9 July 2012 - Tool development within ESPON 2013 is targeted to the use of policy makers and practitioners at all administrative levels (including cross-border and transnational groupings) and will enable the use of information and data by these particular groups of stakeholders. Most tools will be online, made available via the ESPON website. As such they will also be at the disposal of the general public, including researchers and university students, thereby contributing to the use of ESPON data and information and the consolidation of a European research field on territorial development and cohesion.

At the moment five tools are made accessible via the ESPON website. How these tools link to the project groups and the policy makers is visualised in the figure below. The green arrows in this figure show the use for the policy makers and the blue arrows show the flows from the ESPON projects (the Final Reports or the data resulting from the projects) to the tools and vice versa:

The ESPON projects deliver data to the ESPON database and maps to the Online MapFinder. On the other hand, the ESPON projects receive input from the ESPON Database, the Mapping Guide and Typologies.

The policy makers can find and use ESPON results via the Online MapFinder, the HyperAtlas and the ESPON DataBase.

The tools available at the moment, their purpose, their inter-linkages and their relations with the project groups and policy-makers are the following:

ESPON 2013 DataBase (DB)

The DB provides access to regional, local, urban, neighbourhood (candidate countries), world, grid and historical data. The data is mainly provided by ESPON projects and EUROSTAT. LINK

Online MapFinder (OMF)

The OMF provides access to the most relevant ESPON maps resulting from ESPON projects and reports. The maps are accompanied by an explanation and observations for policy makers. LINK

ESPON HyperAtlas (HA)

The HA is an analytical tool based on the multi-scalar territorial analysis concept. With the HA a local decision maker can compare and analyse its region’s relative position at European, national and local scale for a whole set of criteria. LINK

Mapping Guide (MG)

The MG provides guidance on mapping statistical data correctly and delivering the right message. The MG looks into the mapping method, aggregation level, level of statistical areas, type of data and the graphic variables to be used. LINK

ESPON Typologies (TYP)

The TYP provides 9 regional typologies for additional analysis of project results to be considered in the European context. Guidance is given on how the project can filter their results in relation to the specific types of territories. LINK