and co-directs the Technology policy & Assessment Center there//tpac. gatech. edu. Technological forecasting & Social Change 72 (2005) 1070 1081
At times the Technology policy and Assessment Center at Georgia Tech has accessed such sources through a gateway service,
Apart from their ratings, the panellists were asked also to provide verbal comments to justify their assessments.
In each panel, this prior consultation process resulted in a collated document that contained some 30 50 driving forces as well as numerical assessments and written comments on them.
For each driving force, the full distribution of the assessment ratingswas shownto convey information about the variability of perceptions among the panellists.
The resulting proposals were subjected then to an internet-based assessment so that the other panellists could evaluate the focus areas with regard to (i) current level of expertise in Finland
Practically all panels started the assessment phase of focus areas only after additional proposals had been generated further to the discussions at the second panel meeting.
it is worth highlighting that the identification of the competence area Assessment and management of global risks
Global economy Assessment and management of global risks Impacts of business globalisation on national economies Management of innovation processes panel reports. 5 The first part of the synthesis report summarised selected driving forces
For example, the compilation of documents from the internet-based questionnaires showed the full distributions of the panellists'assessment ratings
and merging empirical/analytical methods with stakeholder engagement processes 5. The positioning was aimed at perceived overlapping fields of practice among technology foresight, forecasting, intelligence, roadmapping, and assessment.
The paradigm shift from the one gene one function towards a holistic approach that is one the one hand challenging the safety assessment of commercialised GM plants offers on the other hand a cognitive opportunity for modifying stakeholders alignment of interests.
Finally, as for GM plants, a Nano Foresight exercise may contribute to raise research on safety assessment among the scientific priorities for avoiding the stalemate GM plants are facing.
Three abstracts from different areas air-quality assessment, health care, and the auto industry demonstrate new applications of continuous monitoring.
but this was some time after the UK's Royal Society embarked, in 1981, on a series of conferences on the assessment and perception of risk.
both organisations introduced rules for technological assessment, although with less formal attempts to assess the social accounting cum auditing of business activity.
The collapse of the Berlin Wall and subsequently the Soviet union was weakly discernible in the mid 1980s through assessments of military capacities and responses to the‘‘Star wars''initiatives;
Joint assessment of Foresight experience and trends. The respondents with more than 15 years of experience constituted the largest single group,
Likelihood and time horizon assessment. The majority of the trends were considered to be medium to high probability of occurrence.
Controversy assessment. According to the survey respondents the majority of trends identified contain medium to high level possibility of controversy.
Joint assessment of country of residence and trends. Amajority of the respondents (over 55%)that assessed
%Likelihood and time horizon assessment. Almost all respondents from all regions considered that there is a medium to high level of occurrence of the trends identified. 75%of the North american respondents considered that the likelihood of occurrence was high,
Controversy assessment. A majority of the Australasian respondents expect low controversy for the trends identified.
The assessment of the respondents from EU Candidate and Associate countries seemed to be the opposite with high controversy expectations.
and essentially weathered it. 3. 2. 2. 4. Joint assessment of Foresight affiliation and trends.
%Low number of respondents from NGOS (0. 95%)in trend assessment was noteworthy. Impact assessment. Almost all respondents from different Foresight affiliations stated that over 70%of the trends identified will have high impact on the STEEP systems.
Likelihood and time horizon assessment. Similarly no significant differences were encountered between the different affiliation category groups.
Controversy assessment. 52%of the respondents from NGOS expect medium controversy resulting from the trends.
and differentiated. 3. 2. 3. 1. Joint assessment of Foresight experience and drivers of change. A balanced distribution is observed among the respondents with 1 3, 5 10 and over 15 years experience.
Likelihood assessment. Similarly a large number of respondents considered the likelihood of occurrence high for the drivers identified,
Joint assessment of country of residence and drivers of change. Approximately 60%of the drivers were assessed by the EU-27 respondents.
Likelihood and time horizon assessment. The respondents from North america and the EU countries suggested similar assessments for the likelihood of occurrence of the drivers identified.
About half of the drivers identified have high likelihood of occurrence with the rest being medium likelihood of occurrence.
Joint assessment of Foresight affiliation and drivers. Respondents from Academia and Government took the lead in drivers assessment with 32%and 25%respectively.
More balanced distribution was observed among Business respondents and Students. Impact assessment. Similar to the patterns observed regarding trends
Likelihood and time horizon assessment. The majority of respondents from Academia and NGOS expected a medium level of likelihood of occurrence for the drivers identified.
if any of these eventually emerge. 3. 2. 4. 1. Further assessment of wild cards/shocks by time horizon,
O. Saritas, J. E. Smith/Futures 43 (2011) 292 312 307 3. 2. 5. 1. Joint assessment of Foresight experience and discontinuities.
Likelihood and time horizon assessment. The likelihood of occurrence for about 50%of the discontinuities identified was considered to be medium.
3. 2. 5. 2. Joint assessment of country of residence and discontinuities. Over 60%of the respondents assessed discontinuities were from the EU-27 countries.
Likelihood and time horizon assessment. Strong disagreements were observed regarding the likelihood of occurrence of the drivers identified.
or focus group opportunities to probe the differences in perception of discontinuities. 3. 2. 5. 3. Joint assessment of Foresight affiliation and discontinuities.
Academic respondents took the lead in the assessment of the discontinuities (39%.%A high and balanced participation in discontinuity assessment was observed among the Governmental and Business respondents.
Impact assessment. Around 70%of all respondents from various Foresight affiliations that assessed discontinuities expect high impact.
Likelihood and time horizon assessment. Regarding the likelihood of occurrence of discontinuities, the responses from Academia,
The figures changed slightly in the assessment of time horizons. This time Academia and Business suggested that most of the discontinuities would emerge from 2016 to 2025
and somewhat uncharted directions for societies hence they represent a good cross section of global anxieties as well as global aspirations great fodder for an extended strategic conversation. 3. 2. 6. 1. Further assessment
Further assessment of survey variables has indicated that there are no dramatic surprises, but there seem to be emerging several instances of avenues that could benefit from further discussion,
The authors acknowledge that it could benefit from additional content assessment. However subsequent work will concentrate more on the interpretation of the rich data set that has been acquired
New technology Foresight, Forecasting & Assessment Methods, 2004, European communities Technical Report EUR 21473 EN. 5 F. Scapolo, New horizons and challenges for future-oriented technology analysis:
On a broad range of regional and EU projects, involving foresight and integrated assessment, Peter worked together with experts
as well as a more appropriate interpretation of the results of assessment tools. In doing so, there is a need to look at risks
The overall intention of CBA is the assessment of projects, planning or programmes. There is a need to understand relevant causal relations to apply the method properly.
scenario building and strategic environmental assessment. The term‘‘scenario''subsumes a broad range of tools and methodological approaches.
The other examples are environmental impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA. Both instruments are related to the assessment of the environmental consequences of an activity.
SEA and EIA use combinations of different tools rather than only one tool. Scenario processes and modelling approaches quite often play an important role.
Rather open, interdisciplinary assessments are needed to cope better with these uncertainties and to provide for a better basis for the quantification of potential effects.
Notable on this assessment is its deliberate use of various FTA METHODS. For example, different scenarios were developed; models were used for quantitative assessments.
A wide range of stakeholders have been involved as well as, on a smaller scale, the wider public in form of an online survey.
pointing at the potentials but also at the limits of the tools and methods used for the assessment.
An ex ante assessment of future effects is always based on assumptions and simplifications. In general, these assumptions and simplifications are based on knowledge of different type.
overview, assessment, and selection criteria'',Studies 39, Deutsches Institut fu r Entwicklungspolitik, Bonn. Mendoza, G. A.,Macoun, P.,Prabhu, R.,Sukadri, D.,Purnomo, H. and Hartanto, H. 1999), Guidelines for Applying Multi-Criteria Analysis to the Assessment of Criteria
and Indicators, Center for International Forestry Research, Jakarta. Mishan, E. J. and Quah, E. 2007), Cost Benefit Analysis, 5th ed.,Routledge, London and New york, NY.
Therivel, R. 2004), Strategic Environmental Assessment in Action, Earthscan, London. TSU Oxford et al. 2010), OPTIC Deliverable 1:
http://optic. toi. no van Asselt, M. B. A. and Rotmans, J. 2002),‘Uncertainty in integrated assessment modelling'',Climate change, Vol. 54, pp. 75
our preferences often pass for objective assessments of plausibility and probability;‘‘‘‘Impossible is just and opinion''.
Another risk of this approach is that calculations and assessment of, for example, energy use of some industrial processes,
Assessment of the Foresight report on Long-term Climate and Energy Policy'',Prime minister's Office, Helsinki, Prime minister's Office Publications 3/2011, available at:
In this paper we will address the issue how useful assessments can be made, given the enormous,
An integral part of the Nanoned programme (3%of the budget) is the assessment of social, political, economical and environmental/health issues.
With respect to the assessment of the approach proposed in this paper some findings are worth mentioning. First, the foresight method appears to be user-friendly for regional and local decision makers and quite manageable for technicians.
As Johnston (2008) noted, the objective of the first of these seminars‘‘was to analyse possible overlapping fields of practice between technology foresight, forecasting, intelligence, roadmapping, and assessment.''
which tends to lead to consensual assessments of the future (Blind, 2006), the objective of these think pieces was to collect, within a legal context, a range of varied ideas about the future.
moreover, how the techniques used to envision the future have grown in complexity and sophistication. 3. 3. 2‘‘Future-verification''assessments.
''the obligation to perform‘‘future-verification''assessments of longstanding laws may be seen as a possible example of FTA instruments
After a given period of time, a law of this kind would go through a‘‘future verification''assessment, in
More evidence-based approaches to the assessment of regulatory quality allow a review of the effectiveness of policy tools used in practice
With the incorporation of FTA instruments, the revision of laws and the design of future ones would be complemented with better quality assessment procedures.
On this point, backcasting and‘‘future verification assessments'',processes which evaluate existing laws and their performance by contrasting their initial (and desirable) visions of the future with the one effectively accomplished;
assessment and quality measurement. Following the ideas presented in the legislative-making section, laws should ideally establish their vision of desired future,
and assessment methods 21 for such activities (which is, in addition, a problem of FTA per se).
but on the other side of the Atlantic, we currently have the example of the Scientific Technology Options assessment (STOA),
and the types of assessment tools that policy makers seem most able or willing to use.''
The assessment of emerging technologies implies the introduction of new methods into the toolkit of the TA practitioner.
and tested. 2. Assessment of emerging technologies changing framework and new questions Technology assessment (TA) is a scientific,
This holds considerable methodological challenges with respect to analysis and assessment for all emerging technologies but especially for emerging enabling technologies.
because impact identification and assessment have to be carried out at an extremely early stage and their results are expected to find consideration in practical decisions.
For a valid and sound assessment, the monolith dnanotechnologyt has to be blasted into sensible and workable pieces.
For nanomaterials, two layers of assessment exist. The first one is the assessment of the impacts of its production.
Although there are many knowledge gaps and uncertainties e g. about the up-scaling of the current processes used for material production
the general methodology can be adapted from procedures that are used broadly in the assessment of conventional materials technologies.
Methods like Life cycle Analysis or Materials Flow Analysis are comparatively sharp swords in the analysis and assessment of ecological and economic impacts of new materials technologies.
In this situation, is it possible to find ways to consider knowledge about the potential impacts of a technology which admittedly is gained with high uncertainty and its assessment with regard to sustainability already in early phases of technology development?
Finally, roadmapping could support the conceptualisation of Nano-TA as a dreal timet-investigation and assessment of chances and risk,
and the Office of Technology assessment at the German Parliament (TAB), he is currently heading the project group btechnology Assessment for Nanotechnologiesq at ITAS.
Uncertainty in integrated assessment modelling. Climatic Change 54, no. 1: 75 105. Varela, F. J.,E. Thompson,
Integrated Assessment 4, no. 1: 5 17. Wallén, M. 2008. Mannen som uppfann sms: et.
appreciated (behavioural pattern and numeracy) and learned about through imaginative assessment of substantive knowledge of
The headings of the self-assessment criteria were:(1) Unfamiliar with the subject. 2) Casually acquainted with the subject.
Foresight exercises, or‘formal'assessments of the future, thus, are surrounded by‘informaal assessments of the future (Salo 2001).
This particular condition will have consequences for the established foresight approaches. This paper conceptually and empirically investigates the phenomenon that socio-technical developments are shot through with informal anticipations
repertoire of visions and future assessments and how this both enhances and limits the efficacy of foresight.
How to characterise and understand the condition of foresight being surrounded by ongoing informal future assessments?
This provides other opportunities for foresight and assessments. For example, constructive technology assessment (CTA) does not intend to give a final decision about the prospects of a technical development,
and informal assessments are made continuously. In other words, foresight necessarily occurs in a‘sea'of expectations. The ubiquitous informal expectations circulate within and between groups of developers and policy-makers,
of which they seek to give an assessment. This adds a reflexive and strategic dimensiio to the process of foresight,
This involves studies of technology Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:02 03 december 2014 780 H. van Lente assessment, foresight, intermediary organisations, politics of knowledge production and philosophy of technology.
Vision assessment: Shaping technology in 21st century society. Towards a repertoire for technology assessment. Heidelberg: Springer verlag. Groenveld, P. 1997.
Integrating CTA with vision assessment. Technological forecasting and Social Change 75, no. 3: 334 55. Rosenberg, N. 1982.
forecasting and technollog assessment are essential associates, both of which bring an element of legitimacy and transparency to the overall decision-making process.
Assessment of quality and maturity level of R&d. International Journal of Production Economics 78, no. 1: 29 35.
The characteristics of 5th generation management. http://www. entovation. com/assessment/fifthgen. htm (accessed December 2004.
This will enable the organisation to make an assessment about whether what it had hoped originally to accomplish was achieved actually (gap analysis)
and sample analyses and validation activities associated with the mapping of Sandia's LDRD IAS. 2. Project plan The original plan associated with this assessment activity consisted of several steps,
and draw his own conclusions related to both assessment and potential future directions. 4. 2. Link analysis of IAS The analyses of the visualizations in Section 4. 1 tend to strongly convey the patterns
The third level of analysis consisted of a technology-to-technology relationship assessment within a single IA.
The assessment was used to assist the IA leads in portfolio management activities. The visualization contained very detailed (and thus proprietary) information,
The current approach of applying information visualization tools to the analysis of the LDRD portfolio enables a comprehensive assessment of the technological development trends occurring within our IAS.
openness towards future development options in the ICT context Systematic assessment of the different future options:
Built capacity for systemic resilience at Nordic regional level Identification of‘black swan'type of development options Construction of visionary adaptive strategies on the basis of assessment of alternatives to build
It provided an assessment of explorative visions in the context of four scenarios and created scenario-based visionary sociotechhnica roadmaps.
The visionary space was opened by systematic assessment of different future options, for example, by evaluating the plausible,
Huang a a School of management and Economics, Beijing Institute of technology, Beijing, China b Technology policy and Assessment Center, Georgia Institute of technology, Atlanta, GA,
btechnology Policy and Assessment Center, Georgia Institute of technology, Atlanta, GA, USA Highly uncertain dynamics of New and Emerging science and Technologies pose special challenges to traditional forecasting tools.
Our assessment of the competitor solar cells finds that DSSCS currently hold a minuscule share of the market,
Her current specialty is technology management and assessment, particularly focusing on how to forecast the likely innovation pathways for emerging nano-related technologies and applications.
particularly the study of technology forecasting and assessment. She is focusing on research on emerging science and technology topics.
and of Public policy, at Georgia Tech, where he continues as the co-director of the Technology policy and Assessment Center.
Her specialty is science and technology management, particularly the study of technology forecasting and assessment. She is focusing on research on emerging science and technology topics.
Integrating technology monitoring, forecasting & assessment with strategic planning. SRA Journal (Society of Research Administrators) 26, no. 2: 21 31.
the identification of potential constraints that might stem from economical, technological or societal implications, an assessment of the relevance for basic education and advanced training as well as the consideration of ethical and legal aspects.
These typically last about one to one and a half hours and cover the outside view of the expert on the subject to be examined including an assessment of current challenges and success factors.
Drawing on the joint assessments of potential economic social and technological developments, elements for a coherent vision were created in the workshop by the experts.
This meta-analysis used an assessment framework, which formed the basis of the subsequent project catalogue,
Table I Drivers and trends assessment framework 1 Overview description; rationale and evidence 2 Potential impact (global and national;
2. assessment of existing policy, research and commercial activity; and 3. opportunities for further market and research development.
Although this is not a final assessment of how the project has been used to inform research priorities, there are some important implications for foresight practice in RTDI and grand challenges.
Part of the value of foresight in further work on RTDI policy in national contexts is to provide forward-looking assessments that are bottom-up,
and B an assessment of their impact on policy-making. For characterisation of the projects, several dimensions are used.
For this assessment the following scale is used: B Indirect impact This means that the project results (such as lists of priorities, the most important research topics, policy recommendations) were used for informing policy-makers.
assessment of productivity of oil fields; techniques to monitor oil and gas fields, identifying possible ore-bearing,
order of its assessment and compensation procedures''.''For this task implementation it was suggested to that amendments were made to the Ecological Doctrine of the Russian Federation
Assessment of personnel, financial and technological requirements, and the potential for further S&t development identified the need to increase appropriate investments significantly.
competitor profiling, early warning assessment, scientometrics, science mapping, scenarios, network analysis and so forth (Calof and Smith, 2010).
an interpretation of the technology Delphi with regard to the old structure/high-performance paradox'',Institute of technology Assessment, Vienna, available at:
inductive approach, visual inspiration, assessment of coverage of dimensions of change, and prolonged divergence. Finally, Georghiou and Harper 3 set the scene against which change is considered
iii) rigorous assessment of coverage of dimensions of change to take into account possibly unrecognised/hidden structural changes,
as there are sources of bias in the EFMN database (see Keenan and Popper 26 for a critical assessment of the exercise).
In the NEEDS project (www. needs-project. org), the acceptability of future energy technology options was submitted to a multi-criteria assessment involving a panel of stakeholders, the results
One example constitutes the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment scenarios, linking ecosystem change and human well-being by combining qualitative storyline development and quantitative modelling through several iterations between both parts 44.
The appraisal of the expected future performance (and the ranking) of alternative technological options therefore explicitly incorporates information that inherently reflects the subjectivity of social players,
For instance, the consultative dimension of SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessment) has proven essential to build consensus amongst stakeholders around the long-term effects of large infrastructure projects.
new technology foresight, forecasting & assessment methods, in: JRC Technical Report, EUR 21473 EN, European commission, 2004, Available at:
Change 77 (2010) 1051 1060.30 E. Kemp-Benedict, Converting qualitative assessments to quantitative assumptions: Bayes'rule and the pundits wager, Technol.
Scenarios, Volume 2, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Washington: ISLAND PRESS, 2005.45 D. T. Campbell, A Study of Leadership Among Submarine Officers, Ohio State university Res.
Thirteen indicators are selected for TLC assessment (Table 2). All the data of the indicators are extracted by priority year (the first filing date year for a patent application
and of Public policy, at Georgia Tech, where he remains Co-director of the Technology policy and Assessment Center.
Her specialty is science and technology management, particularly the study of technology forecasting and assessment. She is focusing on a research on emerging science and technology topics. 407 L. Gao et al./
Policy 31 (2002) 1467 1479.30 C. S. Holling, Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management, John Wiley & Sons, New york, 1978.31 R. J. Mclain
However, no careful assessment of EMA for FTA has taken place yet. We illustrated EMA for FTA using three cases.
An Appraisal for Policy makers and Planners, Johns hopkins university Press, Baltimore, 1978.5 J. D. Sterman, All models are wrong:
an assessment of the group judgment or view; some level of opportunity for individuals to revise views;
Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), Bilthoven, NL. Last accessed on 29/06/11 and available at www. pbl. nl/en. 13.
Rijkens-Klomp, D. S. Rothman, J. Rotmans, Cloudy Crystal Balls, An Assessment of Recent European and Global Scenario Studies And Models, Experts'Corner Report:
On a broad range of regional and EU projects, involving foresight and integrated assessment, Peter worked together with experts
and include both assessment and future-oriented parts, but focus predominantly on economic issues and impacts.
and future market assessment were used to identify the promising areas of the field and to assess the market potentials of future nano-applications.
Nanochem (production and safety assessment of nanomaterials for industrial applications. In 2003 the Office of Technology assessment at the German Parliament conducted a broad technology assessment on nanotechnology 49.
The NNI's early nanotechnology assessment studies indicated to the public that policy was based on scientific knowledge information
Nanotechnology and the rise of an assessment regime, in: Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, Springer, 2010.15 R. A w. Rhodes, Understanding governance:
from forecasting to technological assessment to sustainability studies, J. Clean. Prod. 16 (2008) 977 987.49 TAB, in:
Rigorous assessment of coverage of dimensions of change, to foster the explicit consideration of possibly unrecognised/hidden structural changes Extended openness for diversity,
and print media 2. stepwise clustering of the findings into visions in interaction with innovation actors through interviews and an online survey 3. development and assessment of scenarios of future innovation landscapes 4. generation of policy implications.
Inductive foresight approach Visual inspiration Assessment of coverage of dimensions of change Extended openness for diversity (prolonged divergence.
In addition to the assessments given in the survey the experts were asked to point out missing aspects and to suggest a clustering of the visions.
Accordingly, a structured assessment of very different aspects of changing innovation patterns was possible within interviews of 30 min up to 3 h. Considering that the participation in the online survey was restricted to a specific circle of people
It received highly controversial assessments by the experts ranging from very interesting to bullshit. In order to test the approach (only very short textual information) respondents were asked to assess the clarity of the visions in the INFU online survey.
These two visions were excluded thereafter from further interpretation. 2. 3. Assessment of coverage of dimensions of change A third innovative feature developed within INFU to underpin the capture of structural change is the application of a framework of dimensions of change at the very beginning of the project.
Fig. 7 shows the results of one assessment in an early stage of the process.
and openness, aiming at the assessment of diverging rather than converging elements of changing innovation patterns.
Dimensionof change Modified specificationextreme A Modification specificationextreme B Today's dominantspecification Fig. 7. Assessment of coverage of dimensions of change. 461 E. Schirrmeister, P. Warnke/Technological forecasting
The consideration of very diverse perspectives can be seen as an important starting point for the assessment of systemic change.
Furthermore the visual approach succeeded in mobilising tacit knowledge and personal, emotional assessments. As concerns the assessment of coverage of dimensions of change the frameworkwas used to discuss
and clarify the visions included in the project. In addition this classification provided information about the convergence
The systematic assessment of the findings supported deliberate inclusion or exclusion of dimensions of change.
when working in a project consortium) 31 the assessment of coverage of dimensions of change supported the project teamin looking for specific signals of change that had at first been neglected due to perception filters.
Some experts noted in the interviews that the assessment of coverage could have been emphasised even more in the INFU project.
The assessment of dimensions of change is similar to the concept of alternative logics, which has been proved to be a robust and resilient approach to develop alternative scenarios 32, p. 111.
P. Warnke/Technological forecasting & Social Change 80 (2013) 453 466 dominance of the macro-level and the influence of today's perception of consistency were reduced to give room for creative assessment of structural transformation.
Operations research Proceedings 2005, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2005, pp. 741 746.29 P. Warnke, E. Schirrmeister, INFU scenario assessment report (deliverable D
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