MORE-PE 'Mobilising Resources for Public Engagement' aims to examine how research institutions are engaging society. The ultimate goal is to develop indicators for assessing public engagement at the institutional level. In particular, the project aims to assemble a global database of comparable data on the culture of public engagement at academic institutions, and includes collaborators in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. The team conducted national studies in Portugal, UK, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, the US, Brazil, Japan, and China, applying a questionnaire survey to a representative sample of research institutions in each country. The project brings together a team experienced in methodologies and large scale nationally and internationally representative sample surveys applied to PUS and team members in each member country. The project, coordinated by Marta Entradas (PI), is funded by the national research agency FCT (170.000 euros) (ref: PTDC/IVC-COM/0290/2014).

Project goals:Political decisions are risky. They are often made in a context of uncertainty, time constraints, multiple pressures and economic restrictions. Decisions in (or involving) S&T routinely carry even more problems: potentially large negative impacts, insufficient or inappropriate information, public fears, ethical issues, and environmental impacts, among others. However, S&T is playing an increasingly important role in political decisions and the importance of S&T in the economic development of nations is now unquestionable. Specifically, we propose to generate and analyze a large number of data sets, either from traditional library research and questionnaires or from state-of-the-art sentiment analysis and other text mining techniques. We will focus of the case of the Influenza (from research on flu viruses to epidemic control) and our hypothesis is that a better understanding of the risks, the fears and the external pressures can provide legislators with a more complete framework when devising new laws. Essentially, we expect to be able to evaluate how appropriate the current European S&T risk legislation is and, given the results we will obtain from our large data sets’ analyses, we will propose specific and directed guidelines to be followed by legislators. These will include recommendations on how better to use the social media not only to transmit information, but also to collect it.

In recent times the world witnessed dramatic changes in the ways personal data are accessed, processed and used. Personal data are a key asset of the information economy. The amount and variety of personal information in administrations’ databases and systems also escalated. At the same time, the general public became increasingly aware of the related risks for both individuals and society. Normative issues thereby arose about how to define the correct balance between the interests and values at stake, a tension first addressed by the Data Protection Directive - DPD (1995). Later on, a number of measures as part of the EU Space for Freedom, Security and Justice raised mounting concerns about their bearing on privacy and individual freedoms, namely: new information systems for control of individuals’ movements within the EU and across its borders, identity cards containing biometrical data, and the Data Retention Directive. The need to reassess the DPD was therefore acknowledged. This call emerged whilst the Charter of Fundamental Rights entered into force (2010). A challenging theoretical target for this project thus was to critically analyse the principles, rights and guarantees contained in the EU data protection law and under the Space of Freedom, Security and Justice and to proceed to an evaluation of the underlying balancing of values and rights in the light of the Charter. A complementary goal was to deepen our understanding of the related social values. Designing and applying a questionnaire survey to a quota sample of Portuguese respondents pursued this goal.

This project is meant to explore decision making devices (instruments and procedures) and their role in dealing with conflicts between (incommensurable) values as they arise in the process of public decision-making concerning the sustainability of projects with major impact on environment. With the European Union Directive 2001/42/EC the assessment procedure known as Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) became a major instrument for implementing sustainable territorial development policies in the EU. Public decision is thus called to translate into practice the goal of territorial sustainable development - a guiding principle of public action that requires the composition of different and often contrasting definitions concerning desirable common goods to pursue. However, the way in which this composition may be achieved leaves room for controversies and varied, context-dependent, arrangements. The project combines two different but interwoven explorations. The first is meant to analyse the translation of monistic and pluralistic approaches into “devices of decision” (cost-benefit analysis; integrated and multicriteria approaches). The second axis is devoted to the observation of how these devices have been enacted in controversies concerning large infrastructural projects, specifically: the decision on the location of the new Lisbon airport, the decision of the construction of the Tua dam and the decision on the extension of Milan airport.