New Ways through the Alps The New Gotthard Base Tunnel - Impact of a Big Construction Site on a Small Mountain Village

For Switzerland as located in the heart of Europe transport policy is a matter of particular importance. Especially transports between Italy and Germany use the Swiss corridors through the Alps. Therefore Switzerland realised a most ambitious construction project called NEAT (Neue Alpen Transversale) to improve the European train connections especially for freight transports. One part of the project is the new Gotthard base tunnel, the longest railway tunnel of the world and the most impressive element of the new transalpine railway line through the Alps. In view of the difficult accessibility and extreme climatic conditions, ensuring the fast and reliable transit of more than 300 trains per day through the two 57 km long single-track galleries represents a considerable technical challenge. The Gotthard base line directly links the northern and southern sides of the Alps and the project of building a new line should achieve the following goals: Massive increase in goods capacity (twice as much as today) Much shorter North-South transit time for passengers and freight Reduced traction power requirements, per weight unit of transported goods, as a result of the elimination of steep slopes. The construction work started in 1996 and will be probably finished by 2013. Because of the length of the tunnel five points were chosen, from which the drilling started. The shortest but technical most challenging phase of construction is located under the small village of “Sedrun” in the canton of “Graubünden”. Sedrun is a tourism destination for skiing, 1335 m above sea level with about 1.500 inhabitants. Here a gallery leads to a mine shaft with a depth of 800 m, ending at 550 m above sea level. At the intermediate access of Sedrun a multifunctional station is located which also is used for crossover, air ventilation, technical infrastructure and in case of emergency. The construction site with its enormous needs on resources, infrastructure, workforces - for example at the beginning a lot of specialists from South African mining branch came to Sedrun – may be a big challenge for the small village. In 2004 during the peak period up to 400 workers have been employed. Also logistical solutions for the transport of machines and material to the construction side and the carrying of stone to the deposits have to be developed. An ongoing long-term accompanying research (2000 – 2013) is analysing the ecological, economic and social impact on the construction site for the village and the region. The research project wants to assess the sustainability of such a long-term construction process. The contracting body is an advisory group of public institutions including the community of Sedrun, the region ‘Obere Surselva’, the canton Graubünden and the Swiss Federal Office of Transport. Within the long-term research a set of indicators will be collected every year furthermore an every third year deep-rooted analysis on different topics will be done. The project also has the function of an early-warning system to anticipate unexpected stresses and strains. The results of the research will be visualised from a documentary film team. Besides the annual research we tried to answer the following question: Which are the economic impacts of the construction site for the region of Sedrun? The decision to choose Sedrun as one of the five construction sites for the Gotthard base tunnel did not only change the ecological and social situation in the region but also has economic effects on the community. Especially the local building sector but also hotels, restaurants and local industry are benefiting from the construction site. To calculate these economic effects for the region of Sedrun we used the method of the incidence analysis. The incidence analysis is a kind of cost-benefit analysis which is especially suited to assess the spatial effects of infrastructural facilities or the service of these facilities. Considering the direct effects we focus on the receipts and expenditures which are directly connected with the realisation of the project. The economic effects could be divided into the so called tangible and intangible effects. Tangible effects are measurable as indirect economic effects (spill-over effects). To measure the indirect economic effects we carry out an interview survey among the workers to calculate the additional economic impacts caused by the expenditures of the workers in the region. The intangible effects could be explained as soft and mostly not quantifiable effects. To acquire the intangible effects we carry out an image analysis based on national newspaper articles about the construction site in Sedrun. In our paper we present the structure and main indicators of the long-term accompanying research and the results of the incidence analysis to calculate the economic effects for the region.

Quo vadis? How to measure the quality of local and regional development processes?

Today most activities which seem to be sound, cosy and helpful - or sometimes simply useful - are called ?sustainable'. Of course the requirements for measuring sustainability increased rapidly. Many different systems of indicators and conflicting opinions about the adequate approach characterise the present situation. Nevertheless we add another system with an specific approach to evaluate processes of local and regional development. In our opinion it is able notably to refer to the quality of the concept of sustainability. The basic system is threefold and bears analogy to the model of total quality management. We distinguish between: · The assessment of projects with respect to material, procedural and ethical implications. The conceptual framework is translated into an evaluation checklist to systematise the discussion of the character and general impact of a given project or programme. The methodology of this section has been presented at the 39th ERSA Congress 1999 in Dublin even and until now has been applied in different fields. · The assessment of development processes in terms of organisation, methodology, contents and legal demands. This section will be the main part of our presentation. · And the assessment of the state of the region which actually is a 'work in progress'. It will combine elements of 'top-down indicators, deduced from the international and national discussion of the CSD-scheme, with elements of regional specific indicators based on a bottom-up approach which defines regional specific goals of development according to a transdisciplinary approach of how to experience the local and regional space. Our methodology is based on self-evaluation and it can come into operation at an early stage accompanying the activities over the whole life cycle. The assessment of development processes is to be done from the local and regional actors for themselves, accompanied by scientific experts. It depends on four principles: · The people concerned are the experts. They get involved in learning processes. · The focus of the assessment is on credibility and transparency. · Development processes need a minimum of quality. The standard is fixed. · The quality management can be used in a flexible way to allow the assessment of different processes according to the communities main focus. The whole project of quality management is closely coupled with the regional Agenda 21 in the Lake of Constance- region as it has been shown eat the 40th ERSA Congress 2000 in Barcelona. Together with the network of 13 regional contact points in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and the Principality of Liechtenstein the different sections has been discussed and field-tested. 437 words Key words: sustainability, Agenda 21, quality management, development processes, transdisciplinarity

The 'hidden hypothesis'- approach in evaluation methodology: The Swiss participation in the European INTERREG II- Programme

Regional development, and crossborder cooperation in particular, needs feedbacks on the impacts of public policies. Policy evaluation is one appropriate tool. The ?hidden hypothesis'- approach is characterized by two elements: (1) an emphasis on the invisible goals of an evaluated programme or instrument and (2) a strong orientation towards processes of learning and motivation with the actors involved. (1) The formulation of political programmes tends to integrate as much different interests as possible. Such goal-setting processes simplify political agreement. But to evaluate such programmes with all their different and partly conflicting goals creates problems. The quality of an evaluation cannot be better as the quality of the evaluated goals and conflicting goals lead straight forward to conflicting results. (2) Evaluating the results of a political programme is also confronted with problems of measurement. Evaluation methodology normally distinguishes output, impact and outcome of a programme or a project. In general it is very tricky to evaluate the outcome. Thus the presented approach of evaluation works with different logic. The approach aims at enabling the actors concerned to modify and rearrange their activities. The evaluator acts as moderator and gives inputs for the necessary learning processes. This approach can be used especially in intermediate evaluations and monitoring. The case of the Swiss participation to the European INTERREG II- Programme shows a great complexity concerning political goals and concerning the cooperation in a federalistic political structure. Therefore the casestudy is a good example to demonstrate the advantages of the approach: In 1992 the Swiss population voted against joining the European Economic Market Treaty. The narrow rejection by plebiscite lead to intense discussions about the national cohesion. Afterwards the federal strategy to move the country towards an European integration has been based on a piecemeal approach and small projects of crossborder micro-integration. As an important strategic policy instrument the Swiss government decided to contribute to the INTERREG II- Programme of crossborder cooperation with own ressources of co-financing. In this situation the system of goals connected with the participation in INTERREG II is very complex: The different explicite and implicite goals can be categorized by a double dichotomy: On the one hand the tension between the goal of European integration and the goal of (Swiss) regional development. On the other hand the tension between active policy steering and re-active coordinating. Both relationsships are overlapping and influence the administrative levels between central government and the single local project. To evaluate this policy is a work of great complexity. Key words: evaluation methodology, regional crossborder development, INTERREG, Switzerland

Cloud droplet number closure for tropical convective clouds during the ACRIDICON CHUVA campaign

The main objective of the ACRIDICON-CHUVA campaign in September 2014 was the investigation of aerosol-cloud-interactions in the Amazon Basin. Cloud properties near cloud base of growing convective cumuli were characterized by cloud droplet size distribution measurements using a cloud combination probe and a cloud and aerosol spectrometer. In the current study, an adiabatic parcel model was used to perform cloud droplet number closure studies for several flights in differently polluted air masses

Aerosol characteristics and particle production in the upper troposphere over the Amazon Basin

Airborne observations over the Amazon Basin showed high aerosol particle concentrations in the upper troposphere (UT) between 8 and 15 km altitude, with number densities (normalized to standard temperature and pressure) often exceeding those in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude. The measurements were made during the German–Brazilian cooperative aircraft campaign ACRIDICON–CHUVA, where ACRIDICON stands for Aerosol, Cloud, Precipitation, and Radiation Interactions and Dynamics of Convective Cloud Systems and CHUVA is the acronym for Cloud Processes of the Main Precipitation Systems in Brazil: A Contribution to Cloud Resolving Modeling and to the GPM (global precipitation measurement), on the German High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft (HALO). The campaign took place in September–October 2014, with the objective of studying tropical deep convective clouds over the Amazon rainforest and their interactions with atmospheric trace gases, aerosol particles, and atmospheric radiation. Aerosol enhancements were observed consistently on all flights during which the UT was probed, using several aerosol metrics, including condensation nuclei (CN) and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) number concentrations and chemical species mass concentrations. The UT particles differed sharply in their chemical composition and size distribution from those in the PBL, ruling out convective transport of combustion-derived particles from the boundary layer (BL) as a source. The air in the immediate outflow of deep convective clouds was depleted of aerosol particles, whereas strongly enhanced number concentrations of small particles ( 90 nm) particles in the UT, which consisted mostly of organic matter and nitrate and were very effective CCN. Our findings suggest a conceptual model, where production of new aerosol particles takes place in the continental UT from biogenic volatile organic material brought up by deep convection and converted to condensable species in the UT. Subsequently, downward mixing and transport of upper tropospheric aerosol can be a source of particles to the PBL, where they increase in size by the condensation of biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) oxidation products. This may be an important source of aerosol particles for the Amazonian PBL, where aerosol nucleation and new particle formation have not been observed. We propose that this may have been the dominant process supplying secondary aerosol particles in the pristine atmosphere, making clouds the dominant control of both removal and production of atmospheric particles

Regional Cohesion and Competitiveness in 21st Century Europe

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Sustainable Regional Development: Interplay of top-down and bottom-up approaches. – http://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa99pa139.html [05 2008]. DARNUS REGIONŲ VYSTYMASIS: ŠIAULIŲ REGIONO SOCIALINĖS IR EKONOMINĖS PLĖTROS SISTEMINIS TYRIMAS Teodoras Tam

ABSTRACT: The paper presents an integrated framework to manage regional and local development in a sustainable way. The framework is based on an analysis of public policies and private activities. The key questions were the following: What is the degree of orientation of public policies towards regional sustainability? Which factors help to express the regional social potential for development? Which levers can be used for dynamizing the regional transformation process? The theoretical framework is based on two research projects. The main focus of the overall results was on the interplay between innovative actions from below, so-called bottom-up approaches, and supporting missions, which stand for top-down activities for regional development. The results has been deepened with two consulting projects in the Lake of Constance-region. These two projects represent the top down respectively the bottom-up approach of sustainable regional development. Most parts of the theoretical framework and the integrated framework has been worked out within the international group of consultants of the INSURED-project. Here we have to commend our colleagues Gerry Sweeney (SICA, Ireland), Robert Lukesch (ÖAR, Austria), Filippo Strati (SRS, Italy) and Ruggero Schleicher-Tappeser (EURES, Germany) and their collaborators