A Survey of Dutch

Integrated policy analysis aims at providing tools for harmonizing conflicts among individuals, groups, goals of interests in society. Harmonized planning strategies for a diversified system require methods for the resolution of conflicts arising from the interdependence between the components of the system at hand. Hence, integrated policy methods should try to identify feasible states of a system such that these states reflect a meaningful compromise between different policy options. The seventies'have been marked by a drastic change in the attention from social scientists as well as from engineers. Environmental problems (pollution, decline in quality of life, exhaustion of energy and other natural resources, etc.) have come to the fore. Moreover, in political sciences much attention has been oriented to conflictual equity problems (unequal distribution of welfare, unequal burden from environmental deterioration, unbalanced supply of energy sources, etc). The abundance of our affluent society seems to be accompanied by a new scarcity; lack of clean air, lack of energy and raw materials, lack of an equitable distribution of welfare constituents both within and between nations, etc. The economie and technological development of most industrial societies demonstrate a conflictual trend: any further increase in material economie growth evokes a counter-effect which neutralizes-or at least affects-the original economie progress. This 'law of conservation of disaster' • ', which has its roots in the first and second law of thermodynamics, deserves a profound attention from economists, regional scientists and engineers. Given the recent experiences in many countries and in light of the above-mentioned remarks, a research agenda for the analysis of integrated energy-environmental-economic development patterns should include the following items:-A study of the impacts of (realized or expected) changes in the energy sector (for example, price increases, decline in oil supply) on the spatial distribution of activities and vice versa. The sensitivity of location and settlement patterns as well as of their associated transportation-and mobility patterns deserves a closer analysis. The impacts of shifts in land üse and in urban space (for example, the design of energy saving cities and transportation networks or the creation of satelite cities) upon energy consumption are fairly unknown as well. 2)-A thorough investigation of the differences in regional energy efficiency. Such a comparative study requires a closer look at the physical conditions of the regions concerned, the differences in technological conditions (different kinds of energy sources, possibilities of interfuel substitution, etc.) and the sectoral composition of production and …