The objective of ForeSec is to tie together the multiple threads of existing work on the future of European security in an attempt to provide a more coherent guidance, orientation and structure to all future security-related research activities. It aims at enhancing the common understanding of the complex global and societal nature of European security in order to pre-empt novel threats and capture technological opportunities. The project takes a participatory approach in an attempt to facilitate the emergence of a coherent and ho-listic approach to current and future threats and challenges to European security. ForeSec builds a pan-European network around the European security foresight processes and helps foster a societal debate on European security and security research. As this brief is published, ForeSec still has a few months of project work lying ahead. Accordingly, all results presented here are merely intermediate.
Posts Tagged ‘terrorism’
EFP Brief No. 159: ForeSec: Europe’s Evolving Security
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011EFP Brief No. 137: The Future of Manufacturing in Europe A Survey of the Literature and a Modelling Approach
Saturday, May 21st, 2011Manufacturing in Europe is facing challenges that may impact on its performance in the near future: the emergence of international competitors, new technologies allowing the emergence of new business models, increased off-shore and relocated activities. The aim of this study was to provide policy-makers with a long-term vision of European manufacturing, its characteristics, its place in the EU economy, in the world and the main challenges it will be facing. Its purpose was to identify, on the basis of current demographic, environmental, technological, economic and social trends, and possible scenarios, the likely bottlenecks, unsustainable trends and major challenges that European manufacturing will have to face over the coming 30 years. From this, implications for various microeconomic policies, notably for industrial policy, were explored, contributing to the mid-term review of industrial policy in 2007 by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry.
EFP Brief No. 134: Future Challenge for Europe: Providing Security and Safety to Citizens
Saturday, May 21st, 2011As stated in the recent EC Communication on ‘Reforming the budget, changing Europe’ (SEC (2007) 1188), the European Union has a key role to play in ‘providing security and safety to citizens’. Especially in the aftermath of 11th Sept. 2001 security related issues are becoming an increasingly important facet of global society and have an increasing impact on economy and science. The issues are manifold and include protecting citizens and state from organized crime, preventing terrorist acts, and responding to natural and manmade disasters. Civil security issues are becoming more and more important to governments and national economies across the globe, and the EU is no exception. The EC sees security research as an important policy objective, which started in 2001 with a Preparatory Action on Security Research (PASR) and is now the tenth theme of the FP7 Cooperation programme. Security and safety technologies are seen to have applications in many sectors including transport, civil protection, energy, environment, health and financial systems.
EFP Brief No. 133: The Role of the EU in the World
Saturday, May 21st, 2011The purpose of the present brief is to explore how foresight studies perceive, interpret and handle the EU’s role in the world. The examination of its role can be interpreted in different ways, can include a wide range of perspectives, and can apply to various levels of reference (political, social, economic, technological, scientific etc.). We have focused on the concerns and challenges the European Commission has noted as of major importance in the coming years.
EFP Brief No. 118: Austria’s Futures: Past Perspectives and Present Expectations
Friday, May 20th, 2011The Brief covers a foresight exercise that is unique in so far as it revisits the projections and scenarios of a historical foresight undertaken in Austria in 1983 for the challenges and changes that Austria would have to meet up to the year 2005. Not only are these sce-narios revisited but also compared to the reality of 2005. In a further step, a second foresight activity of this kind was started to build scenarios for Austria’s future in 2025. The experts of 1983 saw the microelectronic revolution as the technological pacemaker of the future and 20 years later tried to assess the actual impact of this technological progress on various parts of Austrian life.
EFP Brief No. 115: SMART Perspectives of European Materials Research
Friday, May 20th, 2011Modern materials sciences take as their objective to develop and tailor materials with a desired set of properties suitable for a given application. Next to conventional approaches, predictive modelling and simulation is more and more used. This results into a rapidly increasing knowledge base, allowing for more precise experimental set-ups, more precise simulations and tailoring of goal-oriented materials. They play a key role in the value chain and in product innovation. Although limited profits are made from materials, materials are technology enablers for new high added value products and therefore a key in innovation acceleration. More success and increased opportunities for applications is the outcome. The SMART project aimed at providing support for future strategic decisions in this sector to foster the strengthening of the European Research Area.
EFP Brief No. 105: Future Fuel Technology for APEC Regions
Friday, May 20th, 2011The main aspiration was to gain strategic intelligence on future fuel technologies going beyond the current status and trends of present day energy technology and to draw roadmaps of selected future fuel technologies leading to robust plans for the future of technologies in the APEC region up to 2030. Moreover, the co-organizers of the project also anticipated continuous activities referred to as “post foresight” within APEC economies and among fuel technologies experts both during and after the project.
EFP Brief No. 79: Russian Critical Technologies 2015
Friday, May 20th, 2011The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation conducted a foresight exercise aimed at identifying national S&T priorities and developing the list of critical technologies. The study was organized on a new methodological basis compared to the two previous exercises undertaken in 1996 and 2002. The results obtained were used as a background for the Federal Science and Technology Programme.
EFP Brief No. 69: Madrid 2015
Friday, May 20th, 2011Madrid 2015 is an initiative promoted by the Regional Directorate of Economy and Innovation and carried out by this Directorate and the University Antonio Nebrija with the support from other Universities and Research Centres. This exercise, carried out during 2004, analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the region and initiates a collective thinking process that disentangles the key factors that influence the competitiveness of the region. The final purpose of this foresight project is to explore the possibilities for sustainable economic growth that the region of Madrid has, in order to anticipate possible futures and design long-term polices.
