ICSA-DIAS

DIAS – Data, Indicators and Analysis for Sustainability

Group coordinator:

Corrado Crocetta, Università degli studi di Bari

Members of the Council:

Leonardo Salvatore Alaimo (Vice coordinator), Sapienza Università di Roma
Enrico Ivaldi (Secretary), Università IULM
Maria Teresa Ciommi, Università Politecnica delle Marche
Enrico Di Bella, Università degli studi di Genova
Maria Gabriella Grassia, Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II
Filomena Maggino, Sapienza Università di Roma
Venera Tomaselli, Università degli studi di Catania
Emma Zavarrone, Università IULM

Scientific objectives of the Group:

The concept of sustainability has, in recent years, attracted growing interest from both the public and policy makers, as a result of increased awareness of the planet’s finite resources and the pressing need to preserve the quality of natural heritage. The aim has been to promote socio-economic development models that are more balanced than those adopted in the past.
In the scientific field, sustainability has been—and still is—a subject of extensive debate.

Over time, it has become increasingly evident that the concept of sustainability remains purely theoretical if it is not linked to a specific context, process, or goal.
Recent global events and phenomena have highlighted how the fragility and unsustainability shown by many countries were closely tied to their failure to prioritize people’s well-being. By not placing systemic well-being at the center of decision-making, these countries reached such a level of fragility that they found themselves in a state of true emergency. In other words, the sustainability of a country (or even of an individual) is closely connected to the level of systemic well-being. More precisely, sustainability is a means of achieving such well-being.

Ultimately, sustainability represents a paradigm that enables us to observe, analyze, predict, and govern while respecting the complexity of reality.

It follows that the approach to sustainability must inevitably be multidisciplinary, combining various domains of reality—environment, economy, social networks, health, and so on—and orienting them all toward well-being. Since it is closely linked to well-being, sustainability depends on the values of a society and of the individuals who compose it.

This conclusion calls for a new culture of complexity that leads to new approaches—both in governance and in analysis—that, through continuous monitoring, make it possible to identify the areas, groups, and sectors of a country’s life that exhibit such high levels of fragility (or lack of well-being) that their unsustainability becomes evident.

Conceptually, therefore, sustainability defines the future dimension of well-being, requiring a complex process of knowledge that integrates different disciplines and bodies of expertise.

Given these premises, the analysis of sustainability requires the definition of data, the construction of indicators, a systemic approach to monitoring, and the selection and use of analytical methods that ensure the translation of reality—essential for understanding it—into the language of numbers in a meaningful and necessary way. The analysis of this complex reality calls for the adoption of a systemic and multidimensional approach.

The objective of the reflections to be undertaken within this group will be to stimulate discussion and the development of suitable analytical approaches for studying complexity through the use of appropriate data, the adoption of methodologies capable of creating and analyzing indicators aimed at understanding and assessing the imbalances and deficiencies that, if prolonged over time, render a system unsustainable.