Environmental Management of Natural Resources in Town Planning- Example Applications from Projects in Greece

Natural resources are the basis of human welfare in developing as well as in developed societies. Their study in town planning has to satisfy an ever increasing demand, driven by population growth and changes in lifestyle, and at the same time meet an increasing set of constraints and concerns of environmental impacts and resource depletion and degradation. All these driving forces of development, acting in concert and often reinforcing each other, make better and more efficient tools for decision support in town planning increasingly important. Better, but not necessarily more information directly useful to a larger number of participants in more open and participatory decision making processes is urgently needed.

The management of natural resources requires the integration of often very large volumes of disparate information from numerous sources; the coupling of this information with efficient tools for assessment and evaluation that allow broad, interactive participation in the planning, assessment, and decision making process; and effective methods of communicating results and findings to a broad audience.

Information technology, and in particular, multi-criteria optimization models provide some of the tools for effective decision.

An example from different domains of natural resources and environmental management in Attica Greece. A Town Planning Project is presented, which illustrate a few of the important concepts of effective environmental management. It supports their interactive analysis and helps to display and interpret results in a format directly understandable and useful for decision making processes. Conclusively, Environmental Management systems can support a more interactive, exploratory, and participatory, and thus useful and effective approach to Natural resources.