Support to innovators How you can improve your innovation’s social and technical readiness:

The BRIGAID’s testing and implementation framework (TIF)

The purpose of BRIGAID’s Testing and Implementation Framework (TIF) is to provide innovators with guidelines and tools for evaluating the socio-technical effectiveness of an innovation in terms of its ability to reduce risks from floods, droughts, or extreme weather in an operational environment, and guidelines for assessing an innovation’s impact across various geographic scales and socio-economic and environmental sectors.

An attractive component of the TIF is the Self Assessment Tool, designed to help innovators identify possible societal, technical, environmental and sectoral concerns that their innovations may raise early on – and iteratively throughout the development – so that they may modify their designs and not become locked into those that are less likely to appeal to end users.

The Tool should be applied at three ‘stage-gates’ – critical points in development at which innovators should pause to identify and address social, technical, environmental and sectoral concerns.

How does the Tool work?

The self-assessment consists of twenty (20) questions related to societal acceptance, nineteen (19) questions related to technical design, twenty-one (21) questions related to environmental impacts, and twenty-four (24) questions related to sectoral impacts. The results and recommendations are summarized in a chart as shown below.