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Impact Assessment (AI) is getting over its "teething problems" of the early 1990s, and is now trying to define, consolidate and spread best practice. It has been suggested that computer technologies like Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and/or decision-support tools like Expert Systems (ES) can play an important part in this process, and in a series of two articles we critically review these technologies, their use and their potential — and drawbacks — for IA. This first article is devoted to GIS, powerful packages that can handle spatial information quite efficiently in map form, but whose analytical capabilities are rather limited and would benefit from being articulated with other tools to make their use more friendly and efficient. The proposition underlying these articles is that these three areas (IA, GIS and ES), if properly organised, are potentially complementary and there can be mutual benefits if they are brought together. We concentrate on GIS first, ES will be discussed in the next paper.

This paper and another one preceding it investigate the potential of computer technologies like Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Expert Systems (ES) to help with Impact Assessment (IA), suggesting that one way to optimise the effectiveness of GIS is to embed these systems in a more user-friendly environment. This paper explores the experience and potential of ES to provide such decision support environment, extending the argument further into the realm of Decision Support Systems (DSS). The proposition behind this paper is that these areas (IA, GIS, ES and maybe DSS) are potentially complementary and there can be mutual benefits if they are brought together. Certain tasks in IA — like screening, scoping, or statement review — already have potential for substantial automation, as an opportunity for technology transfer within organisations involved with IA, so that relatively scarce experts can be freed up for more difficult jobs while less expert staff are promoted to answer more sophisticated questions like these. More technical tasks like impact and environmental prediction also show scope for some degree of modelling-based automation, while other less routinised and more open-ended tasks involved with the management of the whole IA process probably lend themselves better to automation of a different kind, which works more as an "aid" than a substitute for the expert, for which the more flexible DSS seem more appropriate.

In May 2002 and 2003, two EuroConferences on "Evaluation of Sustainability" took place in Vienna. The key objectives of the two conferences were to support an international and interdisciplinary exchange of experience, to provide training opportunities to young researchers and to build capacities for evaluations in the context of sustainable development. In the course of the series young researchers carried out country surveys, analysing the state of Sustainable Development (SD) Evaluations in their home countries. In addition, a meta-evaluation of 106 evaluation reports analysed the extent to which evaluation standards are considered. Based on the surveys conducted in 10 countries by young researchers and the findings of the meta-evaluation, the article provides a market analysis, showing the fields of application in which SD-evaluations are conducted and which driving forces may lead to a better institutionalisation of SD-evaluations. Based on the presentations and discussions at the two conferences, future research questions and policy recommendations are identified. A new "Governance by Evaluation" policy style is outlined as a concluding recommendation.

Since the adoption of the EU's first Sustainable Development Strategy in 2001, the European Commission has been committed to undertaking impact assessments of its major policy proposals, covering the potential positive and negative economic, social and environmental effects both inside and outside the European Union. This paper provides as evaluation of a sample of the Commission's recent EC Impact Assessments, focusing on the extent to which the goal of sustainable development has been integrated into the impact assessment analysis.

Experiences from the Finnish Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Act were studied by surveying 35 SEA processes. Integration of plan or programme preparation and assessment, organisation of assessment, public participation and consultation, treatment of alternatives, scoping, impact assessment methods, effectiveness, environmental reporting, follow-up, effects on plan or programme preparation, assessment costs and consistency of the assessment were examined and evaluated. The results suggest that SEA is not yet used properly in decision-making. Several shortcomings characterised assessment practices in public participation, establishment and comparison of alternatives, definition of environmental problems, recognition of significant impacts and readiness to use SEA as a planning tool to integrate environmental considerations into the planning. In consequence, the assessments had only minor effects on the adopted plans and programmes. The most critical challenges in Finnish SEA practise are focusing on the most significant environmental issues and strengthening the links between planning, participation and decision-making.

A substantial portion of private sector investments in emerging market economies internationally is routed through the use of Financial Intermediaries (FIs). FIs act as important gateways for channeling the resources from large Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), to micro, small and medium-sized (SME) projects and enterprises whose comparatively limited business portfolios would otherwise make them ineligible for funding. During a MDB's scoping, FI clients are classified into a unique Category FI, whereby the onus for Environmental Assessment (EA) is transferred from the MDB to the FI. Although EA guidelines exist, FI institutions often fail to adequately incorporate them in their sub-project review. This increases the potential for environmentally and socially harmful development decisions being made by the FI with financial resources originating from MDBs. This paper identifies the factors limiting the successful incorporation of EA in FI subproject financing, in an attempt to develop tools to assist MDB's and their FIs to attain compliance with local, national and international EA laws and regulations.

Across the public sector, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analysis are increasingly ubiquitous when making decisions involving people and places. However, historically GIS has not been prevalently applied to the various types of impact assessment. As such, this paper presents findings from a survey conducted in 2011 of 100 local authorities in England to examine how embedded GIS, spatial analysis and visualisation practices are to the process of conducting impact assessments. The results show that despite obvious advantages of applying GIS in these processes, applications employing basic techniques are at best sporadic, and where advanced methods are implemented, these in almost all instances are conducted by external contractors, thus illustrating a significant GIS under capacity within the sampled local authorities studied.

The construction sector consumes significant quantities of energy and contributes substantially to greenhouse gas emissions. It is imperative that the sector considers a renewable component to its energy procurement. The sector has adopted various policy instruments such as impact assessment and green procurement for improving its environmental performance. Green procurement involves the procurement of services, products and also energy that meet environmental requirements. This paper focused primarily on the conceptualisation of the inter-link between impact assessment and green procurement. Furthermore, interviews were conducted with three fundamental categories of stakeholders that involved client, contractor and energy company. Although the interview responses showed varied perspectives on the inter-link, most of the interviewees acknowledged its need and suggested certain approaches towards establishing the inter-link. The highlighted approach was to consider the use of commercially available environmental certification tools and focus on areas such as partnerships. Future research should examine how environmental certification tools could facilitate the inter-link and how partnerships need to be arranged therein.

Welcome to this special JEAPM issue on impact assessment (IA) research, which — besides this introductory paper — includes 16 short papers contributed by a wide range of leading IA researchers from around the world. These papers provide for an overview of achievements, gaps and future directions for IA research. The collection of papers is the outcome of a targeted call to researchers representing a wide range of IA areas and regions. This has resulted in what we believe is an impressive compilation of contributions on environmental impact assessment (EIA), strategic environmental assessment (SEA), health impact assessment (HIA) and social impact assessment (SIA) as well as theoretical, applied and normative aspects of IA, with a particular focus on sustainable development from European, North and South American, Asian, African and Australian authors.

This short paper makes the case that most impact assessment (IA) has sustainable development as the stated goal, but that it doesn't deliver sustainable outcomes. A key pillar of sustainable development is equity, both intra-generational (defined after Lamorgese and Geneletti (2013, p.119) as ensuring "equity of opportunity for everyone, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community and seek to create a good quality of life for everyone") and inter-generational equity (defined after Gibson et al. (2005, p. 235) as favouring "present options and actions that are most likely to preserve or enhance the opportunities and capabilities of future generations to live sustainably"). Notwithstanding the importance of intra-generational equity, this paper focuses on the problem that inter-generational equity presents to IA both because of the prevalence of short-term planning, and because approaches developed to deal with inherent uncertainty associated with impacts considered in the long term are overly resource intensive and therefore impractical. A research focus on IA processes that can deal with inter-generational impacts cost effectively might provide the basis on which to develop an IA tool that actually delivers on its stated goal and fits in with current decision-making norms.

Incorporation of impact assessment in undergraduate academic curricula has remained underdeveloped in both Ireland and Spain, with the subject commonly narrowed down to a general introduction to impact assessment legislation and procedural stages supported by a number of illustrative case studies. This approach is often transferred to postgraduate level, with a limited number of Masters programmes including impact assessment as a subject, and fewer being dedicated to impact assessment alone. This, in turn, has resulted in limited research in the area and more importantly, in very few academic research publications. At Master's level, research has mainly focused on the quality of EISs (often focusing on controversial sectors such as wind energy or mining) and public participation related issues. At the doctorate level, a limited number of EIA/SEA related PhD dissertations can be found, and the range of issues covered is quite varied and sparse. The largest drivers for SEA research are government initiatives and research calls. This commonly translates into publication of extensive normative guidance on EIA, SEA and Appropriate Assessment, as well as on current practice review reports and good practice recommendations. Relevant dissemination activities can also be found in Ireland and Spain, including provision of platforms for knowledge exchange and learning on impact assessment methods and tool. More efforts and funding are however needed to promote empirical academic research, and thereby advance impact assessment research and practice in relevant sectors and areas, including impact assessment theory and governance, public participation effectiveness, cumulative effects assessment or environmental limits.

There is a growing interest in the use of theory in order to move the field of impact assessment forward, hereunder to advance our understanding of effectiveness and make impact assessment influence decision-making. However, the extent of use of theory is uncertain. This article examines the use of explicit theory from other fields in impact assessment literature and analyse how research uses theory along a continuum from use of non-attached theory to theory building. A sample of research articles (n = 177) published in the Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management from 1999–2014 was reviewed to determine whether, how and which theories was used. Of the articles 32% incorporated theory, of which 28% only mention theories in the introduction or literature review, but without explicit evidence that the theory is used to any other purposes than to establish legitimacy or support the author's ideas of "non-attached theory" and 40% in which theories are used to inform and focus the design of the study. The results show no significant changes in the use of theory in the period 1999–2014. The most often used theories were political and learning theory. The article concludes that there is a broad scope for future use of theories from other fields to mature research and practice of impact assessment. There is no lack of relevant theories, so the underlying reasons for the found results shall be found elsewhere.

There is a growing interest in the potential of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) to mainstream ecosystem services (ES) concerns in decision-making. Experiences in this field have begun to emerge, showing the need for comprehensive guidance. This paper addresses this need by proposing a conceptual approach to integrate ES effectively in SEA. The approach is structured in the following four stages, each comprising specific tasks: establish the ES context; determine and assess priority ES; identify alternatives and assess impacts on ES; follow up on ES. The first stage includes the identification and mapping of ES and beneficiaries for the region affected by the strategic action and the identification of links with other strategic actions. The second stage aims at generating detailed information on a limited set of priority ES, which are considered relevant for shaping and informing the development of the strategic action. This requires determining the priority ES, reviewing existing regulations concerning these services and assessing their baseline conditions and trends. In the third stage, possible alternatives to enhance ES, or at least to minimise negative effects on them, are identified and their impacts assessed. Finally, during the fourth stage, the effects on ES are monitored and managed and the overall quality of the SEA process is tested. The paper concludes by discussing how the stages and their tasks require feedback and interactions and how they can contribute to achieve a better inclusion of concerns about ES (and their beneficiaries) into strategic decisions.

The aim of this paper is to assess the main impacts of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in the development of Portuguese fisheries. CFP has introduced a wide range of regulatory instruments, such as the annual total allowable catches (TACs), restrictions on the permissible number of fishing days, fleet reductions and limits on the size and engine power of fishing vessels, alongside with some technical measures to regulate gear usage and where and when fishermen can fish. We analyse the trend evidenced by some of the most relevant structural dimensions of the Portuguese fishing fleet using data surveyed from the Statistics Portugal database for a 21 year period (1994–2014). The results suggest that CFP, namely its conservation measures, has failed so far to achieve its fundamental objective of matching fishing effort and living resources through the coupling of biologic objectives with the ones related to the social and economic aspects of fisheries.

Strategic forms of impact assessment have seen increased application around the world since their conception. Expansion has produced considerable variation and this range of tools and processes can create practitioner confusion and blurred boundaries in practice. This research draws on empirical data from England and Scotland to examine different systems to understand how the purposes of strategic assessment are framed and to consider how purposes are translated into practice. Four key purposes of strategic assessment are examined; overcoming EIA shortcomings, strategic thinking, representation of the environment and consideration of sustainability. It is concluded that various scales (international, national, local and individual) influence how strategic assessment purpose is framed. We find that as multiple purposes come together they interact, with regulatory compliance potentially dominating. Strategic assessment is also found to be described as information provider, and excluded or distant from strategic thinking as part of plan formulation.

Any adaptation activity needs a reliable evidence basis for the climate itself as well as for the exposition and sensitivity of the social, economic or ecological system and its elements. This requires an assessment of recent climate impacts as well as potential future climate change impacts in order to select tailor-made adaptation measures. For a methodologically coherent assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had introduced the requirement of a parallel modeling approach which means that demographic and socioeconomic changes are projected in parallel to the changes of the climatic system. This paper discusses a conceptual framework of a parallel modeling approach and presents its application in four case studies of climate change impact assessments in Germany, covering the national, regional and local scale. The results from the different applications prove the hypothesis that the change in sensitivity (i.e., demographic change, economic change and change in land-use patterns) often determines the magnitude of climate- and weather-related impacts in the near future significantly. The case studies, however, also show that adaptation processes have to be organized in a collaborative way, which takes the knowledge, and also the concerns of the addressees into full account. A broad mandate from all social groups is especially needed when political decisions are based on uncertain knowledge — which is the case whenever climate change impacts are assessed.

The construction sector consumes significant quantities of energy and contributes substantially to greenhouse gas emissions. It is imperative that the sector considers a renewable component to its energy procurement. The sector has adopted various policy instruments such as impact assessment and green procurement for improving its environmental performance. Green procurement involves the procurement of services, products and also energy that meet environmental requirements. This paper focused primarily on the conceptualisation of the inter-link between impact assessment and green procurement. Furthermore, interviews were conducted with three fundamental categories of stakeholders that involved client, contractor and energy company. Although the interview responses showed varied perspectives on the inter-link, most of the interviewees acknowledged its need and suggested certain approaches towards establishing the inter-link. The highlighted approach was to consider the use of commercially available environmental certification tools and focus on areas such as partnerships. Future research should examine how environmental certification tools could facilitate the inter-link and how partnerships need to be arranged therein.

Social audit is an effective tool to evaluate the social performance of any social program. It helps in finding out how well the social enterprise is aligned to achieve its social mission by taking a multi-perspective outlook of the key stakeholders. This chapter presents a social audit of Stree Mukti Sanghatana, Mumbai (SMS), which is one of the pioneering social organizations working for the empowerment of underprivileged women. One of its social programs is the Family Counseling Centre (FCC) which provides counseling services to victims of domestic violence. Over the last 32 years, it has counseled more than 25,000 clients who are mostly victims of physical or mental domestic violence. The objective of this social audit was to find out the perceptions of both internal and external stakeholders of this program and make suggestions to improve the same. It is based on an empirical study using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The results show that FCC has been successful in creating awareness about women’s legal rights and has empowered them to tackle the problems by becoming self-reliant and confident. This study also helped SMS to realign its focus on building economic empowerment of women.

This presentation will address the results of national public opinion surveys conducted in Ukraine and Romania by the Global Libraries programs, implemented by IREX. The surveys assess national library visitation rates across demographic groups, satisfaction with the library and librarians, information search and information literacy patterns, and ICT familiarity and skills. The results of these surveys form a key basis for national and local advocacy and outreach efforts on behalf of libraries, and the surveys will be repeated in 2011 and 2013 to assess changes. The Global Libraries programs in Ukraine and Romania, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aim to help libraries better serve their communities through training and technology.