Foresight Consultation 2002: Summary of the Findings on Non-Short listed Topics

Personal Security

  • There was considerable interest in this topic, but several of the themes converged with those emerging from discussion on the possible scoping of the Cyber Trust and Intelligent Infrastructure Systems projects.
  • Issues surrounding new technologies for surveillance will therefore be considered within the scope of the new project Cyber Trust and Crime Prevention.

The Lifecycle of Products

  • Good support from some academics and the public sector.
  • Considered options for narrowing the scope to focus on goods and services creating the most toxic waste streams.
  • Concerns due to the amount of work on environmental regulation and cost benefit analysis already underway.
  • Potential tie-in with proposed German Futur Project in similar area (The Intelligent Product") during 2003, will be explored further.

Land Use

  • Extensive agreement about the importance of the issue and the need for inter-disciplinary approaches.
  • Concern about the risk of overlap with a major ESRC-led [Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)] SR2002 research programme "Rural Economy and Land Use" which will focus on current and future use of the UK landscape with an explicit aim of including futures work.

Energy For The Future

  • Extensive agreement about the importance of the issue.
  • Equally strongly held views that there were many initiatives in this area also with long-term forward-looking agenda.

21st Century Infrastructure

  • Less clear support for this issue due to a mix of reasons, including its broad scope and the extent of work already underway on transport and urban futures.
  • Strong views that biggest advance could be made by wider adoption of existing technologies rather than developing new ones.
  • The Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA) is proposing a collaborative construction futures project with the Partners in Innovation scheme.

Knowledge Exploitation

  • Broad agreement that this is an important issue, but one that needs to be resolved on a shorter timescale and where the main science and technology drivers are already clearly identified.
  • The Key Business Technologies has agreed to take this work forward. It has a programme scanning for emerging technologies in key markets.� It will share findings with the Intellectual Property Advisory Committee to use to look at how new technologies will impact on Intellectual Property Protection.

Creative Leisure

  • A general view that this was an area where it was hard to envisage a Foresight project that could clearly add value to market mechanisms, and that the main science and technology drivers for change in the regulatory environment had already been identified.
  • The Department for Culture, Media and Sport noted the points arising from the consultation.
  • As a result of discussion on this topic the existing Foresight Cognitive Systems project will review issues around the implications of emerging technologies for leisure.

Intelligent Search Engines

  • General agreement that developments on the topic as scoped would be market-driven, leaving Foresight with little value to add.
  • Key issues are also likely to be picked up under other topics, such as Intelligent Infrastructure Systems and Cyber Trust and Crime Prevention.

New Technology For Health

  • General view that significant work already underway in this area (e.g. New and Emerging Applications of Technology Programme in Department of Health, ESPRC Life Science Interface Programme) particularly in the area of the application of genomics.
  • Some areas highlighted as needing more work may be incorporated into other Foresight topics such as Exploiting the Electromagnetic Spectrum and Detection and identification of Infectious Diseases.