On March 13 to 15 an international conference entitled "Technology Assessment in Policy Areas of Great Transitions" was organized by the Technology Centre ASCR (TC) in cooperation with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology - Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (KIT- ITAS) in the framework of the 7th Framework project: Parliaments and Civil Society in Technology Assessment - PACITA. The conference took place in the National Technical Library in Prague.

National Technical Library
in Prague Project: Projektil Architekti

The represenatives of universities, research institutes, governments agencies and institutions from approx. 30 countries took part in the conference.

The conference addressed examples of societal areas witnessing great transitions like health care and medicine, energy supply, climate change and mobility in addition to the use of computer technology in all areas of society.

The main subject areas covered e.g.: the kinds of knowledge and dialogue needed for decision-making in societies in order to accomplish the great transitions; the kinds of projects and programs, institutions, approaches and methods needed by technology assessment in these processes.

Dr Junichi Fujino, National Institute
for Environmental Studies (NIES), Ibaraki,
Japan; Dr Anna Sacio-Szymańska,
ITeE-PIB, Poland

During the conference about a 100 presentations were delivered related to such topics as: the use of technology assessment in different countries (Belgium, Lithuania, Czech Republic, South Korea, Japan, Australia, United States); methods and impacts of future-oriented technology analyses projects; emerging technologies in security, material engineering, bio-engineering, synthetic biology. Anna Sacio-Szymańska in her presentation entitled: “Using corporate foresight effecitively - a case study from Poland” gave an account of foresight initiatives, which so far have been realized in Poland and in the Institute for Sustainable Technologies-National Research Institute in Radom.

A poster session accompanying the conference gave an overview of the outcomes of several national and international research projects related to technology assessment, foresight, innovation performance across sectors and countries.

Anna Sacio-Szymańska’s poster "Innovativeness in times of economic downturn: a comparative analysis of selected economies" analysed factors influencing innovative and competitive position of countries in international rankings. The research results presented were obtained within a research project carried out under the Strategic Programme “Innovative Systems of Technical Support for Sustainable Development of Economy” coordinated by the Institute for Sustainable Technologies-National Research Institute in Radom and co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.