Labs as experimentation spaces for policy testing

The FUTURESILIENCE project closed its first year with multiple achievements, signalling a momentous step towards building societal resilience. In a year filled of excitement and dedicated efforts, our partners have laid the groundwork for impactful initiatives set to unfold in 2024. 

The consortium developed a Knowledge Base with over 600 policy documents stemming R&I findings that tackle multiple areas contributing to strengthen societal resilience such as housing, labour market, health, energy, climate, etc. The team also prepared a toolbox that supports policy and decision makers to set up a participatory process that underpins future oriented policies for societal resilience. It includes process tools, based on Foresight techniques, policy tools supporting the use of evidence for policymaking and several thematic tools to support the analysis for and design of policies for resilience.

February 1, 2024, marks another achievement for the project with the kick-off of its experimentation phase – the consortium proposed approach for policy testing. The project is supporting ten FUTURESILIENCE Labs that will focus on developing evidence-based policies for societal resilience and future preparedness. Three of them were part of the consortium and already working on the first phase of the labs (framing the problem and engaging with local stakeholders).  Additional 7 cases were selected through a competitive open call for which the project received 45 applications from all over Europe.

Our 10 labs will focus multiple topics that touches upon one or more challenges linked to societal resilience: 

• Migration (Chios Lab, Greece)

• Climate change (Murcia Lab, Spain)

• Healthcare system (BAPEMED Lab, Bulgaria)

• Floods and use of ICT to coordinate volunteer work during emergencies (TIMES Lab, Italy)

• Labour market and skills gap (FICTIONS Lab, Portugal)

• Cybersecurity (SCRL Lab, Slovenia)

• Governance of land planning (MULTILOCAL Lab, Estonia)

• Social conflicts (COSIGHT Lab, Germany)

• Mobility and energy (IMMER Lab, Germany and France) 

• Access to housing market (LiquidHousing Lab, Spain)

The Labs will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of policymaking for resilience, by working with Foresight and testing policies from the Knowledge Base to address pressing challenges and implementing agent-based modelling to analyse barriers for policy uptake and implementation. Labs will be mentored by experts from the consortium, including both thematic and foresight partners to guide the implementation process.

Press Release #2