WATERMATEX 2004

Selected Proceedings of the 6th IWA International Symposium on Systems Analysis and Integrated Assessment (WATERMATEX 2004), held in Beijing, China, 3-5 November 2004. Watermatex 2004 was the 6th in IWA's well established series of symposia on systems analysis and integrated assessment as applied across the whole field of water management. Its focus, like that of the IWA Specialist Group that sponsored it, was essentially methodological: the goal was to foster discussion of the interdisciplinary issues cutting across the water cycle, including considerations of the human dimension in managing the water environment. The symposium themes were therefore concerned less with sewers, wastewater treatment, river basin management, surface water quality or groundwater contamination per se; rather the primary concern was with matters of method common to all of these case-specific problems, such as new modelling paradigms; uncertainty, risk and reliability; foresight, sustainability and coupled natural-human systems; integrated assessment; identification, estimation, prediction and time-series analysis; planning, optimisation and life-cycle analysis; process control, stability and ecological resilience; and inter-disciplinary and holistic thinking for problem-solving. Following a rigorous peer review 32 high-quality articles were selected for these proceedings, grouped under the following themes: integrated assessment and management; uncertainty analysis; identification, prediction and evaluation; process operation and control; and new supporting tools. They highlight the value of the latest generation of modelling techniques and will provide powerful insights into the natural and controlled behaviour of the many systems that can be recognised in the water environment.