On 20 February 2019, an expert dialogue on robotics in care will take place in the German Bundestag.

Scientists at ITAS have assessed the sustainability of the German energy transition. Their result: Nearly half of the indicators examined require rapid measures in order to achieve the sustainability goals.

A new TAB project provides an overview of developments and perspectives in German space research and industry, particularly against the background of current innovations and start-up dynamics.

On Monday, 22. October 2018, at 6 p.m. the next session of the ITAS series of events technik.kontrovers will take place. Scientists and the audience will discuss about suitable solutions for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste.

The ENavi Kopernikus project combines the expertise of more than 80 institutions. An “inventory” of their diverse inter- and transdisciplinary methods and models will help jointly identify sustainable development paths for the future energy system.

In June 2018, ITAS and its partners in the European Technology Assessment Group (ETAG) have been again selected as contractors for carrying out TA studies tailored towards the needs of the members of the European Parliament.

Making the energy transition accessible to the public and opening up new ways of participation are the goals of the “Energy transformation in dialogue” project, which started in June. It is part of the Transformation Center for Sustainable Futures.

ITAS is breaking new ground to involve Karlsruhe citizens in civil dialogue and in research and development of knowledge. Within a course on “algae” at VHS Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe adult education center), participants also visited laboratories of the KIT.

Researchers at ITAS have developed a monitoring system to assess the sustainability of the energy transition. Their corresponding publication has now been nominated by Springer Nature’s “Change the World” initiative.

The Committee for Education, Research and Technology Assessment of the Deutscher Bundestag decided to continue to trust the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis for the operation of TAB until 2023.

Supported by EUCOR, a consortium of five universities in the border triangle of Germany, France, and Switzerland, an interdisciplinary seminar on cross-border issues of autonomous driving was held on 29 and 30 May at ITAS.

On behalf of the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency, ITAS investigates reasons, types, and dimensions of discrimination risks by the increasing use of digital algorithms. Also in the focus: options for action for an increased “algorithmic accountability”.

On Thursday, 12. April 2018, at 6 p.m. the next session of the ITAS series of events technik.kontrovers will take place. Scientists and the audience will discuss about the design of the energy system of the future.

The results of the newly launched survey are going to be incorporated into options for parliamentary work.

Counting birds and observing the stars are the most well-known forms of citizen science: ITAS researchers investigated in the TechnoCitizenScience (TCS) project how citizen science could look like in the context of technosciences.

On 8 February 2018, the EU Parliament called on the EU Commission to carry out a evaluation of the regulation on summer time and, if necessary, to submit a proposal for amendment.

The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts funds the establishment of the Karlsruhe Transformation Center for Sustainable Futures and Cultural Change (KAT) to consolidate the transdisciplinary ITAS activities in Karlsruhe.

The TAB is looking for experts in the topics „Aktuelle Forschungen und Ergebnisse zu EMF-Risiken für Kinder und ältere Menschen“ and „Digitalisierung der Landwirtschaft“.

Unmanned and increasingly autonomous flight systems conquer the airspace. TATuP 3/2018 deals with possible paths of technology development, its actors, and the need for a legal framework for current and future fields of application.

The new book edited by ITAS scientists presents the ongoing transformation of energy supply as a multi-dimensional process. It focuses on the thesis that analytical dimensions interact with each other in shaping the energy future.

Armin Grunwald also addresses a non-scientific audience with his new book. In his opinion, digitalization should be neither left to its own devices nor to global data enterprises. Instead, we have to actively press for its humane design.

The new publication format “TAB-Sensor” presents social perceptions, evaluations and perspectives on scientific and technological change.

Blessing or curse for a sustainable mobility system? In its current issue 2/2018, the Journal on Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice examines the societal, social, and ecological aspects of self-driving cars.

The micro-level is crucial for the sustainability transformation, argue Oliver Parodi and Kaidi Tamm from ITAS. The book edited by them therefore focuses on human aspects of sustainability, up to now widely disregarded by mainstream academia.

How should TA position itself as a research program that also provides policy advice? Issue 1/2018 of the Journal of Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice wants to give new impetus to the debate on theory formation.

Societal challenges such as digitalization, mobility, and energy supply are on top of Europe’s research agenda. The recently published proceedings of the 7th NTA Conference “‘Grand Challenges’ meistern”, explains the contribution of TA in this context.

The knowledge society announces itself in a change of experimental practices. Thus the new volume in the series “Gesellschaft – Technik – Umwelt” (Society – Technology – Environment) analyzes the form experiment as dispositif in Foucault’s sense.