How to assess the Environmental State of EU regions with the global concept of sustainability?

Abstract

EPSILON project is aiming at assessing sustainability of all European regions to provide a quantitative tool for policy decision making. EPSILON will propose a coherent view of the economic, social, institutional and environmental state of a region, taking into account local as well as relationships indicators. EPSILON provides sustainability maps for monitoring & benchmarking of regions at different levels of aggregation of indicators thanks to a GIS integrated computerized model. This paper is focused on presenting EPFL modelling of the environmental dimension within the sustainability model. Its particularities are: The full use of the DPSIR 3 approach to define relevant environmental indicators at the State level. These indicators are structured across environmental themes (Air, Soil, Water and Land). The inclusion of proper environmental interactions across Europe by using results from transboundary fate models such as EMEP. The aggregation of environmental indicators according to scientific backgrounds. Whenever possible, this aggregation relies on the recognition of the relative impact of the pollutants on human health using the DALYs 4 parameters. These DALYs have been derived from the IMPACT2002 model, a multimedia fate and exposure model for the impact assessment of toxic chemicals covering all Western Europe (Pennington et al., 2003a).