Technology Assessment for the European Parliament's STOA-Panel
» ETAG Running Projects
| 01/2010 - 10/2011 | Nanosafety | |||
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The project will deal with the potential environmental, health and safety (EHS) risks of engineered nanomaterials (ENM). Because of the great uncertainties regarding their actual health and environmental effects and numerous methodological challenges to established risk assessment procedures (toxicology, exposure and hazard assessments, life cycle assessment, analytics, and others), risk management of ENM is confronted with serious challenges. On the other hand, precautionary regulatory action with regard to ENM is demanded by a number of stakeholders and parts of the general public.
Regulation under uncertainty raises fundamental political questions of how lawmakers should regulate risk in the face of such uncertainty. To explore this issue in greater detail, the project focuses on two important perspectives of regulation: Risk management strategies for ENM as discussed or proposed for the EU or its member states, and risk communication problems and needs for EHS risks of ENM. Findings of the project will be discussed with MEPs in several workshops. In addition, the project will use a participatory method in order to investigate the risk communication expectations of the general public.
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| 08/2009 - 12/2011 | Making Perfect Life | |||
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"Making perfect life" refers to a broad spectrum of developments in science and technology, from modifying existing living organisms to synthesising new life forms, and from improving the mind to brain-machine interaction and artificial intelligence. These developments are not seldom off-springs of the so-called converging technologies. Converging technologies refer to a mutually empowering set of advanced research areas and key technologies, including nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and neurosciences. Technological convergence can take place in completely different domains, sharing two dominant characteristics: informatisation and miniaturisation. Informatisation refers to understanding and controlling processes in terms of information, while miniaturisation implies studying and manipulating matter on ever smaller scales. These two trends strongly increase our engineering capabilities with respect to biological and cognitive processes. On the one hand they promise to enhance these processes. Moreover, this promise is extended to (re)designing and (re)constructing living and thinking artefacts. We are making perfect life. Or are we?
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| 01/2010 - 09/2011 | E-Democracy – Technical possibilities of the use of electronic voting and other Internet tools in European elections | |||
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The project will deal with the potential of Internet-based applications to improve political participation and the quality of democratic decision-making at the European level. To this end, the role of new media technologies in creating a European public sphere will be investigated. A major focus of the project will be the formal opportunities for European citizens to participate at the European level by the means of Internet-based applications, including e-voting solutions. Good practice examples of e-participation activities of the member states will provide a useful basis for recommendations for European decision-makers.
The findings of the project will be discussed with experts and MEPs in two workshops.
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| 01/2010 - 12/2011 | Technology Options in Urban Transport: Changing paradigms and promising innovation strategies | |||
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In a Draft Report on an action plan for urban mobility the European Parliament's Committee on Transport and Tourism states that the complexity and interdependence of travel systems and personal and collective modes of transport in urban areas makes a purely technical approach focussed on various modes of transport very limiting. The report emphasises the need for an integrated "urban travel systems" approach together with a "user-centred" approach taking the behaviour of the users adequately into account. In line with these statements, the STOA project proposed in this opinion is looking at technologies from an innovation-oriented angle. It provides an inventory of both existing and future technology options in urban transport as well as an overview on the scientific knowledge about their (potential) impacts on health and/or environment. Taking this as a basis, the project will also look at the socio-economic context in which these technologies are or will be implemented. It will analyse the knowledge about perceptions, motivations and the changeability of behavioural patterns of the actors, in particular users, which are relevant for the successful implementation of technological and organisational innovations in urban transport. The overall aim will be to highlight promising innovation pathways to a more sustainable urban transport system.
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