Welcome!

Venue : Mont­pel­lier Supa­gro (Amphi Lam­our),
2 place Pierre Viala, Mont­pel­lier (Tel: 04 99 61 22 00)

The orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee, and the con­venors, Pr Véronique Bellon-​Maurel (Mont­pel­lier Supa­gro), P. Roux (Cema­gref), were happy to wel­come you to Mont­pel­lier, Langue­doc Rous­sil­lon, France,for the Ecotech & Tools 2011 conference!

This meet­ing was held at the con­junc­tion of research direc­tions of three research net­works and con­sor­tia endeav­our­ing to develop inno­v­a­tive tools and method­olo­gies for a bet­ter mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol of the sus­tain­abil­ity of agro-​biosystems (includ­ing agri­cul­ture, forestry, water man­age­ment, waste man­age­ment, land man­age­ment…). The research net­works which joined their efforts to orga­nize this sem­i­nar are:

- PEER (Part­ner­ship for Euro­pean Envi­ron­men­tal Research)

- Con­sor­tium of the Euro­pean IRSES project “ECOTOOL”

- Con­sor­tium of the Inter­reg IV project “Ecotech-​Sudoe”

These three net­works gather 14 organ­i­sa­tions devoted to research and teach­ing on Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences and Tech­nolo­gies in Europe and Aus­tralia: Alterra (NL), CEH (UK), Cema­gref (FR), Ecole des Mines d’Alès (FR), INRA LBE (FR), JRC (EU), Mont­pel­lier Supa­gro (FR), NERI (DK), Syke (FI), UAB (SP), Univ. of Aveiro (PT), UFZ (DE), Univ. of Girona (SP), Univ. of Syd­ney (AU), UNSW (AU).

EcoTech&Tools was the oppor­tu­nity to learn and exchange about the lat­est research related to envi­ron­men­tal and inte­grated assess­ment of var­i­ous anthro­pogenic com­plex sys­tems such as human-​interacting biosys­tems (agri­cul­ture, forestry, etc ), water man­age­ment sys­tems, land man­age­ment. Spe­cial focus were made on these three areas as well as on method­olog­i­cal bot­tle­necks deal­ing with life cycle analy­sis applied to com­plex sys­tems of indus­trial and ter­ri­to­r­ial ecol­ogy: how to sim­plify meth­ods, how to eval­u­ate emer­gent tech­nolo­gies, how to deal with uncer­tain­ties. Hot research top­ics such as the sta­tus of water, soil and bio­di­ver­sity in LCA of com­plex biosys­tems will be dis­cussed. Finally, the gap was bridged between envi­ron­men­tal and social assess­ment towards inte­grated assess­ment. Spe­cial slots in ple­nary ses­sion were ded­i­cated to pre­sen­ta­tions of posters. Researchers were invited to sub­mit posters on the 5 themes of the conference:

- LCA and anthro­pogenic com­plex systems

- Method­ol­ogy bot­tle­necks in LCA applied to com­plex systems

- Indus­trial and ter­ri­to­r­ial ecology

- Social and inte­grated assessment

- Spe­cific issues linked to bio-​anthropo– sys­tems: water – biodiversity – land.

Posters of case stud­ies of envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment, eco-​design or inte­grated assess­ment of sys­tems related to agri­cul­ture, forestry, water, land and urban man­age­ment were also welcome

We hope to have been able to set up some state-​of-​the-​art forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, through which sci­en­tists, experts and indus­tri­al­ists from all over the world will be able meet and exchange ideas

We hope that you appre­ci­ated the sci­en­tific pro­gram of the con­fer­ence and attrac­tions of Montpellier.

For the organ­is­ing com­mit­tee
Pr Véronique Bellon-​Maurel (Mont­pel­lier Supa­gro), P. Roux (Cemagref)