Final Activity Report Summary - DSS GUIDE (Developing Guidelines for the Successful Application and Implementation of Decision Support Systems in Water Resource Management) In the project's first year significant achievements were attained: (i) a state-of-the-art review of factors governing the lack of acceptance of decision support technology and scientifically driven policy advice has been completed; (ii) a discussion forum has been established to facilitate dissemination and transfer of knowledge; (iii) a workshop attended by internationally recognised experts and special sessions at international conferences have been organised and chaired; (iv) several scientific papers produced and presented at conferences and workshops; and (v) lectures have been held to train early stage researchers. The state-of-the-art report summarises knowledge about main success and failure factors influencing the acceptance of decision support systems in water resource management and interrelated fields (such as agriculture, forestry science). Besides scientific journals in different scientific disciplines, the EU funded projects and other international initiatives connected to water policies (e.g. European Water Framework Directive) have been reviewed. The review was presented and discussed at scientific conferences and tested in context of specific case studies. The results have informed DSS development / application process in other project carried out in the FEEM such as EU Fifth Framework Programme (FP5) Transcat and EU FP5 integrated project Newater. Identified success and failure factors provide a good basis for development of a guidance document which is the main objective of the project. Close collaboration with applied research involving case studies in Czech Republic/Poland, Greece/Bulgaria and Germany / Netherlands allowed an empirical basis for such guidance document and a platform for knowledge transfer. The review was first presented during the International Symposium on Environmental Software Systems ISESS (24-27 May 2005, Sesimbra, Portugal). In the context of this conference, a special session dedicated to DSS success was organised and chaired by Jaroslav Mysiak. In October 2005 (5-6), fifteen internationally recognised experts were invited to Venice to discuss the lack of DSS acceptance in more detail. The conference was organised by FEEM in collaboration with UNESCO ROSTE and chaired by Jaroslav Mysiak. Further scientific workshops referred to this project include two sessions during the Summit on Environmental Modelling and Software, 9-12 July, in Vermont, USA, co-organised by FEEM.
