Linking Impact Assessment Instruments to Sustainability Expertise – LIAISE

The LIAISE Network of Excellence (NoE) aims at helping to realise the full potential of Impact Assessment (IA) procedures and tools. The main purpose of LIAISE is to bridge the two communities of IA researchers and IA practitioners, currently divided by a huge gap, trough the creation of a shared toolbox – simultaneously accessible and useful for policy makers as well as for the research community.

Impact Assessment (IA) is potentially an important policy instrument for delivering more sustainable development as well as enhancing the evidence base, transparency and effectiveness of decision making processes. Within the European Commission, IA has evolved in the past few years as an important instrument to coordinate the preparation of policies.

However, existing (and largely EU FP funded) research points out that the full potential of IA is not being realised. On the one hand, many assessment tools such as models exist but are not being fully employed in IA procedures. On the other hand, the expectations in tools and models are sometimes too high and academics are pointing at limits to what IA can reasonably achieve, but their recommendations are not always taken into consideration. These are indications for a gap between the two emerging communities of IA researchers and IA practitioners, each of which is rooted in different worlds with different interests, languages, knowledge and objectives. Policy makers tend to look for tools that are simple and transparent, while the researchers are more interested in sophistication and innovative aspects of existing tools and the development of new ones. FEEM is involved in WP3 of the project, namely the back-office for the IA toolbox, and is leader of WP7, the work-package dedicated to dissemination and comunication, crucial to the success and effetiveness of the project.

As a whole, the LIAISE consortium will:

• Unite the multi-disciplinary competences of a core of large European institutes, that in turn consolidate the expertise from large FP6 projects such as SEAMLESS, SENSOR, MATISSE, Sustainability A Test, IQ Tools and EVIA;
• Combine researchers that analyse current policy needs and link them in innovative ways (i.e. targeted, co-designed and co-produced IA ‘test cases’) to those who maintain existing and are presently improving existing and developing new tools;
• Develop a roadmap towards a virtual centre of excellence on IA, that can operate as the durable hub of existing academic and practitioner networks relevant to the themes of the NoE;
• Maintain the flexibility to support ‘real life’ IA processes, informed by a structured dialogue with the IA user community, represented by a high level Policy Advisory Board;
• Develop a business plan to ensure durable operation, scientific credibility and efficient usability of the shared toolbox, also in the post-project period.