The chapters in this volume are the invited papers presented at the fifth S´eminaire Europ´een de Statistique (SemStat) on extreme value theory and applications, held under the auspices of Chalmers and Gothenburg University at the Nordic Folk Academy in Gothenburg, 10–16 December, 2001. The volume is thus the most recent in a sequence of conference volumes that have appeared as a result of each S´eminaire Europ´een de Statistique. The first of these workshops took place in 1992 at Sandbjerg Manor in the southern part of Denmark
