The SOURCE Network of Excellence on societal security organized a sector survey meeting with high-ranking experts from different fields at the VUB on 5 June 2014. About 20 invited representatives from different professions and institutions, including partners of the SOURCE consortium discussed a number of security problems and solutions, following a structured approach of decision support for security solutions, based on the DESSI method.
Working on two scenarios (security in public transport and migration into the EU across the Mediterranean Sea) industry representatives, researchers, policy makers, civil society representatives and end users analysed a number of options, bringing their sector-specific expertise into the discussion.
Applying this innovative approach to the solution of security problems
yielded a number of highly relevant insights. Given a specific security
problem, the potential and limits of technological solutions could be
demonstrated. At the same time the discussion clearly showed the need
for an elaborate concept of societal security: A number of seemingly
well-defined security problems can be decomposed into underlying
societal problems. Experts from security research and security
technology development agreed that a comprehensive policy strategy is
required to tackle problems that do not have a technological or
administrative solution. Finally it became clear that although
technology can provide solutions meeting the standards of
data-protection and privacy legislation there are nonetheless a number
of side effects in the long run that should be considered when
approaching security problems with technology based solutions.
The chosen format of this meeting produced lively discussions and
demonstrated how mutual learning effects can be achieved when bringing
together representatives from different fields and backgrounds. The
cognitive and normative limitations, shaped by different professional
and institutional affiliations became clearly visible and mutually
understandable, clearly demonstrating that decisions about solutions for
security problems require a multi-professional and inter-institutional
discourse.
The results of this Sector Survey meeting will be refined and validated
by a survey of representatives from the involved sectors (end-users,
research, policy makers, industry, civil society).
A final report of the Sector Survey meeting and the results from the
survey will be available soon on the Source web portal under www.societalsecurity.net
