Sweden: Sweden integrates core aspects of HEAT into the country’s own assessment tool

The Swedish Transport Administration (STA) has taken part in the development of WHO/Europe’s health economic assessment tool (HEAT) since the first consensus meeting that helped to design it in 2007.

The STA has also recommended the use of HEAT in its assessment tool GC-kalk since 2008. The tool gives guidance for the economic assessment of pedestrian and cycling infrastructure investments and promotion.

GC-kalk contains the core aspects of the HEAT calculations and integrates them into Sweden’s national guidance. The current 2015 version uses the updated figures from the latest version of HEAT.

The STA has made one interesting modification to the HEAT methods: when computing future benefits, the STA takes into consideration the annual growth rate of cycle traffic. The STA also uses a value of a statistical life with an annual increase equivalent to the annual increase of real income.