BSR-TeMo - Territorial Monitoring for the Baltic Sea Region

Thematic scope

European policy with the Lisbon Treaty includes the aim of territorial cohesion. There is therefore a need to innovate and develop monitoring systems for territorial development that can support policy makers at different levels in order to contribute to European competitiveness and cohesion.

The stronger political focus and improved understanding of structures, trends and scenarios influencing territorial development highlights the need to improve the monitoring also at macro regional level.

This ESPON project shall support evidence informed territorial development and cohesion in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) by developing an indicator based monitoring system. This monitoring system shall comprehend a policy dimension, related to the promotion of territorial cohesion in the Baltic Sea Region, and a methodological dimension aimed at developing a tool (indicator based) for monitoring the territorial development in the Baltic Sea Region.

This will contribute to increased knowledge and understanding of territorial cohesion processes in the BSR and at the same time allow for a comparison and benchmarking with other European regions and macro-regions. It will also support the contribution of the BSR to smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe as mentioned in the EU2020 Strategy.

Please read more about the main research areas and main results envisaged on the next page.

Scientific support to policy development

• Illustrate and support the understanding of territorial structures and trends at different scales for different types of regions across the BSR. Providing evidence on the regional diversity, the situation and progress on main territorial challenges of the BSR: east-west divide, north-south divide, urban-rural divide
• The use of European-level data for comparison and benchmarking purposes as well as regional/local data to focus on specific challenges most important for the BSR region
• Provide an indicator based monitoring system, complemented with some qualitative information, which allows a continuous monitoring and benchmarking of the territorial development of the BSR at European level, in relation to other macro regions and internally at regional and local scales.

Lead Partner

Nordregio - Nordic Center for Spatial Development, Sweden.

Detailed information on the contracted project team can be found under Transnational Project Groups.

Budget: € 340 000,00

Project’s lifetime: February 2012 – January 2014

Delivery of Reports

Inception Report: 6 June 2012

Interim Report: 30 November 2012

Draft Final Report: 28 June 2013

Final Report: 28 February 2014

Publishing

Reports will be published once they are approved by the ESPON Monitoring Committee

More information

Please contact the Project Experts at the ESPON Coordination Unit:

Sandra DI BIAGGIO, e-mail: [email protected]

Main research areas

Some key analytical questions to address during the implementation of this project are:

• Indicator setting. Which indicators, content wise, should be used to assess progress towards territorial cohesion and to assess the progress in relation to the main territorial potentials and challenges identified for the BSR (as mentioned under section IV)?
• Geographical level/scale. What is a suited territorial structure (aggregation) for permanent monitoring/reporting? What are the appropriate functional regions? From what level do we need to aggregate? In this connection particular attention should be given to the possibility to include LAU2 or municipal level as building blocks.
• Visualisation. How to visualize and present territorial structures and trends with appropriate maps, figures and tables?
• Benchmarking. How the monitoring system could be used for comparative analyses within groups of comparable areas or regions within the BSR and with other European (macro) regions?

Main results envisaged

A system for monitoring territorial development in the BSR tied to The Treaty of Lisbon which defines that the Union "shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion”, and backed by relevant European and BSR policy documents. This system is envisaged to include a basic module providing simple information for interpretation of territorial development and an advanced module including a sample of different and more sophisticated/composite indicators that can also catch trends in the territorial/structural development in the BSR.

• Tests of the analytical capacity of the system including 3-5 examples of comprehensive case analyses that can show the ability of the monitoring system to provide facts and evidence on the BSR in support of territorial cohesion and provide evidence based support to policy implementation.
• Concept for the visualisation of monitoring output in adequate maps, diagrams and graphs showing the BSR and the BSR regions/cities, also in their European context.
• A simple and easy readable manual with guidance for the use, maintenance and update of the BSR Monitoring System, as well as advice on an application of similar monitoring systems in other Macro Regions of Europe.