eng

Agenda 21 December 2007 1

THE PEP Clearing House

Agenda 21 and the Information Society

Session II: Making environmental information accessible:

Collaboration, networking and partnerships on clearing-house mechanisms


THE PEP features

Policy framework for the promotion of sustainable transport at the pan-European level

• Tripartite governmental and secretariat process

• Supervision: THE PEP Steering Committee

• Focused programme of work

• Finances: Ad hoc XB resources

• Administration: UNECE (Geneva)+WHO/Europe (Rome)


Objectives of THE PEP Clearing House

• Portal for the promotion of environment and health integration into transport policy

• Dissemination of information (present)

(policies, legislation, good practices, research, data,

capacity building, funding, etc.)

• Cooperation and exchange of views at Pan-European level (planned)


Keys of THE PEP Clearing House

- Internet-based center for

- collection, classification and distribution

of structured information

- kept and maintained by authorized

bodies


THE PEP Clearing HouseTHE PEP Clearing HouseStructureStructure

Academic institutions

THE PEP Clearing House(Transport, Environment and Health)

NationalGovernments

Local authorities

NGOs

Internationalorganisations

Private sector


Features of THE PEP Clearing House

• Inter-sectoral approach (T,H,E)

• No legal and institutional framework

• No national support structure (nodes)

• No agreed information base

• No funding mechanism for operation

• Two secretariatsUNECE (Geneva) and WHO/Euro (Rome)


Design of THE PEP Clearing House

• Central operation directed by one secretariat(bottom-up approach risky as no “mainstream” issues, no

legal/financial obligations by national nodes; UNECE/WHO)

• Minimize operational/personnel costs (maximize automatic functions, uploading, downloading)

• Use of existing UN technical infrastructure (identify marginal UN cost components, such as server capacity, IT maintenance, search engines, etc.)

• Harness substantive know-how of secretariats(ECE and WHO/Europe staff assistance for operation)

© Economic Commission for Europe, 2007, all rights reserved 8

THE PEP Clearing HouseTHE PEP Clearing House Implementation stages Implementation stages

Phase I – Target user survey/concept/design

2003Phase II – Implementation

2004-2005

Phase III – Pilot Operation(Part I)

2006-2007

© Economic Commission for Europe, 2007, all rights reserved 9

Clearing House MechanismClearing House MechanismAdministrative structure

Resources

2004 $ 122’734 2005

$ 81’0000

2006 $46’107

Advisory Board

Steering Committee

UNECEWHO


Services of THE PEP Clearing House

• Core services (information broker)

– Focus on THE PEP priority areas

- Information targeted to policy makers (but flexible)

- Dedicated search engines

- Multilingual coverage (English/Russian)

– Description and analysis of key areas and topics


Services of THE PEP Clearing House

• Potential additional (value-added) services

– Structured access to data bases and statistics

– Analytical and advisory service (expert database)

– Capacity building and training

– Sources of international funding

– Interaction/cooperation (forums, feedback)

– Translation (automatic ?) services

– Newsletter and calendar of meetings


Uploading - Information procurement

• Information content and quality criteria (THE

PEP CH terms of use)

• Authorization of information providers-nodes)Governmental (international, national, local, NGOs)

• Automatic uploading procedures for nodes

• Information categorization and tagging

• Automatic maintenance mechanisms Web crawler regularly updates information of nodes


THE PEP Clearing HouseTHE PEP Clearing House Web-based Web-based uploading mechanismuploading mechanism

Submission form


Downloading – Information provision

• Information architecture (principles)

– Comprehensive, coherent and systematic

information search on inter-relationship and

interdependence of transport, health and

environment (search engine)

– Intuitive information search for policy makers (non-

experts) (“information tree”)



6 main information areas

• Policy integration measures (T,H,E)

• Transport demand management

• Sustainable urban transport

• Environment and health effects of transport

• Sensitive areas

• Focus on EECCA and SEE countries



• THE PEP priority areas and transport effects

– By categories (110 key topics with summaries)

– By key words (search engine)

• Toolkit (policy measures)

– Policy (international, regional, EU, national)

– Legislation (international, regional, EU, national)

– Research and case studies; (indicators and data)

– Capacity building and funding opportunities


Challenges (internal)

Sustained operation of Clearing House

mechanism

- Successful automatic operation

- High investments, but very little operating costs

- Complex administration of technical and substantive

task (among many staff)

- Visibility (lack of ownership within secretariat)


Challenges (external)

Lack of national visibility– EECCA and SEE countries

– Western European countries

• Lack of national information provision/uploading– EECCA and SEE countries

– Western European countries

• How to activate THE PEP Focal Points ?


Indicators of operation

Good and up-to-date user and content dataare key for effective response

• Visitors

• Visited pages

• Uploaded documents

• Database sources and content

• Document content


CLEARING HOUSE USE: UNIQUE VISITORS (JAN 2006–NOV 2007)

434

462

287 280

228

261

320330349

265 269

297

361

293

273 276

342

522

470

390

473460

448

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Unique Visitors *

Visitors Average

Unique Visitor:A unique visitor is someone with a unique address who is entering The PEP Clearing House web site and are counted only once per day, no matter how often they visit the site. Unique visitors are measured according to their unique IP addresses, which are like online fingerprints.


CLEARING HOUSE CONTENTDOCUMENTS/LINKS BY LANGUAGE

Russian: 38 (6%)

French: 144 (24%)

English: 416 (70%)


CLEARING HOUSE CONTENT: CONTRIBUTORS (JAN 2006–NOV 2007)

3113

3113 0 0 0 2 0 0

421

131

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

Nu

mb

er

of

Do

cu

men

ts

EU EU15 EU12 SEE EECCA OTHER(NGOs,

Secretariat,etc)

Contributors

Uploaded Documents

Before 2006

Jan 2006 - Nov 2007

EU12: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, SloveniaEU15: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United KingdomSEE: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, TurkeyEECCA: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan


VISITED PAGES PER SUB-REGION(EECCA, SEE, EU12, EU15)

(JAN 2006–NOV 2007)

EU15: 8775 (60%)

EECCA: 3275 (22%)

SEE:308 (2%)

EU12: 2292 (16%)


EECCA(JAN 2006–NOV 2007)

1770

972

194115 111

41 27 22 13 9 1 0

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

Nu

mb

er

of

Vis

ite

d P

ag

es

Country


SEE(JAN 2006–NOV 2007)

138

74

54

23

127

0

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

Nu

mb

er o

f V

isit

ed

Pag

es

Country


EU12(JAN 2006–NOV 2007)

994

365

162 143130 128

11981 66 61

26 17

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

Nu

mb

er o

f

Vis

ite

d P

ag

es

Country


EU15(JAN 2006–NOV 2007)

2762

1531

1310

584 537423

266 262 211 198 198 188 126 107 72

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

Nu

mb

er

of

Vis

ited

Pag

es

Country


THE PEP Clearing HouseTHE PEP Clearing HouseAcknowledgmentsAcknowledgments

DonorsDonors

Switzerland

Finland

Norway

NetherlandsFrance

United Kingdom

Germany


THE PEP Clearing House

www.thepep.org/CHWebSite


CLEARING HOUSE USE: VISITED PAGES, JAN 2006 – NOV 2007

10951039

639

778

594654

592640

1109

919

1535

1238

1395

990907

771

684

916

11801130

812784

1644

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800Visited pages

Average


CLEARING HOUSE CONTENT UPLOADED DOCUMENTS and LINKS (web crawler)

367

8563

83

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

Nu

mb

er o

f D

ocu

men

ts

2004 2005 2006 2007 (up toDecember)

Year


Development of THE PEP Clearing House

• Cautious (phased) top-down approach(step-by step - high initial investment costs)

• Extensive target user surveys (2003)

(THE PEP market niche: T,E,H inter-relationship, policy

makers, “East and West” link, multilingual: English/Russian)

• Conceptual design (2003)

• Implementation phase (2005)

• Pilot operation phase (2006-2007)

• Normal (sustained) operation (planned for 2008)?