TransSustSpace
| Project name: | TransSustSpace - Dynamic Infrastructure Development, Transport and Environmental Sustainability (OeNB) |
| Project leader: | Karl Steininger |
| Project team: | Olivia Koland Christoph Schmid |
| Partners: | Joanneum Research, Institute of Technology and Regional Policy |
Sponsor: | Austrian National Bank, Research Fund (Jubiliäumsfonds) |
| Duration: | - |
Abstract:
Substantial increases in transport infrastructure supply and transport flows in Austria over the last decades, both in freight and passenger transport, have enabled crucial growth in consumer benefits. But, as a recent OECD (2000, 13-15) report put it, “there have been costs – mostly environmental costs – that are eroding the benefits. […] The challenge for the 21st century is to maintain and even enhance transport's benefits while reducing its impacts to sustainable levels.”
In tackling this challenge the research team acknowledges the limits of the current state of the art of interlinked transport and economic forecast that Austrian infrastructure planning is based on, and with this project seeks to supply and test new methods originating foremost from applications of new economic geography and spatial computable general equilibrium modelling.
Within this project the team will develop the first spatial computable general equilibrium (SCGE) for Austria in order to
- depict and analyse the simultaneity of decisions on producer-producer/producer-consumer distances, output levels and input production structures
- analyse the dynamic impact of new transport infrastructure on land use patterns, spatial distribution of production and transport flows
- supply a new evaluation instrument for transport policy and test for which aspects of analysis of transport policy (in its broadest sense) substantial advances can be gained over the current state of the art by this new evaluation instrument
The SCGE model will be developed for one Austrian federal test area, consisting of a multi-political district (or NUTS III-level-regions) structure. This allows for both detailed analysis of in fact complex dynamic impacts of those transport policy measures that are considered urgent and – in terms of model development – to serve as a role model for other areas of particularly dynamic development.
With the proposed new spatial economic elements of modeling we seek to proof how the traditional model in transport planning as used to date in Austria can be substantially improved by an integrated spatial economic modelling approach. We also seek to show that on the regional scale economic methodology can be advanced beyond the traditional gravity model still dominating the analysis of inter-regional exchange.
