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About the project

Building on decades of experience in creating and using world-leading economic valuation models to support environmental policy making, the VALESOR research team will make the economic valuation of environmental stressors standardisable, transparent, and utilisable by policy makers and stakeholders.

Based on earlier research and engagement with other programs, VALESOR will clarify which input knowledge is important prior to calculating economic values associated with pollution. In particular, VALESOR will benefit from the experience and knowhow of several of its partners who have already worked models and / or tools targeting air pollution. VALESOR will make concrete guidance with respect to how key economic wellbeing values should be used by policy makers.

  • Project name: VALUATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL STRESSORS, VALESOR
  • Project number: 101095611
  • Project starting date: 1 January 2023
  • Project duration: 36 months
  • Project budget: 2 913 886,26€.

Project summary

VALESOR aims to make major contributions to the scientific and policy efforts to accommodate economic values of environmental stressors more homogenously in policy making, planning. The environmental stressors of concern for VALESOR are chemical stressors such as chemicals and air pollutants transmitted via air, water, and soil vectors.

VALESOR will develop an innovative online tool for stakeholders to assess health and economic consequences of planned variations in chemical stressors. This tool will be able to evolve: by given the fact that, at a given date, exposure and impact assessment of some chemical stressors would be still incomplete, thus providing partial and provisional assessment based on credible hypothesis.

VALESOR will also engage in substantial outreach activities to promote the consideration of environmental stressors in economic decision making and to facilitate an establishment of a trans-disciplinary consistency in values used when valuing environmental stressors.VALESOR will previously develop a state-of-the-art environmental economic model which will be as complete as theoretically possible in its representation of economic values of pollution.

In particular, VALESOR will increase the number of human health endpoints considered in economic welfare assessments of chemical and air pollution in connection with recent results and current projects. Based on earlier research and engagement with other programs, VALESOR will clarify which input knowledge is important prior to calculating economic values associated with pollution.

In particular, VALESOR will benefit from the experience and knowhow of several of its partners who have already worked models and / or tools targeting air pollution. VALESOR will also make concrete guidance with respect to how key economic wellbeing values should be used by policy makers.

Work packages

The project is divided into 8 work packages.

WP 1: Review of state-of-the-art knowledge

Review of state-of-the-art knowledge – Lead Umeå University

The scientific quality of health impact assessments depends on the degree of interaction between researchers from different fields and decision-makers, HIA consultants and economists. Despite a fast-growing number of epidemiological studies of health effects, there are few activities synthetizing knowledge necessary for applied concepts and tools. The work made in WP1 will start bridging this gap by giving scientific support on the state-of-the-art to the later work packages.

WP 2: Health

Health outcomes and exposure-response functions – Lead Michael Holland

Based on the screening and scoping in WP1, WP2 will pay attention to the characterisation of health impacts for economic assessment. Variation in the description of impacts in health research and valuation studies with respect to: severity of illness; effectiveness of treatment; and duration of disease are all factors relevant to the translation of health impacts for economic valuation. The work package will therefore provide clarity on the interpretation of impacts recommended for quantification to establish a firmer basis for valuation work.

WP 3: Value wellbeing

Methodological advances in measuring well-being improvements from reductions in environmental stressors risks – Lead: Université Paris Dauphine

WP3 proposes two distinct surveys producing robust and comprehensive measures of willingness to pay (WTP) and measures of cost-of-illness (COI) for reducing chemical and environmental pollutant exposures considered in VALESOR’s valuation tool.

WP 4: Guidelines for application

Guidelines and exposure data for stakeholders and the supporting tools – Lead: INERIS

The how-to documentation will assist users and stakeholders to set the scope of their decision problem, choose methods and indicators, identify the required data, including gap filling, consideration of ethical and wider societal issues, and communicate results and uncertainties in a transparent and consistent manner. Inputs from exchanges with stakeholders will be incorporated into revisions of the guidance document.

WP 5: Model and tool development

ARP2.0 model and website VALESOR tool development – Lead: IVL

In WP5, the ARP model will be updated based on recommendations from WP4 into ARP v2.0. With the updated ARP model, we will calculate results from a set of valuation scenarios to be used as input to the website VALESOR valuation tool.

WP 6: Expert outreach

Expert consultations and outreach – Lead: Anthesis

  • Establish expert roster to support the ARP model and VALESOR tool development
  • Gather expert and stakeholder input to the updated ARP model and VALESOR online tool
  • Disseminate information on the ARP v2.0 model and the VALESOR online tool

WP 7: Case studies

Case studies – Lead: SERC

Case studies will be selected from various countries across Europe (potentially up to five projects), including locations from Eastern Europe, and in particular from countries which might someday become member states of the EU community (e.g., City Administration for Environmental Protection in Novi Sad, Serbia, has expressed interest in working with the VALESOR team to contribute a case study). We also have the possibility to conduct health impact assessments of today’s small-scale wood burning in the County Västerbotten in Sweden and investigate alternative scenarios of a change in wood burning. The VALESOR team will engage with local stakeholders (WP6) in the definition and execution of case studies, and critical review of the results and lessons learnt. Further, other case studies will be developed within the context of this project (WP5) to maximise the applicability of the software tool.

WP 8: Project management, Communication, Cluster activities

Project management and communication – Lead: Université d'Angers

The main goal of WP8 is to ensure the achievement of the project objectives, in particular the applied productions (Guidance, website tool) for public and private stakeholders concerned by health impacts of air pollution and chemicals.

WP8 ensures effective coordination between WPs, considering the multidisciplinary nature of the project and the partners. It also verifes that the internal outputs of various WPs located upstream of the project (i.e., WP1, WP2, WP3) correspond to the expectations of WPs depending on them (i.e., WP4, WP5, WP6) and that they will deliver them in time, according to the schedule exposed by the Gantt chart. The WP ensures scientific cooperation and a coordination regarding communication and dissemination with the other projects of the cluster of the HORIZON-HLTH-2022-ENVHLTH-04-01 call.

The Valesor Consortium

France

  • Angers Univesity
  • Nantes University
  • French National Institute for Industrial Environment and Risks - INERIS
  • Université Paris Dauphine

Sweden

  • IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute
  • Umeå University
  • Anthesis

Norway

  • Menon Economics

Italy

  • Joseph Spadaro, SERC
  • Forastiere Francesco

Serbia

  • University of Novi Sad, Medical Faculty

UK

  • Michael Holland, EMRC