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The overall objective of URBEM is:
- To provide a comprehensive framework
to facilitate urban watercourse rehabilitation that takes
into account the regional variations in modification and
use of watercourses across Europe.
The specific technical and scientific objectives
of the URBEM research project are:
- To develop new tools to assess the potential
for enhancement and rehabilitation of urban watercourses,
- To develop innovative urban watercourse
rehabilitation techniques for use in future schemes,
- To develop decision making support procedures,
including social, economic, environmental and safety aspects,
to help planners and city authorities effectively prioritise
and plan urban river rehabilitation projects that help to
achieve "maximum ecological potential".
In addition the URBEM project intends:
- To provide guidance, in the form
of training and briefing modules, to public, professional
and environmental authorities about how to plan, implement
and maintain an urban rehabilitation scheme.
For convenience of organisation and management,
the overall project is divided into 11 work packages that
divide up the work into discrete and manageable units. Each
work package is led by one of the project partners
Work package
1 Project Integration and Co-ordination
Led by : Hr Wallingford
This work package is the overall co-ordination and management
of the research project. There is no specific input to the
package, other than work package progress reports, but the
work involves close liaison with all themes and work-packages
in the URBEM project.
Work package
2 Existing case studies
Led by : Institut fur Okologische Raumentwicklung e V.,, Dresden
This work package aims to collate information from existing
urban river rehabilitation schemes
Work package
3 Study-site monitoring
Led by : University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
The objective of this work-package is to collect all the relevant
information about a range of selected urban watercourses in
the following Six cities (Newcastle, UK; Lyon, France; Dresden,
German; Oeiras, Portugal; Ljubljana, Slovenia and Vienna,
Austria) across Europe.
Work package
4 Aesthetic evaluation
Led by: Instituto Superior Tecnico
The objective of this work package is to develop an evaluation
methodology to classify the aesthetic quality of urban watercourses
and their surroundings.
Work package
5 New tool to assess the potential for urban watercourse rehabilitation
Led by HR Wallingford
The objective of this work package is to develop a new tool
to assess the potential for urban watercourse rehabilitation.
The methodology to apply the new tool will be defined so it
can be implemented and tested on the urban watercourse study
sites.
Work package
6 Implementation and review of the new assessment tool
Led By : University of Ljubljana
The objective of this work package is to apply the assessment
tool developed in Work Package 5 on the urban watercourse
study sites, analyse the results and review and improve the
tool if needed.
Work package
7 Development, implementation & review of social appraisal
tool
Led by: New Economics Foundation
The objective of this work package is to develop and review
an audit tool which:
· identifies all stakeholders in any river rehabilitation
project
· generates information about how citizens perceive
the urban environment
· enables citizens to participate in consultations
about any rehabilitation project
· generates indicators against which urban watercourse
rehabilitation can be measured.
· tests the tool on the study sites and the local citizens
& revises the tool in light of this testing
Work package
8 New techniques for urban river rehabilitation
Led by: Portuguese National Civil Engineering Laboratory
This work package aims to develop innovative techniques for
urban watercourse rehabilitation
Work package
9 Decision support methodologies
Led by: HR Wallingford
The objective of this work package is to define a decision
support methodology for public and environmental authorities.
Work package
10 Development of indicators of success
Led by: Institut fur Okologische Raumentwicklung e V.,, Dresden
The objective of this work package is to find indicators with
which to assess the success of a rehabilitation scheme. It
is important to be able to measure the effects of interventions
in the river system to determine the effectiveness of expenditure
on rehabilitation measures and their contribution to achieving
a sustainable future in the urban context.
Work package 11 Training &
dissemination
Led by: Centre for Urban Water
To ensure the results of the URBEM project will be put into
practice by as wide a range of end users as possible including
EC citizens, public authorities and professionals, there are
three aims:
· To document the project
results
· To develop a set of
training materials to educate end-users of the URBEM results
· To disseminate the
project outputs to the potential user-community
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