SIAT, a sustainable impact assessment tool for understanding the drivers in integrated impact assessment

SENSOR is an Integrated Project within the 6th Framework program of the EU. The major outcome is the modeling approach Sustainable Impact Assessment Tool (SIAT). The knowledge-based model SIAT enables end users to assess the impacts of land-use relevant EU-policy strategies. The results are presented for European administrative regions (NUTS), though for specific issues the grid resolution of 1x1 km will be used. The six sectors agriculture, forestry, energy, transport, nature conversation and tourism are considered. Analytically, SIAT focuses on cross-sectoral trade offs and side effects of the impacts of new introduced EU-policies. The model concept is based on a wide set of pre-run model results that are implemented into SIAT in a consistent way. SIAT is a problem- and user-oriented tool that allows end users to modify basic parameter sets of Sustainability Impact Assessment according to the methodological framework of the EU-guidelines. SIAT facilitates analysis of impacts from policies and the process that lead to those impacts. Additionally it checks whether the impacts are within sustainability tolerance limits. In a first step the SIA-Tool is able to interpolate iteratively mechanistically single policy variables, but it will be widened by a generic approach that allows simultaneous simulations of newly grouped policy variables. Main challenges of the modeling approach are the consistent integration of pre-run model results by translating the policy variables into land use claims and land use claims into indicator values. A major challenge within the project is to keep all translations transparent. SIAT will comprise a wide set of integrated policy instruments to be assessed simultaneously within bundles of policy variable sets that are currently of high importance in EU policy discussions. In this regard SIAT addresses the user group of EC policy maker, related joint research institutes and corresponding consultancies dedicated to outsourced Impact Assessments. A first prototype has been developed in October 2005. The second prototype will be developed at the beginning of June 2006.