- Topic
- Urban mobility planning
- Country
- Czechia
- Resource type
- Case study
First published on 15 December 2022.
Understanding the collective impact of individual mobility measures is essential to creating an effective Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP). This is the main driver for the City of Brno in designing and developing a tool that aims to help mobility planners attain an overview of the potential impact of the mobility measures that have been selected for implementation.
Context
The SUMP Action Plan of Brno, which was developed within the framework of the LOW-CARB project between 2017 and 2019, is based on the SUMP developed by the municipality in 2014 within the framework of the CH4LLENGE project. The Action Plan was developed following an extensive consultation process undertaken by Brno over the years spent working on its SUMP, starting with the setting up of the institutional cooperation framework within the CH4LLENGE project (see the case study published on Eltis). The Action Plan focuses on strengthening and continuing regular collaboration amongst the different levels of government – local, regional, and national – through meetings and workshops. Building on the SUMP’s set of targets and proposed measures, the updated SUMP Action Plan started by strengthening cooperation with municipalities in its functional urban area (FUA) and the South Moravian Region. The new SUMP monitoring tool complements the Action Plan and supports the implementation of its measures.
In action
The new tool, which is based on a Geographic Information System (GIS), was developed by the City of Brno between 2017 and 2019 in the framework of the LOW-CARB project financed by Interreg Central Europe. It aims to support the collaborative monitoring and evaluation of the measures foreseen in the SUMP Action Plan. The Action Plan was developed by the City of Brno in cooperation with the South Moravian Region Transport Authority and the Brno Public Transport Company. It is a strategic document that forms the basis for financial support of any planned mobility measure. The SUMP monitoring tool is used as the basis for selecting the measure(s). Within the Action Plan, Brno identified mobility indicators for strategic and specific goals at the functional urban area level, along with the data collection methods and target values for each indicator that are to be achieved by 2030.
The SUMP monitoring tool is meant to support stakeholder collaboration during the measure-implementation phase. The tool is primarily used by the main stakeholders to provide an overview of the measure(s) selected in a SUMP, with essential data on each measure including its stage of planning or implementation. Moreover, the tool can be used to display selected measures and demonstrate cumulative impacts of the whole package of measures. This provides a starting point for the continued engagement in a co-creative process, which is driven by enabling easy access to the information in the tool for stakeholders. Receiving online feedback from residents and stakeholders on the planned measures was enabled by the ‘public’ function of the GIS-based SUMP monitoring tool.
The tool synthesises data in a user-friendly GIS application and supports planners in monitoring the implementation and financing of the measures, while assigning clear responsibilities to all stakeholders involved. The measures selected for implementation are revised on an annual basis as part of the annual Action Plan revision and evaluated and monitored using the SUMP monitoring tool.
The approved draft Action Plan was open to an online public consultation using a mobile app that was developed based on the SUMP monitoring tool. For the municipality it was clear that the work does not finish with drafting the Action Plan or its formal approval. On the contrary, this moment was considered the beginning of the main job of transforming the planned actions into reality. A clear and well-structured Action Plan is essential for this, where all actions are carefully assessed and described with their respective timing, budget, sources of financing and responsibilities, etc.
Results
Monitoring and evaluation are necessary within the SUMP process to ensure that the agreed objectives are achieved within the specified timeframe and budget, and to predict the impact a measure could have after its implementation. Here lies the primary niche for the newly developed monitoring tool. Mapping measures in the GIS provide a clear visualised overview, with easy to access data and information, including details of who is responsible for which measure and over what time horizon, not to mention the respective funding source.
The SUMP monitoring tool can be used by all stakeholders involved to display information about selected measures and demonstrate the intended cumulative impacts of the whole package of measures. The SUMP measures are selected and displayed in a table format. Multiple parameters can be filtered according to various criteria – for example by type of measure, implementation status, cost, start or end date of the measure, investor, etc. After selecting filters, results are generated in both table and map formats. This provides a quick overview and gives detailed insight into the measures. From here, results can be further analysed according to strategic or specified objectives.
Challenges, opportunities and transferability
The tool is used to synthesise data relating to multiple mobility measures in a visual format. This greatly helps planners to monitor the number, type, scale, and duration of a measure over the course of the lifetime of a SUMP or Action Plan. The monitoring tool can additionally be used as an engagement device to help facilitate communication between various stakeholders participating in the SUMP process. While it is currently only available in Czech, the tool can be easily translated into other languages and thus used widely by other European cities.
In Depth
LOW-CARB-SUMP-monitoring-tool-brochure-EN.pdf (interreg-central.eu);
Implementation manual (interreg-central.eu)
Brno-Action-Plan---SUMP.pdf (interreg-central.eu)
Author: Ana-Maria Baston
Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the European Commission.
Photo Credits: BearFotos, Wirestock Creators, Leonid Andronov © / Shutterstock.com - no permission to re-use image(s) without separate licence from Shutterstock.