Sustainable Futures Co-research

In the Sustainable Futures co-research project VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) and University of Turku (Finland Futures Research Centre. FFRC) together with participating companies and cities, develop a data-driven impact model for assessing social sustainability and making visible the long-term value of solutions that promote sustainability. The project investigates and validates ways of utilizing the model in the context of urban living and the built environment. Project is linked to the KONE Veturi programme. The novelty value of the project is particularly the analysis of the value of the solutions from the perspectives of social sustainability and different stakeholders. A special focus is on the development of indicators of the social dimension of sustainability. The need to develop indicators to validate the value of social sustainability is broadly recognized in the companies nationally and globally.

The regulation is getting tighter and sustainability requirements are now trickling down to smaller companies as well. In the future, sustainability is basically a part of business development. In the cases, we find out what kind of information and data is needed to evaluate the social sustainability of products and services and thus to develop an overall sustainable business. The starting point is a strong future orientation and participatory co-development approaches, which are grounded in the change of urban lifestyle.

The result is the Social Sustainability evaluation concept, which helps both to make the value of the solution visible and to develop socially sustainable ones. The results provide capabilities to make sustainability an international competitive advantage for Finnish companies. The project is for two years and during that time the innovation ecosystem of the co-innovation project v/ill be designed, which will act as a catalyst for the development of international business opportunities, in the emerging "Smart Block" field.