SENSOR sustainability impact assessment: tools for environmental, social and economic effects of multifunctional land use in European regions

Abstract

Implementation of European policies designed to promote and protect multifunctional land use requires the urgent development of robust tools for the assessment of different scenarios' impact on the environmental, social and economic sustainability in European regions. The EU-FP6 Integrated Project SENSOR (2004-2007) brings together 33 partner institutions from 15 European countries with the aim to develop science based Sustainabiity Impact Assessment Tools (SIAT) for the analysis of land and human resources in the context of land use policies for Europe. The scientific challenge is to establish relationships between different environmental, social and ecoonomic processes as characterised by sustainability indicators and to analyse the interrelating effects between various land use sectors such as agriculture, forestry, nature conservation, tourism and transport. SIAT will incorporate three key assessment streams (1) A European wide driving force analysis on the basis of various land use policy scenarios so that future scenarios of land use are produced and their likely impact assessed (2) a risk analysis of the land use projections on the basis of region specific spatial and policy reference in order to identify sustainability problem regions and (3) a validation of SIAT in a number of sensitive areas studies (mountains, coastal zones, islands and post-industrialised areas) using detailed information on specific sustainability issues, including stakeholders values