Sustainability

Over the past thirty years, the concept of sustainability has become a central guiding framework for the development of our societies worldwide. It shapes debates in politics, business, science, and the public on the direction in which societies should move. Essentially, it is about identifying problems, defining objectives, and taking measures to solve or implement them. This requires in some cases far-reaching and long-term transformations of structures and processes. To provide concrete guidance for practical action, three components are crucial: (1) The concept must be translated into concrete action goals. (2) Tools are needed to analyze the complex challenges, address them in a context-sensitive manner, and evaluate the results against the set goals. (3) The results of the analysis and evaluation must be prepared and communicated in a manner tailored to the target groups in order to effectively support decision-making processes.

A key challenge is to implement this triad in a way that does justice to the complexity and multifaceted nature of the concept of sustainability. The implementation must be adapted to the specific context of the subject under study while remaining both analytically and practically feasible.

Resilience

In light of increasing and often concurrent crises and their diverse accompanying effects, which are frequently linked to unsustainable structures and practices, the concept of resilience is of growing significance. Generally, it is understood first and foremost as the ability of societies, organizations, institutions, or states to weather disruptive shocks, stressful situations, or crises and their cascading consequences, and to maintain or restore essential systemic and functional relationships (bounce back). Furthermore, it is about learning from critical threats, hazardous situations, and damaging events, and proactively reducing vulnerabilities by changing structures and behaviors (bounce forward).

Social resilience therefore requires action on three levels:

• prevention, in the sense of proactively preparing for possible future events,
• adaptation to changing conditions, and
• a fundamental transformation of structures, processes, and practices in order to effectively implement mitigation and adaptation measures.

In politics, science, and society, there is now broad awareness of the growing relevance of these requirements for action, which are considered essential to overcoming complex challenges. However, there is much uncertainty and disagreement regarding the conceptual understanding of resilience and how or to what extent it can be concretely strengthened and embedded in various sectors of society. The same applies to the question of how the concepts of resilience and sustainability relate to each other and how they can be linked.

Tasks and objectives of the cross-cutting activity

Against this background, the cross-cutting activity “Sustainability” pursues the following objectives:

• Review of the current state of knowledge on sustainability from theoretical, conceptual, and methodological perspectives.
• Reflection on the sustainability research conducted by ITAS over more than three decades through an exchange across research groups, with the aim of deriving lessons learned from the extensive project and consulting experience.
• Further development of ITAS’s existing sustainability approach, in particular
  • the Integrative Concept of Sustainable Development (IKoNE), developed under the lead management of ITAS, based on the diverse practical experiences gained both within and outside ITAS. This concerns both the fundamental architecture of IKoNE and its integration or linking with new topics, especially the expansion to include aspects of resilience;
  • building on this, the further development of tools for integrative sustainability assessment, among other things, for application to subjects that have received less attention to date, such as different scenarios of sustainable and long-term versus unsustainable, more short-term development paths.
• Design, establishment, coordination, and substantive support for the ITAS working group “Sustainability and Resilience.”
  Its objectives are:
  • compiling work and activities related to resilience within ongoing or planned projects;
  • organizing, promoting, and supporting the exchange of experiences and open questions across research groups. This is intended to foster learning processes, lay the groundwork for conceptual and methodological advancements, and identify needs and opportunities for deeper or new collaborations within ITAS and with external organizations;
  • developing the theoretical and conceptual foundations for linking the two principles of sustainability and resilience in the conflict between the fundamental goals of solely maintaining or restoring system stability, on the one hand, and the need for transformation, on the other. In particular, this concerns the questions of to what extent resilience can be understood and implemented as an approach for systematically addressing or mitigating obstacles or risks to the achievement of sustainability goals as well as how unintended effects of resilience measures on pathways to sustainability can be (more) systematically taken into account;
  • developing a foundation for an innovative concept for sustainability transformations that appropriately integrates elements of resilience and can thereby contribute to improved support for transformation processes.
• Greater integration of sustainability and resilience issues into established research methods at ITAS. This is relevant both for the methods themselves and for transformation research and can help better support decision makers in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. These include, in particular, systems analysis and life cycle assessment, technology assessment, vision assessment, long-term governance, responsible research and innovation, risk, safety, and acceptance studies, as well as transdisciplinary and real-world laboratory research. The primary focus is on identifying the specific theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and analytical questions, advantages, and potential as well as the disadvantages and challenges of the various approaches.
• Implementation of supplementary, cross-research-group projects related to sustainability and/or resilience in different contexts.
• Provision of substantive support to the ITAS staff in applying for and carrying out such projects.
• Needs- and event-based discussions on topics related to sustainability and resilience with partners outside ITAS – both within KIT and beyond.

• Basis Project Sustainability
• EPISODE – European Produced Sustainable Sodium-Ion Batteries for Stationary Applications
• Cluster of Excellence POLiS II (Post Lithium Storage)
• Generative AI and changing human behavior
• Helmholtz platform for the design of robust energy systems and their supply chains, phase II (RESUR II)
• URBORETUM – Inter- and transdisciplinary measures to reduce tree mortality for preserving ecosystem services in cities in the face of increasing drought, heat stress, and urbanization
• Long-term governance: Conceptual and empirical development of governance from a long-term perspective
• Multi-criteria decision analysis for sustainability assessment of energy technologies
• Sustainability assessment of research on systems and technologies – integrative and transdisciplinary (NaBIT)
• Changing politics through generative AI
• Protecting the privacy and other citizens’ rights from misuse through deepfakes (DEEP-PRISMA)
• Speckle Technology and Digital Biomarkers of Microvascular Function for Monitoring Cardiovascular Diseases (STIMULUS)
• How is generative AI changing knowledge production?

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