Dr Danail Hristozov (EMERGE) on SUNRISE and its novel Integrated Impact Assessment Framework (IIAA)

Could you please tell us a bit about yourself?

Dr Danail Hristozov (Founder and Scientific Director of EMERGE Ltd)

I am the founder and scientific director of EMERGE Ltd in Bulgaria and co-founder and Head of Research of Greendecision Srl. When nanosafety started as a field nearly 20 years ago, I was graduating from the Brandenburg University of Technology in Germany, working part-time at the Chair of Industrial Sustainability and writing a master thesis on the risks of engineered nanomaterials. Then, I did my PhD on the same topic at University Ca’ Foscari of Venice in Italy, where curiously on the day of my PhD exam I submitted to the European Commission the proposal for the SUN project, which was later awarded more than 10 million euro for research into the safety and sustainability of engineered nanomaterials. This was one of the first projects focusing on Safe and Sustainable by Design (or SSbD) of emerging materials, long before the SSbD term even existed.

So, from a PhD student, I immediately became a coordinator of a large EU project with more than 35 partners, which was quite a challenge at the time. Then, after SUN came SUNSHINE and SUNRISE, which are the projects I am currently coordinating. In the meantime, I have been involved in more than 20 other EU projects performing integrative research across the areas of risk governance and sustainability of chemicals and emerging materials (nanomaterials, biomaterials, advanced materials) used in industrial settings, consumer products and in medical applications. In these projects I have always tried to provide constructive contribution to advancing the chemicals and materials risk assessment, decision analysis and nano-informatics research areas. In doing so, I did not constrain myself to Europe but travelled to USA and China where I spent extended periods at the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the Chinese Academy of Science during my time as a senior scientist at the Department of Environmental Science, Informatics and Statistics of Ca’ Foscari University (Venice, IT).

Could you describe your role in the SUNRISE project?

I created SUNRISE with substantial contribution from a core team of experts, who are now the Work Package leaders, and I am acting as the scientific coordinator of the project. In terms of contribution to the research objectives, I am directly involved in developing the Integrated Impact Assessment Framework, which is the main goal of SUNRISE. This involves the co-creation of a tiered approach for health, environmental, social and economic impact assessment in close collaboration with stakeholders, always balancing technical indicators with safety and sustainability trade-offs.

“We believe that the definition and integration of safety and sustainability criteria and indicators to support SSbD decision making cannot be a technocratic task; therefore, we will involve key actors along entire value chains in a co-creative process that balances the perspectives and interests of stakeholders from industry (including SMEs), regulation, policy, consultants, academia, and the civil society.”

Can you provide an overview of the SUNRISE Project’s innovative concept Integrated Impact Assessment Framework (IIAF), and describe how SUNRISE will tackle the existing challenges within Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) and Advanced Materials (AdMa) sectors by developing a comprehensive approach as such?

The advanced materials are among those enabling technologies that could effectively support the transition towards more sustainable innovation in a broad range of sector, but due to their emerging and complex nature it has been challenging to assess their safety and sustainability impacts, and even more so to do this in an integrated manner. SUNRISE strives to address this challenge by developing the overarching Integrated impact assessment framework, based on lifecycle thinking and designed to support SSbD decision making along supply chains of AdMa and their products.

The IIAF will be a 3-tiered approach with each tier corresponding to an integrated methodology (supported by a toolbox) for health, environmental, social and economic impact assessment targeting different groups of users at different stages of the innovation process and requiring a different level of data and expertise. We believe that the definition and integration of safety and sustainability criteria and indicators to support SSbD decision making cannot be a technocratic task; therefore, we will involve key actors along entire value chains in a co-creative process that balances the perspectives and interests of stakeholders from industry (including SMEs), regulation, policy, consultants, academia, and the civil society.

To support generation of robust input data for the integrated methodologies we will develop and apply Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment (or the so called IATA), New Approach Methods (NAMs) as well as screening level and more advanced sustainability assessment tools based on Environmental Life Cycle Assessment, Social Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Costing, Cost-benefit Analysis, and Circularity Analysis.

The integrated impact assessment methodologies and the toolboxes of newly proposed methods will be thoroughly tested and demonstrated in case studies corresponding to AdMa provided by our industry partners. To facilitate its real-life implementation, we will deliver the integrated impact assessment framework as a user-friendly open web application and a guidance document.

Get to know EMERGE

To learn more about the role of EMERGE in SUNRISE, please click here.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact SUNRISE.