Developing a Tool for Environmental Impact Assessment of Planned Activities and Transport Infrastructure Facilities

Abstract

An adoption of national standards with assessment criteria and environmental impact indicators for road transport infrastructure elements made it possible to most effectively conduct environmental expertise in transport domain and determine potential environmental consequences in the process of preparing an environmental impact assessment (EIA) report. To give the EIA the Leopold matrix as a method to identify harmful implications for environment is used. This method becomes more complex, the more activities and environmental characteristics are indicated in the matrix. Road transport is an intense source of pollution for the atmosphere, territories and water areas adjacent to highways. For road construction the environmental characteristics are numerous and the estimation process becomes confusing even for experts. As the result of co-operative efforts of a state agency, developers and experts in EIA, road construction and project management a special web application for comprehensive estimating has been developed, tried and tested within the project of H-31 public highway reconstruction. It’s been proved the facilitation for the processes of selecting the matrix components, filling it up with expert estimates, calculating the resulting indicators, identifying the most sensitive to changes elements of the environment and, finally, preparing the reporting documents for the supervisory state agency. The paper briefly describes the functionality of the developed online service, the methodology used for assessing the impact of planned activities and transport infrastructure facilities on the environment, as well as other challenges, that depend, inter alia, on public participation, scientific community comments and authority’s support.