Focus of the EnRoute meeting
The focus of the meeting will be on the local city assessments and how cities can contribute to these local assessments. An essential objective of EnRoute is to test the MAES indicator framework for urban ecosystems. This means that we are interested to find out which indicators cities are using at local scale and what sort of data they have available to quantify the indicators. Grazia is leading this activity. Ultimately we are interested to make a cross scale comparision between local and EU datasets of urban ecosystems and ecosystem services. This can help selecting a set of key indicators which cities and projects can use to assess urban green in a consistent manner across Europe. This is very relevant since many projects are funded under the Horizon 2020 program to create urban green space for nature-based solutions.
Exchange with EKLIPSE and the nature based solutions projects
The EnRoute meeting is set up as a side event of a conference: https://nbs2017.eu/
This gives us the opportunity to confront the MAES indicator framework with the EKLIPSE impact evaluation framework to support planning and evaluation of nature based solutions. The latter framework provides a number of indicators which H2020 projetcts should use to assess the societal impact of newly implemented nature-based solutions in cities. One of the aims of DG RTD is to streamline the two indicator frameworks and to select a list of common indicators for NBS projects to enhance the comparibility of the outcomes and to increase opportunities for valorisation of NBS.
As EnRoute is testing the use of these indicators at EU and local scale, we can provide very useful input and guidance to other cities and projects.