How to assess social impact in sustainable assessment of the technology-state of art

The development and implementation of new technologies can generate many effects for the economy, the quality of environment and human life. For that reason, when a decision about using new or developing already functioning technologies is made, the Sustainability Assessment of the Technology (SAT) should be carried out. The methodology of assessing social impacts is worst developed compared with assessment of economic and environmental impacts, so there is still need to find appropriate indicators and methods for measuring this kind of impacts. It should be stated that the SAT methods currently used take into account the assessment of social aspects, but the complexity of this assessment is various. For that reason, this article presents an overview of indicators, tools and methods used for evaluation of social impacts in the SAT. Then, an assessment of selected SAT methods has been conducted to indicate which of the SAT methods is the most comprehensive in relation to the social aspects in the final assessment.