Needs Assessment and Prioritizing Environmental Research (Case Study: Environmental Research Institute and Sustainable Development)

Improving the quality and status of country’s environment through targeted research management is one of the most important goals of the research centers in this field. In this regard, administration and prioritizing the environmental research can play a significant role in achieving this goal. This paper uses the collected data from a research project called "Needs Assessment and Prioritization of the Research Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development", a systematic approach to identifying the research priorities. This process is based on five principles. These principles include beneficiaries participation, status analysis and needs assessment, identification of research bases, scoring the research bases, based on feasibility and attractiveness criterions and prioritization based on the highest agreement rates at the research institute (the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development). The experts participating in this project were, 16.66% from Environmental Research Institute, 15.15% from department of Water and Soil, 13.63% from county departments, 9.09% from department of Marine Ecosystems, 54.4% from faculty members of universities and the rest of them, from the Environmental Protection Agency. In total, there are 346 research bases, 28 titles in ecology; 5 titles in science; 41 titles in environmental engineering and technology; 44 titles in environmental economics; 31 titles in environmental law; 108 titles in environmental management; 26 titles in natural science; 22 titles in social systems; 27 titles in Biological Safety and 14 titles in Environmental Technology. These research bases were analyzed by the experts and the most important research priorities were identified.