List of Authors -- List of Authors -- Sustainability Impact Assessment: concepts and approaches -- Ex-ante Impact Assessments (IA) in the European Commission — an overview -- Impact Assessment in the European Commission in relation to Multifunctional Land Use -- An institutional analysis of land use modelling in the European Commission -- Ex ante impact assessment of land use changes in European regions — the SENSOR approach -- Transfer into decision support: The Sustainability Impact Assessment Tool (SIAT) -- Scenario modelling of land use changes -- Scenarios: Driving forces and policies -- Cross sector land use modelling framework -- Tourism geography in Europe -- Landscape level simulation of land use change -- Spatial representation and data issues for European regions -- Regional socio-economic profiles for assessment of European land use related policies: the SENSOR experience -- A Spatial Regional Reference Framework for Sustainability Assessment in Europe -- Requirements for data management and maintenance to support regional land use research -- European level indicator framework -- An indicator framework for analysing sustainability impacts of land use change -- Indicators for assessing the environmental impacts of land use change across Europe -- Reflections on Social and Economic Indicators for Land Use Change -- Weighting and aggregation of indicators for sustainability impact assessment in the SENSOR context -- Regional and local evaluation -- Land use functions — a multifunctionality approach to assess the impact of land use changes on land use sustainability -- Limits and targets for a regional sustainability assessment: an interdisciplinary exploration of the threshold concept -- Sustainability Impact Assessments: limits, thresholds and the Sustainability Choice Space -- Key sustainability issues in European sensitive areas — a participatory approach -- Key sustainability issues and the spatial classification of sensitive regions in Europe.

The principle of multi-functionality simultaneously considers a variety of social, economic and environmental goods and services related to land use. It is thus a key to sustainable development of land and rural areas. Land use policies seek to support the economic competitiveness and sustainable development of rural areas. For efficient impact assessment, policy makers require tools for assessment of anticipated policy impacts on a wide range of sustainability issues across European regions. The European Union funded Integrated Project SENSOR develops ex-ante Sustainability Impact Assessment Tools (SIAT) to support decision making on policies related to multifunctional land use in European regions. SENSOR directly responds to the European sustainability objectives as applied to land use and rural development. This book provides an overview on the analytical approach in SENSOR and documents preliminary results. This includes the identification of end user needs for SIAT and the development of a first SIAT prototype. Methodological frameworks for scenario development and land use modelling including indicator analysis and web-based data management were established. Surveys of European sensitive areas and a regional spatial reference framework for socio-economic and environmental assessment were drafted.