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Strategic Environmental Assessment aims to incorporate environmental and sustainability considerations into strategic decision making processes, such as the formulation of policies, plans and programmes. In order to be effective, the assessment must take the real decision making process as the departure point. Existing SEA approaches are frequently tailored after an EIA model conceived from a rational perspective on decision making. However, there are good reasons to assume that most strategic decision making processes are characterised by a bounded rationality. Furthermore, the predictability of environmental consequences generally becomes weaker at strategic levels than at the project level and complexity increases in terms of the numbers of actors involved in the decision. This paper examines various theoretical perspectives to decision making and discusses the implications for decision support in general and SEA in particular. The authors argue that the design of the SEA must be more sensitive to the real characteristics of the decision making context.

This chapter focuses on applying bibliometric analysis and text mining technique to generate technology intelligence from publication databases. The intelligence represents the research profile and landscape by highlighting active research areas and revealing professional communities along with their social networks. Professional communities are both hidden and promoted. In developing countries, such as Thailand in particular, the number of experts in science and technology is quite limited. The mobility of talent between academia, government, and industry is therefore essential for knowledge transfer and technology diffusion. The main challenge is how to identify the potential groups of experts leading to future research collaboration. In this chapter, the case analysis of two emerging research areas in Thailand are presented; Biomedical Engineering (BME) and Data Science. The findings are used as key inputs for the development of effective policies and incentives to promote the research activities as well as research collaboration among different groups of experts.

Strategic Environmental Assessment aims to incorporate environmental and sustainability considerations into strategic decision making processes, such as the formulation of policies, plans and programmes. In order to be effective, the assessment must take the real decision making process as the departure point. Existing SEA approaches are frequently tailored after an EIA model conceived from a rational perspective on decision making. However, there are good reasons to assume that most strategic decision making processes are characterised by a bounded rationality. Furthermore, the predictability of environmental consequences generally becomes weaker at strategic levels than at the project level and complexity increases in terms of the numbers of actors involved in the decision. This paper examines various theoretical perspectives to decision making and discusses the implications for decision support in general and SEA in particular. The authors argue that the design of the SEA must be more sensitive to the real characteristics of the decision making context.