GUARD - Specific Support Action for CIVITAS II
Overview
Background & policy context:
Urban traffic congestion, accidents and pollution are serious problems in Europe's cities. Therefore transport issues and mobility are of highest priority for local authorities. In 2000 the European Commission recognised the need for action and launched the CIVITAS Initiative (CIty-VITAlity-Sustainability) to help cities to achieve a more sustainable, clean and energy efficient urban transport system by implementing, demonstrating and evaluating an ambitious integrated mix of technology and policy based measures. CIVITAS I (2002-2006) has involved 19 cities clustered in 4 demonstration projects, while CIVITAS II (2005-2009) involved 17 cities in 4 demonstration projects. Like the project METEOR in CIVITAS I, the CIVITAS GUARD was a horizontal project designed to support, monitor and evaluate the CIVITAS demonstration projects, as well as to organise European dissemination.
Objectives:
CIVITAS-GUARD was established as the Specific Support Action for CIVITAS II to efficiently and professionally plan, realise, manage and control the following activities:
- Independent overall cross-site evaluation of the measures undertaken by the CIVITAS II cities including monitoring and analysis of the implementation process;
- Support the EC in the technical and formal monitoring of the CIVITAS II projects through the provision of specialist and independent advice;
- Development of policy recommendations on the basis of validated project results;
- Targeted Pan-European dissemination and awareness-raising.
The aim of the evaluation within CIVITAS-GUARD was to support and ensure that the evaluation within individual cities and projects was undertaken in such a way that:
- The impacts of individual or packages of measures are understood in a clear and unambiguous way with rigorous statistical interpretation where this is possible and valuable;
- Methods, approaches and outputs are coordinated and comparable across cities, so that value is added to enable coherent understandings to be developed at a European level;
- Clear and supportable messages are determined regarding the value of sustainable urban transport measures, singly and in combination, which can be actively promoted across Europe. This will be undertaken in the context of EC transport policy and will supplement findings from CIVITAS I;
- The evaluation procedure will include the assessment of results and outcomes as well as processes of planning and implementation;
- Based on the insight from the processes of implementation, interpretations and explanations will be given for success/ failure and policy recommendations will be formulated.
Methodology:
The different tasks and responsibilities were taken over by the partners, exploiting their competencies, knowledge and experience. The project consisted of groups of activities with strong linkages:
- Management of the involvement of the cities, by motivating and supporting them (to achieve a commitment of the cities to co-operate within the pan-European dimension of CIVITAS is crucial for the success of the CIVITAS Initiative);
- Identification and evaluation of the impact of the CIVITAS measures and applications;
- Provision of policy recommendations trough the interpretation of the results, ensuring that everybody in Europe knows about it and achieving a multiplier effect.
The whole project was quality controlled in a fully independent way. Doing so GUARD addressed the objectives of the CIVITAS Initiative and spread the knowledge about cleaner and better transport in cities throughout Europe
Share this page