Systems Analysis Tools Framework for the EU Bio-Based Economy Strategy

One of the biggest challenges facing global society today is the provision of food, water, energy, healthcare and other resources and services to a world that will see its population increase by a third in the face of mounting environmental stresses over the next 20 years. SAT-BBE studies the contribution of a bioeconomy in many of these areas to ensure long term economic and environmental sustainability. Given that the lead time for some social and technological solutions is long, there is a need for a framework to structure long-term analytical capacity for providing guidance for the execution of consistent, coherent, long-term strategies with desirable consequences, putting into focus the bioeconomy as an increasingly leading part of the economic system. Inherent in this framework is the integration of the rapid developments in bio-technology, with far-reaching impacts in the fields of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, human health, and industrial production.

SAT-BBE brings together a consortium of internationally recognised and respected researchers in bio-based economy and sustainability at the European and global levels. During the two and a half years planned for the project, the consortium will design a systems analysis tools framework using their broad experience of modelling the economy in the perspective of bio-based and sustainability objectives. A systems analysis tools framework has the purpose to understand the functional requirements of a bio-based economy and to measure the necessary extent for transformation of the economy as a whole to a bio-based foundation. Systems analysis implies the capacity to understand relations between parts, and the nature of both the parts and their relationships. Tools are modelling and non-modelling analytical methods, organised in evaluation (and, by extension, monitoring) methodologies. The project will match the tools with the requirements of the systems analysis and ensure that links between the tools and their access by non-specialists are explicitly addressed. Data requirements and indicators are designed according to the inputs required, and the outputs desired, for the type of analyses intended.