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ISA is intended as a pro-active, strategic and potentially transformative process that can be used to support the development of policy proposals and other undertakings that have a specific sustainability orientation. Such undertakings would be expressly intended to address persistent problems of unsustainable
development, take up opportunities for more sustainable development and maximize synergies among policy objectives.

The ultimate goal of an ISA is to develop a shared interpretation among stakeholders of what sustainability means for a particular system (city, region, country or sector), place or jurisdiction (scoping), transform that into a shared vision on a sustainable future (envisioning), and explore various solution directions for a transition towards sustainability through a range of innovative experiments (experimenting), as a basis for learning about key relationships and
ways of reframing problems and solutions (learning). In order to deal with the multidimensional complexity of ISA, ISA is designed as a cyclical, participatory process of 1) scoping, 2) envisioning, 3) experimenting, and 4) learning.

ISA brings together an integrated systems analysis and a participatory process involving relevant stakeholders and actors. The integration of stakeholders selected to represent different perspectives and interests is a basic requirement of ISA in order to develop a rich and robust interpretation of sustainability for a specific context. This interpretation is applied in an integrated manner, in order to explore solutions to persistent problems of unsustainable development and to search for opportunities for achieving multiple synergistic sustainability benefits.

For more information: www.matisse-project.net

Note: MATISSE is an Integrated Project bringing together 21 Partners from all across Europe for three year, supported by the SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME of the European Union.