The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP) is one the four independent assessment agencies in the Netherlands advising the Dutch government. It is the primary task of the MNP to advise the Dutch government on a wide variety of environmental issues from a scientific base built on knowledge and expertise. Policy-makers use MNP research findings to develop, implement and enforce environmental policy. MNP underpins policy through its monitoring, modelling and risk and impact assessment results. Operating within the bounds of the Environmental Management Act and the Nature Conservation Act, the MNP has assumed the role of charting the current status of the environment and nature in collaboration with a range of scientific institutes and other national assessment agencies to support a broad, but ecologically based, political and social discussion. The MNP has a staff of around 200 people and in located at the RIVM premises in Bilthoven.

The work in INTARESE concerns two MNP teams. The Quality of the Local Environment Team (LOK) studies the relationship between the physical (local) environment in which people live, the related health effects & risks of exposure, and the well-being of the population. LOK maps current levels of local environmental quality, makes forecasts and evaluates the effects of current and proposed policies. The Information Services and Methodology Team (IMP) manages information on nature and the environment, assembles geo-information from sources within and outside the MNP, and develops and applies guidance and analyses related to uncertainty on environmental modelling exercises and outcomes. MNP will participate in several INTARESE work packages: 1.1 (LOK), 1.4 (LOK), 1.5 (IMP), 3.7 (LOK), 4.1 (LOK) and 6.1 (LOK).

Leendert van Bree has a large experience in toxicology and risk assessment of environmental pollution, and science-policy interface activities regarding research, policy, and control strategies. He has coordinated a large number of studies on the health studies, funded by Dutch scientific organizations and the Dutch ministry of Environment. He has been a contractor in the EU funded HEPMEAP study linking and hybridizing exposure, toxicology, and epidemiology data to assess the contribution of traffic emissions to health effects associated with ambient particulate matter. In addition, he has been the co-initiator and co-ordinator of AIRNET, the Thematic Network on Air Pollution and Health in the European Union. He is currently involved in studies and advisory tasks for national and international bodies and agencies (EEA, US-EPA, UN ECE, IIASA, WHO) in the field of (1) research programmes and advice on environment and health risk assessment (2) development of new environmental risk assessment and risk management philosophies, and 3) environmental policy and management. He is director of the MNP programme on ‘Health Risks, Well-being, and Quality of Life’.

Arthur Petersen is currently director of the MNP ‘Methodology and Modeling’ programme. In this capacity, based on longstanding experience in research and science-policy interactions, he leads the Agency's efforts in methodology for sustainability assessment and methodology for uncertainty assessment and communication. Besides his job, he is Managing Editor of the ISYP Journal on Science and World Affairs and Treasurer of Pugwash Netherlands (part of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs). In addition to dealing with epistemological and methodological questions, social normative issues are also addressed in his current activities and environmental studies, on top of his guidance activities on sustainability assessment and scenario analyses.

Peter Janssen is senior scientist with large experience in modeling methodology in policy-advice settings (simulation, validation, calibration, optimization, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis). He has participated in many projects on local and global environment issues, concerning acidification, eutrophication, climate change, emission inventories, noise modelling, risk and safety studies in aviation, sustainability assessment. At MNP he has initiated the development and application of tools and methods for uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, and has worked, in close cooperation with (inter)national expert, on the development of the RIVM/MNP guidance for Uncertainty Assessment and Communication. His special interests are tools for quantitative and qualitative uncertainty assessment and expert elicitation methods for uncertainty quantification.