Knowledge-based (KB) technology is being applied to complex problem-solving and critical tasks in many application domains. Concerns have naturally arisen as to the dependability of knowledge-based systems (KBS). As with any software, attention to quality and safety must be paid throughout development of a KBS and rigorous verification and validation (V&V) techniques must be employed. Research in V&V of KBS has emerged as a distinct field only in the last decade and is intended to address issues associated with quality and safety aspects of KBS and to credit such applications with the same degree of dependability as conventional applications. Since 1995, V&V of KBS has been the topic of annual workshops associated with the main AI conferences, such as AAAI, IJACI and ECAI. This is a collection of papers dealing with all aspects of KBS V&V, presented at the Fifth European Symposium on Verification and Validation of Knowledge Based Systems and Components, which was held in Oslo in the summer of 1999, and was sponsored by Det Norske Veritas and the British Computer Society's Specialist Group on Expert Systems (SGES).