The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) is one of the seven Research Institutes of the European Commission (EC). These Institutes together, make the EC Directorate General known as the Joint Research Centre (JRC), which is the corporate research laboratory of the European Union with sites in Ispra (Italy), Geel (Belgium), Karlsruhe (Germany), Petten (the Netherlands) and Seville (Spain). The mission of IPTS is to provide techno-economic analyses in support of the European policy-making process. IPTSprime objectives are to monitor and analyse science and technology developments, their cross-sectoral impact, their inter-relationship with the socio-economic context and their implications for future policy development

The ICT Unit of the IPTS carries out prospective analyses in selected and highly-focused ICT areas in an attempt to explore the limits and opportunities of technological advances in these vast and rapidly developing fields. The mission of the Unit is to support the Commission services and Community institutions in the process of policy formulation by interpreting and alerting its clients on the socio-economic implications of emerging Information and Communications Technologies. Therefore, the ICT Unit developed the FISTE "Foresight on IST in Europe" framework. The FISTE framework provides a consistent methodology for foresight analysis. It seeks to balance the identification of supply-side IST trends with demand-side impact analyses, and in so doing, to detect potential bottleneck areas for innovation and further research in the European Research Area.

As a result new technological developments like Ambient Intelligence are at the core of the Fiste workplan. An overview of what has been done in this field can be found at http://fiste.jrc.es.

Role in the network   Top

The role of IPTS in the EMTEL network is to focus on the increasingly prevailing ubiquity of information and communication technologies. IPTS is responsible for WP2 on a social and technological analysis of Ambient Intelligence in Everyday Life. IPTS also co-ordinated the Final Deliverable on Quality of Life in the Information Society.

Principal Researchers   Top

Prof. Jean-Claude Burgelman
Mr. Marc Bogdanowicz
Dr. Yves Punie