Future societal challenges and research linkages

Abstract

When formulating mission-oriented STI policies, it is important to visualise how science, technology and socio-institutional initiatives can contribute to specific societal challenges. In order to map the interrelationships, a survey was conducted to gather researchers' opinions on how science, technology and societal approaches are expected to contribute to these challenges. The survey sought to envision the future state of society and to concretise future societal challenges and value creation through a backcasting approach. It is expected that such an approach would lead to new insights into the links between societal issues and science and technology that cannot be found through a forecasting approach alone, as well as to new discoveries in interdisciplinary research.