Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the system in the opposite directions. It consists of an assessment, at regional level,
of environmental policies (Nitrate Directive) in contrasting EU regions in terms of
biophysical conditions and cropping systems (Louhichi et al.
2008)
. These case
studies represent regional and environmental policies where new production
technologies play an important role and which are again assessed at different scales
(field to region) and in all domains. The test cases used different combinations of
models, allowing to test the core modelling chains of SEAMLESS-IF.
Apart from serving as different ways of evaluating the framework in a tech-
nical sense, the policy relevance of the test cases (and the integrated framework in
general) was assured by presenting them to prime users (i.e. Directorate General
of European Commission) and other potential users (regional and national decision
makers, stakeholder groups) at several points during the project (van Ittersum
et al.
2008)
.
These case studies proved to be useful for the development of the framework.
The multidisciplinary character of the test cases forced to reach consensus among
disciplines to arrive at a single and clear definition of the concepts and procedure
(ontology) needed for the framework. Hence after a large number of iterations
among SEAMLESS participants with different backgrounds a project assessment
has been defined as a set of realistic scenarios, based on economic, policy and
technological changes. This project is first defined by the spatial scales (resolution
and extent) at which the scenario is assessed (e.g. field-region, region-EU) which
determines the appropriate modelling chain for the investigated IA problem, as well
as the possible economic, environmental and social indicators with which the scenario
should be assessed. After choosing scales and indicators, several experiments can
be developed by varying the external driving forces, the biophysical context and the
policy parameters (Thérond et al.
2009)
. In a nutshell, the case studies provided
real time applications involving different disciplines which allowed derivation of
the general approach to implement the IA problem within SEAMLESS-IF and
accordingly the graphical user interface (GUI) functionalities to develop.
Conceptual Evaluation
The first type of evaluation consists of assessing whether the foreseen integrated
framework is internally consistent and suited for addressing the purpose for
which it is designed. The specificity of this evaluation is that it used the speci-
fications of the framework's components as described in the available project
reports while components nor framework were yet available for testing. In the case
of SEAMLESS-IF the aim - a computer-based tool for ex-ante assessments of
alternative agricultural, economic and environmental policy options and technical
innovations - is too general for an evaluation. To create a reference point or
yardstick for evaluating the framework the test cases were used. These test cases
provided the concrete background of the prototype's evaluations.
