Environmental monitoring of transport infrastructure programs. An Italian experience: the National Operative Program (PON) “Reti e mobilità

The 2001/42/CE Directive on the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) gives environmental monitoring a very important role. Monitoring activities should allow the actual effects of the program to be tested against those predicted in the SEA and help ensure that problems arising during implementation, whether or not they were originally predicted, could be identified and that the appropriate actions could be taken. The few published studies on environmental assessment of transport infrastructure programs highlight different monitoring types and approaches which often are not adequate for the purposes of the SEA Directive. This paper outlines in detail the study carried out for the monitoring of the italian National Operative Program (PON) “Reti e mobilità”, which is co-funded by the European Union in the budgetary period 2007-2013. An innovative approach is discussed. In particular the paper focuses on the governance process, the selection of appropriate indicators to detect and measure changes in environment and the design of a territorial information system based on GIS software solutions (data gathering and processing). Based on the results of the ongoing monitoring activities, some suggestions are provided in order to improve the effectiveness of the SEA monitoring for transport infrastructure programs.