The concepts and development of a participatory regional integrated assessmenttool.

This paper provides an overview of the development of the ‘Regional ImpactSimulator’ – a user friendly software tool designed to allow stakeholders toperform integrated assessments of the effects of climate and/or socio-economicchange on the important sectors and resources of two contrasting UK regions.This includes the assessment of agriculture, water resources, biodiversity andcoastal and river flooding. The tool arose from the need to further develop themethods applied in the earlier RegIS project, which was the first local toregional integrated assessment in the UK. The limitations of RegIS included verylong run times, a limited number of simulations, incomplete linkages betweenmodels and no allowance for scenario uncertainty. Based upon the stakeholderneeds identified within RegIS, a series of guiding principles were developedwith Steering Committee stakeholders, which informed the concept of the‘Regional Impact Simulator’ including functionality, appearance and complexity.An Integrated Assessment Methodology based upon the Drivers-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework facilitated the integration of multiplemodels, scenarios and datasets within the software interface. The development ofthe ‘Regional Impact Simulator’ provides a test-bed for further studies ofstakeholder-led, regional, integrated assessment, and provides an opportunity tolearn the many lessons in undertakin