C
Past Present Future
http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI 9
10. Drivers to indicators (1/3)
Drivers Spatial explicit indicators
(e.g. policy, Convert (quantitative and/or
technological innovations, qualitative)
Climate change, population growth)
Conversion in SIAT system by:
Look up indicator values in database
Modeling
(meta) model
Knowledge rule
Chain of models
Mixture of the above
http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI 10
11. Drivers to indicators (2/3)
Convert
Land use
• Summaries of the most
changes
important societal,
[meta model] environmental en economical
aspects of a region
• contain region specific
Indicators
Drivers Impact
sustainability limits per
indicator
indicator (standards, thresholds,
targets,…)
[knowledge rule]
Static
maps Land use
function
[database]
s
[model]
http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI 11
12. Drivers to indicators (3/3)
meta-model sources
Multi-sectoral land use models Sectoral land use models
National
NEMISIS
Sectoral models
(CAPRI
EFISCEN
Nuts 2/3
Etc.)
CLUE
1x1 km2
http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI 12
13. SIAT requirements
Interactive web based tool to estimate the possible
consequences of different policy assumptions on land
use on sustainability within different images of the
future.
Identify areas that are sensitive to particular policies
Identify regional differences and analyse causes
look at potential ‘trade-offs’
Examine the concept of sustainability tolerance limits
undertake all analysis dynamically
Be able to compare different scenarios
Flexible in terms of:
New policies / baselines / target times
Regionalisations (extent and resolution)
Indicators
http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI 13
14. System architecture
SIAT user interface
Messaging Messaging Messaging
Resources
Map services
(e.g. factsheets)
Simulation services
OpenMI Persistence
OpenMI
Model
OpenMI
Model
OpenMI Spatial
Model database
http://siat.cgi-systems.nl/SiatGUI 14