• Develop a model which people and organisations can question, or interrogate existing data to find out what is required if a community wants to achieve sustainability.
• Model will be based upon a virtual community.
• Once developed the model will be piloted within one community - this will lead to further development of the framework.

This project aims to provide an innovative and interactive approach to identifying skills and training needs to build effective sustainable communities.

While a lot has been written and said about the needs of skills for individuals and organisations to pursue community-based sustainability objectives there is less work that has been done on the theoretical and applied modelling approach.

The project aims to develop a model by which people and organisations within communities can question, or interrogate existing data (and individuals), to find out what is needed if a community wants to make progress in developing specific issue-related activities in a sustainable way.

The research is located within the context of sustainable consumption, as it is consumption activities that colour much of the lives of individuals and communities. The recent study by Arnold Tukker at TNO and others on the environmental impacts of products and consumption (EIPRO) provides four areas of possible activity that form the basis of the issues in this research:

• Food
• Energy
• Transport
• The home

The research will develop a model of a virtual community built from identifying key characteristics and sustainability-related issues and concerns in English communities.

Using the virtual model will allow the highlighting of a range of issues that many communities are likely to consider important:

• Traffic congestion
• Health and well being
• Healthy diets
• Efficient energy use
• Waste management

The project will develop a large number of case studies that relate to these issues - some of the data is already available - some will be new case studies. These case studies will provide information about skills and training requirements, education and knowledge transfer needs.

In addition, stakeholder interviews will be carried out with community-based individuals and organisations, policy-makers and others to gather further opinion about such needs.

A framework of interrogation will then be developed, or an interrogative model, that will include tools for interrogation - questions, skills identification sheets, barrier analysis*, gap analysis and so on. The input of community practitioners and others will be sought to develop the most effective and relevant approaches.

Once developed the model will be piloted on one selected community who will use it to find out:

• What their current patterns of sustainability are in relation to any given issue (eg local traffic management).
• What their needs are in terms of engagement, leadership and the breaking down of barriers to change.
• What their future demands and objectives are likely to be in relation to the issue.
• What skills, training, education and knowledge transfer are needed at each point - ie engagement, leadership and response to demand.

The pilot will allow community individuals and organisations to interrogate existing data and individuals and to process the results leading them to the development of a framework for change that identifies gaps and needs, and offers some possible interventions to address these.

The results of the research will be evaluated and then the research team will produce a guidance for communities publication that provides all the framework details, tools and techniques and the case studies, academic journal papers, policy briefings and media outputs and a final project report.

In addition, research network activities will be supported through the development of a website, seminars and interaction with other networks.

*barrier analysis/gap analysis: comparing the data that exist (suitability and availability) against the data that are needed to make a map, in order to identify the scope and nature of missing data (gaps) that will have to be collected by surveys or derived through modelling. The gap analysis should summarise the gaps and/or inadequacies of existing data.    

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