  The International Design Study for the Neutrino Factory (the IDS-NF) was
established by the community at the ninth "International Workshop on Neutrino
Factories, super-beams, and beta- beams" which was held in Okayama in August
2007. The IDS-NF mandate is to deliver the Reference Design Report (RDR) for
the facility on the timescale of 2012/13. In addition, the mandate for the
study [3] requires an Interim Design Report to be delivered midway through the
project as a step on the way to the RDR. This document, the IDR, has two
functions: it marks the point in the IDS-NF at which the emphasis turns to the
engineering studies required to deliver the RDR and it documents baseline
concepts for the accelerator complex, the neutrino detectors, and the
instrumentation systems. The IDS-NF is, in essence, a site-independent study.
Example sites, CERN, FNAL, and RAL, have been identified to allow site-specific
issues to be addressed in the cost analysis that will be presented in the RDR.
The choice of example sites should not be interpreted as implying a preferred
choice of site for the facility.
