INTRODUCTION

From 12-19 July 2000, the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment (EFIEA) hosted a Policy Workshop on Scaling Issues in Integrated Assessment in the town of Mechelen, close to Maastricht in the Netherlands. This was the second of the so-called “Matrix” workshops, which addressed specific methodological topics relevant to Integrated Environmental Assessment in the context of policy-relevant issues. In each workshop, a group of approximately 50-60 participants, including EFIEA-members and other scholars, were brought together to explore theoretical and methodological issues and to share practical experiences. The first Matrix workshop was held in July 1999 in Baden close to Vienna, where the focus was on uncertainty. In the second workshop, the focus of this volume, the emphasis was on the issue of scaling in Integrated Environmental Assessment. Thus, it is commonly referred to as the EFIEA Scaling Workshop.