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Transport economics is a branch of economics founded in 1959 by American economist John R. Meyer that deals with the allocation of resources within the transport sector. It has strong links to civil engineering. Transport economics differs from some other branches of economics in that the assumption of a spaceless, instantaneous economy does not hold. People and goods flow over networks at certain speeds. Demands peak. Advance ticket purchase is often induced by lower fares. The networks themselves may or may not be competitive. A single trip may require the bundling of services provided by several firms, agencies and modes.
Technology assessment is a practical process of determining the value of a new or emerging technology in and of itself or against existing technologies. This is a means of assessing and rating the new technology from the time when it was first developed to the time when it is potentially accepted by the public and authorities for further use. In essence, TA could be defined as "a form of policy research that examines short- and long term consequences of the application of technology."
Risk assessment determines possible mishaps, their likelihood and consequences, and the tolerances for such events. The results of this process may be expressed in a quantitative or qualitative fashion. Risk assessment is an inherent part of a broader risk management strategy to help reduce any potential risk-related consequences.
Healthy city is a term used in public health and urban design to stress the impact of policy on human health. It is a municipality that continually improves on a physical and a social level until environmental and pathological conditions are reached establishing an acceptable morbidity rate for the population. Its modern form derives from a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative on Healthy Cities and Villages in 1986, but has a history dating back to the mid 19th century. The term was developed in conjunction with the European Union, but rapidly became international as a way of establishing healthy public policy at the local level through health promotion. It emphasises the multi-dimensionality of health as laid out in WHO's constitution and, more recently, the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. An alternative term is Healthy Communities, or Municipios saludables in parts of Latin America.
Cost–benefit analysis (CBA), sometimes also called benefit–cost analysis, is a systematic approach to estimating the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives. It is used to determine options which provide the best approach to achieving benefits while preserving savings in, for example, transactions, activities, and functional business requirements. A CBA may be used to compare completed or potential courses of action, and to estimate or evaluate the value against the cost of a decision, project, or policy. It is commonly used to evaluate business or policy decisions, commercial transactions, and project investments. For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission must conduct cost-benefit analyses before instituting regulations or deregulations.
Life cycle assessment (LCA), also known as life cycle analysis, is a methodology for assessing environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. For instance, in the case of a manufactured product, environmental impacts are assessed from raw material extraction and processing (cradle), through the product's manufacture, distribution and use, to the recycling or final disposal of the materials composing it (grave).
Policy analysis or public policy analysis is a technique used in the public administration sub-field of political science to enable civil servants, nonprofit organizations, and others to examine and evaluate the available options to implement the goals of laws and elected officials. People who regularly use policy analysis skills and techniques on the job, particularly those who use it as a major part of their job duties are generally known by the title policy analyst. The process is also used in the administration of large organizations with complex policies. It has been defined as the process of "determining which of various policies will achieve a given set of goals in light of the relations between the policies and the goals."
Eco-efficiency refers to the delivery of goods and services to meet human needs and improve quality of life while progressively reducing their environmental impacts of goods and resource intensity during their life-cycle.
A feasibility study is an assessment of the practicality of a project or system. A feasibility study aims to objectively and rationally uncover the strengths and weaknesses of an existing business or proposed venture, opportunities and threats present in the natural environment, the resources required to carry through, and ultimately the prospects for success. In its simplest terms, the two criteria to judge feasibility are cost required and value to be attained.
Environmental Impact assessment (EIA) is the assessment of the environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or actual projects prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action. In this context, the term "environmental impact assessment" is usually used when applied to actual projects by individuals or companies and the term "strategic environmental assessment" (SEA) applies to policies, plans and programmes most often proposed by organs of state. It is a tool of environmental management forming a part of project approval and decision-making. Environmental assessments may be governed by rules of administrative procedure regarding public participation and documentation of decision making, and may be subject to judicial review.
Environmental indicators are simple measures that tell us what is happening in the environment. Since the environment is very complex, indicators provide a more practical and economical way to track the state of the environment than if we attempted to record every possible variable in the environment. For example, concentrations of ozone depleting substances (ODS) in the atmosphere, tracked over time, is a good indicator with respect to the environmental issue of stratospheric ozone depletion.
A regulatory impact analysis or regulatory impact assessment (RIA) is a document created before a new government regulation is introduced. RIAs are produced in many countries, although their scope, content, role and influence on policy making vary.
The New Approach to Appraisal was the name given to a multi-criteria decision framework used to appraise transport projects and proposals in the United Kingdom. NATA was built on the well established cost–benefit analysis and environmental impact assessment techniques for assessing transport projects and proposals.
The Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT), developed by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, provides an approach for evaluating land-use planning and urban development with regards to the achievement of human health needs. The HDMT provides a set of baseline data on community health metrics for San Francisco and development targets to assess the extent to which urban development projects and plans can improve community health. The HDMT also provides a range of policy and design strategies that can advance health conditions and resources via the development process.
DPSIR is a causal framework used to describe the interactions between society and the environment. It seeks to analyze and assess environmental problems by bringing together various scientific disciplines, environmental managers, and stakeholders, and solve them by incorporating sustainable development. First, the indicators are categorized into "drivers" which put "pressures" in the "state" of the system, which in turn results in certain "impacts" that will lead to various "responses" to maintain or recover the system under consideration. It is followed by the organization of available data, and suggestion of procedures to collect missing data for future analysis. Since its formulation in the late 1990s, it has been widely adopted by international organizations for ecosystem-based study in various fields like biodiversity, soil erosion, and groundwater depletion and contamination. In recent times, the framework has been used in combination with other analytical methods and models, to compensate for its shortcomings. It is employed to evaluate environmental changes in ecosystems, identify the social and economic pressures on a system, predict potential challenges and improve management practices. The flexibility and general applicability of the framework make it a resilient tool that can be applied in social, economic, and institutional domains as well.
The Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA) is a global consortium of development institutions that work collaboratively to advance sustainability learning with systematic and science-based measurement. COSA applies a pragmatic and collective approach for using scientific methods to develop indicators, tools, and technologies to measure the distinct social, environmental, and economic impacts and are applied in performance monitoring, evaluation, return on investment (ROI) calculation, and impact assessment. COSA has a public mission to open its scientific methods and metrics up to widespread use.
The OECD Environmental Performance Reviews programme provides independent assessments of countries’ progress in achieving domestic and international environmental policy commitments. The programme has completed over 60 reviews that aim to help improve individual and collective performance in environmental management by: promoting peer learning; enhancing countries’ accountability to each other and to the public; and helping governments to assess progress in achieving their environmental goals.
The European Union (EU) Environmental Policy was initiated in 1973 with the "Environmental Action Programme" at which point the Environmental Unit was formed. The policy has thereafter evolved "to cover a vast landscape of different topics enacted over many decades" (Reuters) and in 2015 the Institute for European Environmental Policy estimated that "the body of EU environmental law" amounted to 500+ directives, regulations and decisions.
"Over the past decades the European Union has put in place a broad range of environmental legislation. As a result, air, water and soil pollution has significantly been reduced. Chemicals legislation has been modernised and the use of many toxic or hazardous substances has been restricted. Today, EU citizens enjoy some of the best water quality in the world"
NUSAP is a notational system for the management and communication of uncertainty in science for policy, based on five categories for characterizing any quantitative statement: Numeral, Unit, Spread, Assessment and Pedigree. NUSAP was introduced by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz in the 1990 book Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy. See also van der Sluijs et al. 2005.
Alternatives assessment or alternatives analysis is a problem-solving approach used in environmental design, technology, and policy. It aims to minimize environmental harm by comparing multiple potential solutions in the context of a specific problem, design goal, or policy objective. It is intended to inform decision-making in situations with many possible courses of action, a wide range of variables to consider, and significant degrees of uncertainty. Alternatives assessment was originally developed as a robust way to guide precautionary action and avoid paralysis by analysis; authors such as O'Brien have presented alternatives assessment as an approach that is complementary to risk assessment, the dominant decision-making approach in environmental policy. Likewise, Ashford has described the similar concept of technology options analysis as a way to generate innovative solutions to the problems of industrial pollution more effectively than through risk-based regulation.
References
- ↑ Adelle, Camilla; Weiland, Sabine (2012). "Policy assessment: the state of the art". Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal. 30 (1): 25–33. doi:10.1080/14615517.2012.663256. S2CID 130512741.
- ↑ Jacob, Klaus; Ferretti, Johanna; Guske, Anna-Lena; Turnpenny, John; Jordan, Andrew; Adelle, Camilla (2011). "Sustainability in Impact Assessments A Review of Impact Assessment Systems in selected OECD countries and the European Commission" (PDF). OECD. SG/SD(2011)6/FINAL. Retrieved 2012-12-10.
- ↑ Podhora, Aranka; Helming, K; Adenäuer, L.; Heckelei, T.; Kautto, P.; Reidsma, P.; Rennings, K.; Turnpenny, J.; Jansen, J. (2013). "). The policy-relevancy of impact assessment tools: Evaluating nine years of European research funding". Environmental Science & Policy. 31: 85–95. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2013.03.002.
- ↑ Nilsson, Mans; Jordan, Andrew; Turnpenny, John; Hertin, Julia; Nykvist, Björn; Russel, Duncan (2008). "The use and non-use of policy appraisal tools in public policy making: an analysis of three European countries and the European Union". Policy Sciences. 41 (4): 335–355. doi:10.1007/s11077-008-9071-1. S2CID 154062860.
- ↑ LIAISE – Network of Excellence. "LIAISE KIT – Knowledge for Decision Making" . Retrieved 2013-05-05.
