Brief description
The main goal of PROSUITE is to develop a coherent, scientifically sound, and widely accepted methodology for the sustainability assessment of current and future technologies over their life cycle, applicable to different stages of maturity. With PROSUITE, we will identify the “hot spots” of sustainability assessment of technologies. Whereas many projects have broad and general aims, this project is proposed to be specific by delivering actual sustainability estimates for four technology cases with close consultation of the stakeholders involved. Essential to this is the ability to derive a standardized methodology to assess the sustainability of existing and especially new technologies. PROSUITE will show (i) how to combine technology forecasting methods with life cycle approaches, (ii) how to develop and possibly combine the three sustainability dimensions in a standardized, comprehensive, and feasible way. In line with the general overview of activities given above, PROSUITE has, apart from a work package on coordination, 7 work packages with its specific objectives.
DIALOGIK contribution
DIALOGIK is in charge of the work package on social assessment and contributes to case studies and other workpackages. Specifically, the social assessment comprises
- to generate a concept of social sustainability that is comprehensive, consistent and inclusive and allows a coherent transformation into an operational list of measurable social indicators.
- to delineate from such a concept a list of social indicators that relate to both social sustainability and technology development.
- to integrate the findings of technology assessment, technology foresight, social lifecycle analysis, social indicators and social sustainability studies into a coherent and consistent perspective.
- to select quantitative indicators whenever possible and additional qualitative indicators where needed.
- to develop special methodological tools for operationalising these indicators, placing special emphasis on respecting context variables (i.e. highly affluent versus less affluent European countries) and dealing with uncertainties and ambiguities.
- to develop participatory approaches to deal with ambiguities and provide protocols for measuring those indicators that demand input from stakeholders.
Project partners
- Utrecht University, Department of Science, Technology and Society / Copernicus Institute (UU), The Netherlands
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway
- Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Denmark
- DIALOGIK, Germany
- Ecological Economics and Management Centre – Foundation of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology, New University of Lisbon (UNL), Portugal
- Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), Switzerland
- Institut Symlog (SYMLOG), France
- National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), The Netherlands
- Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Finland
- Gent University (UG), Belgium
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria
- Budapest University of Technical and Economic Sciences (BUTES), Hungary
- UAB, Spain
- Pré Consultancy (PRE), Netherlands
- GreenDeltaTC (GD), Germany
- FORTH, Greece
- Solvay, Belgium
- OWS, Belgium
- NOKIA, Finland
- Tolsa, Spain
- HeiQ, Switzerland
- PSI, Switzerland
- Sony Ericsson, Sweden
- DSM, Netherlands