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Abstract

The paper is intended to open up the national construction of ISEW also for regional application. Including valuations for environmental changes this index appears as a regional indicator for sustainable development. As such, by the high degree of aggregation, it is common acceptance. However, the same reason implies that, as a single number, it has only limited scientific expressiveness. Nevertheless, this indicator can be made rather productive if the variability in time is studied and concurrently different scenarios for changes in the region are anticipated: land use, climate, demographics, economic and technological conditions.

In this sense, the realized in the paper ISEW-construction for the NGC (New German Countries including West-Berlin) during the transition period 1990-1994 can be considered as a preliminar and extendable calibration of a model frame with the possibility for off-line coupling of partial models. In particular, the environmental parts of the index should be mapped by those partial models which are able to reflect different land use scenarios, management regimes or redevelopment measures.

Using the simulation language MOSES, a model for the ISEW has been built with a specific parametrization for the NGC. This model is a generic model, i.e. the model structure can be used for any other region or nation by exchanging the parameter sets only.