Objectives, Indicators and Scenarios for
          Sustainable Development

This research area deals with the quantification of environmental, economic and social effects of policy measures on the macro level, disaggregated by economic sectors. The research applies scenario techniques, comparing sustainability scenarios to business-as-usual trends. Thereby, SERI aims at exploring the development of a resource-optimised knowledge-based service society in relation to all dimensions of sustainability by way of applying a backcasting methodology to identify gaps between desired futures and current trends.

For the realisation of a national (European, global, regional) sustainabiltiy strategy it is important to know, which macro-economic effects (on growth, employment, budget deficit, interest rate etc., but also on ressorce use) different suggested measures will presumably have to derive a sustainable mixture of instruments.

Within this research areas SERI wants to develop and apply tools, which make it possible to assess the effects of different Sustainability scenarios and in respect to the Business as Usual regarding their effects to their social, economic and ecological aspects (material, energy, climate, surface) for the national economy and industries respectivly.

The objectives are

· to set realistic and consistent development targets or "landing places" within one generation (20-30 years) determined by regional development objectives (economic, social and ecological)

· to describe current European development models, disaggregated to the regional level, member state level and sectoral level

Changes on demand, technology, the price relations, working time
etc. can be measured in such a way in its effects on GDP, employment and resource use. For a dynamic analysis with consideration of all relevant back and side effects the development of a macro-economic model is necessay, which permits to simulate scenarios of different policies and their effects, during one period of 10-20 years in advance.

One important topic in the research area "Szenarios" is Input-Output-Analysis.

Another topic is related to The Future of Work and Ecology