Geneva, Palais des Nations - May 3-6, 2000
CITIES OF THE SOUTH:
SUSTAINABLE FOR WHOM?
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ESF/N-AERUS International Workshop Geneva, Palais des Nations - May 3-6, 2000
CITIES OF THE SOUTH:
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| WORKSHOP: HOME PAGE - INDEX OF PAPERS |
L. Demicheli, C. Lavalle., P. Casals-Carrasco, M. Turchini
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MOLAND (Monitoring Land Use/Cover Changes) aims to define and validate a methodology in support to sectoral policies with territorial and environmental impacts. Its main objective is to study areas experiencing fast land use dynamics within and outside the European Union.
With its component MURBANDY (Monitoring URBAN DYnamics), MOLAND sets up land use databases for various cities, with the purpose to provide a measure of the extent of urban areas as well as their progress towards sustainability. It develops present and past land uses and combine them with socio-economic and environmental data sets aiming to both understand the development of cities in the last 40 years as well as to estimate past and present social metabolism. It also develops scenarios of urban growth that will be used to define strategies for sustainable development.
A distinctive feature of MOLAND is the territorial outlook. For the first time it is now possible to carry out land use comparisons amongst different urbanised areas at international level. Such comparisons can also be developed on a multi-temporal basis. In this way the user can easily select a certain area within the study domain and quantify the changes in the land use, which had occurred during previous years.
Moreover the association of socio-economic data and territorial features allows to improve some sustainable development indicators, such as the ecological footprint. In order to build the land use database, MOLAND adopts Earth Observation techniques, such as satellite imagery. The final product is proposed in a GIS format, and is immediately ready to be exploited by the user even with a minimum knowledge of informatics tools.
The team of MOLAND operates as a remote co-ordinator, so that the project methodology can be - and usually is - implemented directly "in loco" by a local partner. Once that the database has been prepared, a minimum effort is required for following updatings. Such an approach strongly reduces the costs, also because local authorities usually already own the basic material - satellite data, aerial photographs, master plans, etc. - for applying the methodology. MOLAND revealed at the end to be quite cost-efficient.
To facilitate technology transfer in developing countries, a consistent effort should be directed towards the strengthening of operational capability of regional and/or national institutions involved in environmental and urban management, natural resources monitoring and land-cover mapping. Thus in a sustainable development perspective the MOLAND methodology seems to be a useful basis to help urban management and related policies.
The response from both local authorities and international organisation was very positive. Strict co-operation has been set up with the European Environment Agency, the United Nations Environment Program, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Eurostat and several General Directorates of the European commission.
The project started in 1998 focusing on 25 European urban areas. Its approach revealed to be successful, so that the project's second phase includes also mega-cities outside Europe, such as Johannesburg, Buenos Aires and New Delhi. The "mega-cities" are the third round of areas investigated, and can benefit of the experience learnt during the previous assessments. Several improvements have been brought as the project evolved. Main changes are in the classification adopted for different land use features. In fact, even if MOLAND adopts as a basis the CORINE land cover guidelines, the accuracy of its maps is higher, and fits particularly well for regional planning purposes.
Due to its characteristics the project can serve several purposes, such as in dealing with issues like population growth, mobility and security; strategic and environmental impact assessment at a large scale; urban sprawl.
MOLAND is funded under the Fifth Framework Programme of the European Commission (EC), and carried out by the Strategy and Systems for Space Applications Unit operating within the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.
N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net