When this two-day meeting was proposed, it was certainly not conceived as a celebration, much less as a party. However, on reflection, this might have been a wholly appropriate gesture because geostatistical simulation came of age this year: it is now 21 years since it was first proposed and implemented in the form of the turning bands method. The impetus for the original development was the mining industry, principally the problems encountered in mine planning and design based on smoothed estimates which did not reflect the degree of variability and detail present in the real, mined values. The sustained period of development over recent years has been driven by hydrocarbon applications. In addition to the original turning bands method there are now at least six other established methods of geostatistical simulation. Having reached adulthood, it is entirely appropriate that geostatistical simulation should now be subjected to an intense period of reflection and assessment. That we have now entered this period was evident in many of the papers and much of the discussion at the Fontainebleau meeting. Many questions were clearly articulated for the first time and, although many of them were not unambiguously answered, their presentation at the meeting and publication in this book will generate confirmatory studies and further research.
