All official European Union website addresses are in the europa.eu domain.
See all EU institutions and bodies
An official website of the European Union | How do you know?
Environmental information systems
EN
Objective(s)
The BlueHealth Toolbox is for planners, designers and other decision-makers responsible for blue spaces. Its 6 tools provide the means to make comparable assessments of urban blue spaces before and after any proposed changes. Such changes can include a wide range of interventions, from physical alterations to the environment to advertising campaigns that influence how people interact with it. The tools provide evidence about the quality of blue environments, as well as information about how people and communities use, perceive and interact with blue spaces. They also assess the state of people’s health and well-being. Together, this evidence can enhance urban planning and design.
Short description
The starting point of this tool is to have urban planners think about how people use different spaces in the city, rather than undertake a major assessment.
The BlueHealth Toolbox provides the means to incorporate robust evidence on blue spaces’ benefit for people’s well-being and health into planning and design of projects. The BlueHealth Toolbox comprises six tools that work at different spatial scales to collect social and environmental data on blue spaces: (a) Environmental Assessment Tool (BEAT), (b) Decision Support tool (DST), (c) Behavioural Assessment Tool (BBAT), (d) Community Level Survey (BCLS), (e) PPGIS (Public Participatory Geographic Information System), and (f) International Survey (BIS).
The tools provide an assessment of existing blue spaces that improve health with minimal cost to the environment, and so inform future management.
Free keywords
Urban space, well-being, public health, blue spaces, landscape planning
Readiness for use
Applications
The toolbox has been implemented from 2020 onwards in the case studies Plymouth (UK), Tallinn and Tartu (Estonia), Barcelona (Spain) and Warsaw (Poland).
Strengths and weaknesses, comparative added value to other similar tools
Strengths:
(+) Clear guidance is available for each of the tools, including information on when and where which tool to use.
(+) The tools complement each other.
Weaknesses:
(-) The toolbox is created for urban areas, it is not so useful in rural areas.
Input(s)
For all other tools it is only necessary to know the details of the planned interventions to fill in the surveys and questions with the information.
Most tools are online surveys or interactive step approaches that enable the user to collect and integrate data into the assessment platform. The data collection forms are clear, but many have further questions.
Output(s)
The tools result in maps, scores and other data on how people use blue (water) spaces. The tools generate information on how people perceive blue spaces (i.e. of safety, quality etc.), and how blue spaces – and blue space interventions – might affect the wellbeing of individuals and communities.
Below is an example of the BIS tool which shows spatial associations between health and residential proximity to lakes in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Replicability: Cost/effort for (new) usage
The tools are readily available to be used in other regions in Europe. The users decide themselves if they want to use one or more tools and the tool creators recommend to base the decision on 3 core considerations: (1) The spatial scale relevant to the effects of an intervention; (2) The timing of an intervention evaluation; and (3) The population that may be impacted by an intervention.
Materials or other support available
Toolbox guidance for users, and each of the tools is also explained in videos
Website and maintenance
Links to all six individual tools can be found here: BlueHealth Toolbox - BlueHealth (bluehealth2020.eu).
Contact
Associated project(s)
The BlueHealth project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 666773.
Primarily Rast Step 5
National, regional, municipal, and/or building (site).
The Toolbox is a suite of tools. Taken as a group of tools, they apply to the full range of geographies. However, individual tools within the Toolbox are applicable at specific scales (e.g. the DST is fully useful only at the site level; BIS is useful at the City, Region and Country scales).
Geographical area
All EU, with a focus on urban areas.
Not hazard specific.
Extreme temperatures, and the risk of heat-island effect is anticipated and mitigated if the tools are used for urban interventions. The Decision Support Tool also covers flooding and UV exposure.
The tools are specifically created for urban designers and planners.
They can also be used by researchers, staff of regional authorities, practitioners at the regional level, stakeholders and citizens.
The users do not need to have any previous knowledge or skills, except for the Behavioural Assessment Tool (BBAT), for which users must know how to use Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS).
Disclaimer
The contents and links to third-party items on this Mission webpage are developed by the MIP4Adapt team led by Ricardo, under contract CINEA/2022/OP/0013/SI2.884597 funded by the European Union and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, CINEA, or those of the European Environment Agency (EEA) as host of the Climate-ADAPT Platform. Neither the European Union nor CINEA nor the EEA accepts responsibility or liability arising out of or in connection with the information on these pages.
Language preference detected
Do you want to see the page translated into ?
Exclusion of liability
This translation is generated by eTranslation, a machine translation tool provided by the European Commission.