Aims

The heart of the research project is to continually survey, analyse and summarise the state of knowledge on the potential health and environmental risks of nanotechnology. For the first time in Austria, these important aspects of technology development will be subjected to a systematic scrutiny that goes beyond individual R&D projects, i.e. will be investigated on a meta level. At the same time, research gaps will be identified and differing assessments made transparent. This is what we call a risk radar, and will be the basis for a clearing house on questions of potential health and environmental risks. NanoTrust will be an information desk and promoter of discussion: A kind of service point will be established for the general public, the administration and the nano research community to raise questions regarding the assessment of security issues.

NanoTrust will …

… be the Austrian clearing house for questions of how we deal with the potential health and environmental risk of nano technologies, accessible by citizens and the administration, the political sector and the research community;

… network with the core national and international actors and hence form an information platform;

… build up an encompassing, annotated bibliographic database on potential environmental and health risks and risk governance, which will be made publicly available via the Internet (more);

… elaborate dossiers on “hot topics” in the national and international discussion on the risks of nano technologies; these dossiers will address the general public, administration and the research community (more);

… establish a link collection on the Internet, which will provide quick and structured access to core actors and activities in the field of nano technologies (more - German only);

… provide a German glossary (more - German only) and an FAQ database (more - German only) relating in particular to Austria, i.e. answers to frequently asked questions;

… organise regular workshops and conferences on special topics such as communication on nano technologies or on open questions of risk assessment;

… identify important open issues of risk assessment and

… contribute to the research on nanotechnology by means of its own contributions from a technology assessment perspective.