This means attention to the needs of the present without compromising those of future generations with regard to all aspects: technological, economic, social, environmental, etc. The resulting applications pertain not only to products and industrial manufacturing, but also to social policies, the managing of every type of organisation, construction and land management, and public services, not to mention artistic and recreational aspects: that is, having reference as a whole both to creative and destructive capabilities of human beings.
Alongside this unifying priority, as well as with achievements in a competitive system to capture a significant proportion of international and national projects, SUPSI’s commitment to meeting the demands of the economy and of public authorities within its area of reference remains valid, with the performance of applied research and service across a broad spectrum of disciplines, especially from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Industry and energy consumption are sources of pollution, and the increasing consumption of resources threatens to exhaust them. The environmental issue is classically associated with the state of the environmental matrices of atmosphere, geosphere, hydrospere and biosphere. Excluding the topic of atmosphere, which includes key indices of emissions and air quality, for all other issues it was decided to use two types of key indices, one oriented to the monitoring of the state of environmental matrices, and the other to issues related to the management of our natural heritage. SUPSI’s Department of Environment, Construction and Design is involved both in the promotion of the use of renewable energy in construction (the study of innovative technologies integrated with architecture in harmony with both the natural and urban environments) and in the use of sources of terrestrial heat and solar radiation (photovoltaic panels) as sources of renewable energy
Sustainable development is not limited to direct energy savings, but also touches on the conception and sustainable production of any product. As an example, The Department of Technology Innovation is participating in a major European project which has as its primary aim the complete re-design of the life cycle of the product and its process, with considerable savings in raw materials. The objective is to arrive at a completely recyclable product which is also based on non-polluting processes and which responds to the needs of the end user, thus giving Swiss and European industry competitive advantages in terms of technological innovation and sustainability.
The Department of Business and Social Sciences is widening sustainable development in economic and social domains. In the first case it concentrates on issues related to competitiveness, production and consumption. Indeed, some elements of the development of human and social capital contribute to systemic competitiveness, as well as other factors affecting the market.
In the second domain, the social, issues such as fairness come together with problems connected to poverty and discrimination, the question of employment, knowledge, and with aspects connected to company training and the conditions which determine population growth. The themes which define sustainability in the social domain are derived from large conceptual trends of global debate, among them the category of fairness.
The Department of Health Sciences deals with developing and expanding issues pertaining to quality of life and investment in health. Quality of life is seen as a wider concept of welfare and concerns each individual in a specific social context. One definition by OMS from 1948 states: “Quality of life is the subjective perception which an individual has of his/her own position in life, within the context of a culture and a set of values in which he/she lives, also in relation to his/her goals, expectations and concerns”. In a more pragmatic and operational way, quality of life can be described as a series of areas or dimensions of human experience which concern not only physical conditions, but also the ability of an individual to function, from a social and psychological point of view, and to derive satisfaction from reality, both in relation to their expectations and their ability to achieve what they want.