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Submitted Title: Mapping medium term dynamics of key indicators in regional development

Jürgen Wolfbauer; Lajos Dobrosi

Address Leading Author:

Department of Geosciences, Chair of Environmental. System Analysis Montanuniversitaet (University of Leoben) Peter-Tunner-Strasse 5 A-8700 Leoben Austria

Submitted Abstract: Advanced students test the impact of planning policies and of sectoral decisions on complex interdependencies in medium term regional development and competitiveness respectively by a system dynamics simulation tool integrated with GIS. Visualising spatial development of critical key indicators (e.g. changes of land coverage as consequence of decrease of farming) in discrete time slices provides better understanding of sensitivities in nonlinear system interactions and back loops of sustainable regional development. This innovative toolset for decision support is a spin off use of results of EC funded research in the 5th Framework of Research on Quality of Life and Living Resources which provides also full case study datasets of six contrasting trans boundary regions north (Norway/Russia) to south (Bulgaria/Greece) along the former iron curtain in Europe. The simulation output of tabular data showing time series of relevant indicators is post processed and visualized in GIS via integrated interface programmed in Avenue.

1. Introduction Regional planning courses and related project training at Montanuniversitaet Leoben, Austria are allocated within the curriculum of postgraduate studies in environmental engineering. Focus is set on sustainable regional development accorded with projects and scenarios of maintaining and improving territorial competitiveness. Territorial competitiveness emerged as key objective for structuring sustainable development programs for rural areas as large demand showed up for this along the accession of new (poorer) countries to EC. A great share of effort was put on restructuring the agricultural sector and relevant policies and operational guides for development of rural areas were defined in the Leader-programme. Special new perspectives got shape after opening of iron curtain in 1989/90. The turn from central planned economies to open market economies of the countries in middle of Europe in the following early 90ies initiated research how to tackle efficiently the challenge of cross border development of regions artificially cut and isolated for almost half of a century by the iron curtain causing several deficiencies, but also sectoral chances in both parts. To improve joint research efforts and prepare innovative decision tools for choosing most effective development policies in the run-up of accession of

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these countries to EC, the Commission funded several joint R&D projects at universities in the framework of multinational consortia. One of those project is titled “innovative models of critical key indicators as planning and decision tool for sustainable rural development and integrated cross border regional management in former iron curtain areas based on north to south european reference studies” Especially Montanuniversitaet gained from this engagement – the chair of System Analysis & Environmental Engineering acts as co-ordinator and leading partner for methodological issues for three multinational project teams - a lot of feedback of practical experience in adapting and using advanced methods and toolsets in regional planning and also numerous datasets of cases generated across Europe from north to south. This provides some spin off well to use as important extensions of teaching material.

2. Project objectives and background the project research activities are clearly focused to the overall goal for providing territorial competitiveness for rural areas with direct implications for

• employment and conditions in rural and other relevant areas • reduction of the vulnerability of the relevant sectors through diversification • the response to societal demands for sound environmental practices • the sustainable production of renewable resources

This will be achieved by developing and testing of an innovative integrated methodology focused on interactive planning and decision support. It allows processing and preparation of the necessary complex and highly structured regional data to generate reliable scenarios for support in decision making for regional development. To successfully perform this research concept the availability of actual regional test data from different rural areas is an essential prerequisite. Therefore six trans-national reference areas along the former Iron Curtain have been selected representing one of the most actual sensitive types of areas in Europe in terms of integration and demand for development initiatives. Based on this framework and principal concepts the main research goals are the following:

• innovative combination and development of a set of methods (Geographical Information Systems extended and integrated with methods for environmental accounting, multivariate assessment concepts and dynamic simulation, visualisation tools) to provide reliable information for decision making in integrated regional development and regional policies to significantly increase rural areas competitiveness based on the six reference areas data.

• creation of prototypes of tools and procedures for operative implementation

and further routine use of the above mentioned integrated methodology based on latest information and communication technology

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• performance of test studies in the six reference areas along the former Iron Curtain border line on a north to south European traverse in Norway/Russia, (Eastern)Germany/Germany, Czech Republic/Germany, Austria/Czech Republic, Austria/Hungary and Bulgaria/Greece

3. Methods In general the methodological approach is based on GIS-based geo-environmental evaluation for land-use planning (Fig. 1) Specific sub-goals for the development of the anticipated methodology are the following:

• Development and deployment of a generic and transferable methodology supported by IT-application systems for preparation of a reliable regional inventory as basis for a strength and weakness analysis (SWOT); the derived results represent the input for definition of development scenarios for the areas on both sides of the border, e.g. definition, calibration and weighting of quantitative indicators based on GIS thematic information layers and socio-economic data

• special attention will be paid to environmental inventories and aspects in relation to sustainability especially because of expectable higher biodiversity in some border areas where land use was restricted due to the different political system in the east; this could gain European importance and should therefore play a key role in the development plans

• delineation of developments in relation to sustainability including the diverse mutual effects and their sensitivity over a midterm projection by using system dynamics tools with high integration capabilities.

3.1 Key role of GIS The development of the Iron Curtain tool set will be based on actual and further improved systems and techniques which will be combined in an integrative systems approach by incorporating:

• enhanced GIS-Tools to define and assess the regional natural, agricultural and socio- economic resources in subregional/local patterns which are embedded in the regional/national spatial network of demand and competitive supply of rural products and services

• special features of APL (applied programming language for GIS) – macros – to extract quantitative features out of GIS – layers as base for indicators

• visualisation of attribute statistics and of spatial/temporal development simulated by dynamic modelling

The innovative aspects in this GIS-data management are:

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- the variety of quantitative state variables (approx. 45 to 60) extracted and

directly measured by GIS-facilities - identification and quantification of spatial patterns of competitive supply

(especially aspects of natural capital like soil and groundwater resources or local potentials and infrastructure for recreation purposes)

- integration and management of various levels of density and resolution of spatial information to provide decision support in relation to details of the reference areas within the scope and dominating spatial patterns of demand and supply impacts based on the surrounding regions and individual countries involved

• To some extend customising and new development of tools will be performed for

quantification of an indicator system. It will allow the assessment of sustainable development in rural areas using an approach of weighted indicator systems for human-, man made-, social- and natural capital.

3.2 Modelling regional development (system dynamics)

• The dynamics of interdependencies in the indicator system will be modelled to decide and manage rural development for increasing the competitiveness of the territories by reference areas examples based on a systems dynamics programming environment. This will improve decision making related to sustainable development by enhancing the understanding of the relative

Fig. 1: GIS-based geo-environmental evaluation for land-use Collection and collation of data

Establishment of spatial database * vectorize maps * establish attribute database * rasterize vector maps (optional)

Selection of appropriate factors calculations of distance/area/quality parameters

Standardization of factors

Computation of weights of factors •establish a pairwise matrix •calculate factor weights

Interpret regional development policy•define scenarios •define land-use categories •set areal boundary

Multi-criteria evaluation •evaluate suitability for each category •create single-category suitability map •vectorize suitability map

Result analysis

Dynamic simulation EXIM

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importance of rural development and associated programs of the EC and the countries involved. It will improve the ability of the interested parties to review, critically appreciate and supply suggestions for improvements in sectoral development or relevant projects.

Innovative aspects in this dynamic modelling of projections of future development in smaller areas are: - using system dynamics to model sustainable development on the level of

countries is the most actual state of the art. To differentiate such models according to the specific needs of rural and competitive territorial development represents a considerable leap in innovation

- bridging the gap between the actual used projections of average development at levels of whole countries or of provinces and the often contrasting needs of smaller individual territories for introducing competitive rural development

- projecting with systems dynamics modelling the possible mid term to long term consequences and their sensitivities in the sustainable development of specific rural territories which compete within the surrounding demand and supply network of provinces and countries as well as the impacts of subsidies for development

Fig. 2: Elements in System dynamics programming

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Fig. 3: Vensim model environment

Fig. 4 Main structure of system dynamics model based on sectoral submodels The Model structure is differentiated with numerous subscripts enabling to test the long term impact of single branches or even single projects in the frame of complex

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interactions in regional development and territorial (sustainable) competitveness respectively. The scope of optional use of these model features is as follows:

• 50 production commodities (subscripts) in total

• Agriculture: 2 sub-ranges, 15 commodities

• Industry: 4 sub/ranges, 28 commodities

• Services: 7 activity types The dynamic model – development phases are more or less sequential with back loops for iterative improvements and show no significant differences to other model development:

• Thought, concept • Design of the model scheme • Checking the available data • Construction of the model • Testing the functionality • Calibration of the interactions

Rather special features show the dynamic model application which is also tested thoroughly in development phases as follows:

• Simulation run(s) • Testing user interventions • Sensitivity analyses, testing the scenarios • Collecting the results and their interpretation

According to the complex interdependencies in rural regional planning the examples of necessary model input cover a broad variety:

• Real conditions in the region – natural, socio-economic/human resources

• Investments to specific sectors • Local or governmental subsidies • User interventions (when testing certain scenarios) • Zoning

– continous variable, – object related

• (point – e.g. gas station, line – e.g.road, polygon – e.g. county, land...)

Crucial for effective use of all the modelling effort is a proper design of What-IF capabilities in the IC Vensim model. The minimal set comprises GUI features of:

• User interventions • Indicator parameterization

(Sensitivity analysis) • Compare previous results

from runs

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• Create the scenarios This can be achieved via comfortable commercially available model environment which is shown for Vensim in figure 5

Fig. 5: Special features to show the results are:

• Output graphs • Output tables • Uses and Causes • Detailed analysis • Multi-Compare (previous runs)

Examples of model output are:

• Simulated (forecasted) conditions in the region (possible production of goods, agricultural crops or services, balance sheets and economic statements, etc.)

• Investments or subsidies needed to specific sectors • Possible scenarios of future development

3.3 Interaction of dynamic simulation with GIS Interaction with GIS is performed via an interface supporting exchange of tabular data. More details on this are provided in paper 1449 (Dobrosi/Wolfbauer).

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Fig. 6: Combining GIS functions with numeric simulation model Samples from this paper are taken as the next three figures.

Fig.7

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Fig. 8: Visualisation of trans boundary features in regional development

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Fig. 9: Preparation of spatial data to simulate consequences of development policies in agriculture

4. Application and results A selection of reference areas across Europe have been made to be able to provide a good contrast in rural area typology. The local studies carried out in these areas will support tool development, provide results for generation of reference models and for preparation of local development concepts. The following will give a summary of the areas selected. The areas are all trans-national crossing the former Iron Curtain. They are described in relation to the motivation of selection, the problems already encountered and their European dimension. Additionally their main characteristics and data availability has been checked in advance. Further on a first concept for individual subproject performance is designed and the form of cooperation with local interested parties and potential end-users has been prepared. The necessary information was gained by the respective responsible project partners in a preliminary investigation and by performing local workshops in the areas thus strongly limiting the risk in project feasibility in the selected areas. The areas represent a north to south traverse starting in the Baltic region between Norway and Russia. This area reveals problems in

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pollution caused by mineral industries and townships and in overgrazing of vegetation by livestock (reindeers) strongly influencing the sensitive ecosystem typically for the Scandinavian environment. Next area to the south is situated between (Eastern) Germany and Germany as a reference control area with ten years of common development revealing a mixed economy typically for Central Europe. The third area between Czech Republic and Germany is representative for forestry and emerging tourism with a weak economic basis. The fourth area is situated on the border between Austrian and Czech Republic with increasing economic development in a variety of sectors like fishery, forestry, agriculture, mineral exploitation, small scale industry and trading and even a potential in tourism. The fifth area situated on the Austrian/Hungarian border is typical for the Eastern European rural territories [6] with various agricultural activities dominating and the presence of very small scale business on a weak economic basis. The area representative for Southern Europe is situated along the Bulgarian/Greece border with a strong impact of the regional water management to the environment, agriculture and protected natural areas lacking a sustainable trans-national water policy. On of preliminary results – the project will be closed in spring 2005 - is the simulation of possible medium term consequences of EC development policies as the cohesion fund and agricultural policy (CAP, NAP) in Trebon Basin

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Fig. 10: Contrasting patterns of forestation in a 30 years perspective and different agro-policies in EC Increasing income of industrial development and agro policy as usual would initiate increase of forests (a ! b) on abandoned marginal farmland . An announced change in agro policy (NAP) with rewarding efforts in maintaining cultural landscape could effect in valuable additional potential for tourism.

Fig. 11: Indicator of variability in landscape as asset of tourism industry Several similar testsamples prove also the viability and promising effects in decision support of system dynamics combined with GIS. The dissimination for endusers as well as for students will be intensified in autumn 2004. References

Books:

[1.] ArcView Spatial Analyst, ESRI UBS5M5/00, 380 New York Street, Redlands California 92373-8100 USA www.esri.com

[2.] Using ArcGIS Spatial Analyst, Gil McCoy and Kevin Johnston, ISBN: 1-58948-005-8

[3.] Using ArcGIS 3D Analyst, Bob Booth, ISBN: 1-58948-004-X http://store.esri.com/esri/

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[4.] Using ArcGis Geostatistical Analyst, Kevin Johnston, Neil Lucas, ESRI, ISBN: 1-589-48-006-6, 2000

[5.] Geographic Information Systems and Science, Paul A. Longley, David W. Rhind, JOHN WILEY & SONS Ltd, ISBN: 0-471-49521-2, 2001

[6.] Building a Geodatabase, Andrew MacDonald, ESRI, ISBN: 1-879102-99-4, 2000 [7.] ArcUser, The magazine for ESRI Software Users www.esri.com/arcuser Project reference: [1.] ©Iron Curtain Consortium: Project Reference No. QLK5-CT-2001-01401

Title of Project: Innovative models of critical key indicators as planning and decision support for sustainable rural development and integrated cross border regional management in former Iron Curtain areas based on North to South European reference studies www.ironcurtainproject.com

System Dynamics Toolkit:

[1.] VENSIM® Standard Professional DSS, Tutorial, Venata Systems 60 Jacob Gates Road, Harvard, MA 01451, 1998-1999

[2.] http://www.ventanasystemsinc.com/ [3.] http://www.averill-law.com/