Assessment of environmental valuation reference inventory (EVRI)and the expansion of its coverage to the EU

The Environmental Valuation Reference Inventory (EVRI) is a database of valuation studies accessible through Internet. The database contains detailed information of about 700 environmental valuation studies, primarily from North America. EVRI was designed by Environment Canada, and both Environment Canada and US EPA currently use EVRI to guide their policy work. The main aim of this report is to assess how EVRI works for European conditions in order to see what adaptations are needed. Part I of the report contains two parts: the report and the questionnaire. Part II is an as complete as possible list of European valuation studies. Part III concerns the input of data from 14 European valuation studies into EVRI to test out the EVRI Capture Mode under European conditions. The evaluation is based on a survey of potential users of the database, who were granted free access to EVRI for one month to test the database by conducting searches on topics relevant to their work. They were then asked to fill in an evaluation questionnaire that was sent out by e-mail, and return it by e-mail.