ASSERT · Assessing Security Research: Tools and Methodologies to measure societal impact

The need for considering societal impacts of EU security research has been acknowledged on many occasions by different actors. The problem though is that in traditional thinking, societal impacts are reduced to side effects of instrumental (technological and legal) security measures. This binary thinking has to be overcome. It should and can be demonstrated that societal dimensions of security research taken into account from the very beginning of the “design process” can increase the variety pool of feasible solutions. Starting from a synthesis of state of the art discussions on societal security, we will identify best practice cases exploring and assessing societal impacts of science and technology in the security domain and beyond, and carefully analyse their structural properties. This will be done in a multidisciplinary fashion from different perspectives, including end-users, stakeholders, researchers, policy-makers and NGOs. Bringing together these different perspectives in a series of workshops will create the basis for the development of a tool and a strategy for the sustainable implementation of societal impacts in future EU research activities in the field of security.