Assessing the ability of rural agrarian areas to provide cultural ecosystem services (CES): A multi scale social indicator framework (MSIF)

Assessing the ways in which rural agrarian areas provide Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) is proving difficult to achieve. This research has developed an innovative methodological approach named as Multi Scale Indicator Framework (MSIF) for capturing the CES embedded into the rural agrarian areas. This framework reconciles a literature review with a transdisciplinary participatory workshop. Both of these sources reveal that societal preferences diverge upon judgemental criteria which in turn relate to different visual concepts that can be drawn from analyzing attributes, elements, features and characteristics of rural areas. We contend that it is now possible to list a group of possible multi scale indicators for stewardship, diversity and aesthetics. These results might also be of use for improving any existing European indicators frameworks by also including CES. This research carries major implications for policy at different levels of governance, as it makes possible to target and monitor policy instruments to the physical rural settings so that cultural dimensions are adequately considered. There is still work to be developed on regional specific values and thresholds for each criteria and its indicator set. In practical terms, by developing the conceptual design within a common framework as described in this paper, a considerable step forward toward the inclusion of the cultural dimension in European wide assessments can be made

Trandisciplinarity and Design: Comparative Review and Synthesis for the Design Process

Transdisciplinarity gained importance in the 1970s, with the initial signs of weakness of both multi- and interdisciplinary approaches. This weakness was felt due to the increased complexity in the social and technological landscapes. Generally, discussion over the transdisciplinary topic is centred in social and health sciences. Therefore, the major challenge in this research is to adapt design research to the emerging transdisciplinary discussion. Based on a comparative and critical review of several engineering and design models for the design process, we advocate the importance of collaboration and conceptualisation for these disciplines. Therefore, a transdisciplinary and conceptual cooperation between engineering and industrial design disciplines is considered as decisive to create breakthroughs. Furthermore, a synthesis is proposed, in order to foster the cooperation between engineering and industrial design.