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What we eat has big implications for our health, our society and the environment. Unhealthy and nutritionally poor diets lead to ill health. The current food system and people's food practices have negative impacts on the environment, leading to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and biodiversity loss. Addressing these complex challenges requires changing how food is produced to ensure it is more sustainable, and, importantly, changing consumption to ensure it is healthier and more sustainable. Therefore, understanding food consumption trends, what drives them and how we can change consumption practices through interventions is crucial to inform policy. The aim of this study commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was to provide an overview of the existing evidence in four main areas: (1) the trends related to consumer food practices and attitudes, and to the changing food environment (e.g. out-of-home sector, online retail models) in the UK; (2) the drivers of consumption (e.g. the role of information or food system actors); (3) interventions that can influence food consumption practices; and (3) the differences between groups, or 'food publics', across the trends, drivers and interventions (i.e. segmentation). Researchers conducted a rapid evidence assessment, with a focus on identification of existing evidence and evidence gaps within high-quality, primarily academic literature from the last ten years. This report provides evidence around these questions and identifies areas of uncertainty where more evidence is required and, based on this, suggests a number of priority areas for further research and action by policymakers.

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RAND Europe was commissioned by the Financial Conduct Authority to conduct a piece of forward-looking research to understand how the credit information market might evolve in the future. Using a structured scenario methodology and stakeholder consultation, this project identified the factors influencing change and developed four plausible future scenarios that provide insights into the implications for the credit information market, the lending markets, consumers and wider society. Four plausible future scenarios were identified for 2030. Widening credit gap: Innovation in new data sources and advanced analytics has slowed, meaning credit information has not continued becoming cheaper and more consumers have little or no information held about them at the CRAs. Consumer-centric credit: Consumers are empowered to choose which data they share and with whom. Whilst lending decisions are, in general, better informed, the reliance on consumer-consented data presents challenges. Some individuals also pay a 'privacy premium'. Big data driven: CRAs have become more sophisticated in using Big Data and advanced analytics to provide insights to a diverse range of customers. However, as credit is increasingly offered on personalised terms, some higher-risk individuals face significantly higher costs and fewer options for credit. Lenders lead: Lenders have led the way in using credit information from a wider range of sources, generating greater competition. However, confusion from consumers over how their data is collected has led to an increased focus within industry on developing a code for data collection and use, including factors like ethics and transparency.

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As a founding member of NATO, Norway supports efforts to enhance deterrence, crisis management and regional security in the North Atlantic and High North — a region commonly understood to include territories in Scandinavia and northern Russia, as well as the surrounding waters of the Arctic Ocean, Barents Sea and North Sea. To help ensure effective delivery of these tasks and inform ongoing strategy and policy development, Norway needs insight into other NATO Allies' perspectives on strategic opportunities and challenges in the region. Researchers from RAND Europe and the RAND Corporation combined a targeted document review with expert workshops and field visits to gather and analyse evidence in support of the Norwegian Ministry of Defence's (MOD) strategy development, planning and defence policy. Researchers examined the perspectives of defence officials from Denmark, France, Germany, the UK, the US and NATO institutions and this analysis fed into a summary of findings alongside five strategic options for the MOD to consider.

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The Research Council of Norway (RCN), the national funding agency for research and innovation (R&I) in Norway, has identified five 'strategic areas' in its current strategy (2020-2024): health and welfare; oceans; green transition; technology and digitalisation; and cohesion and globalisation. The RCN is focussing its priorities on delivering high-impact R&I within these areas. All five areas are intrinsically linked to societal challenges, both within and outside Norway. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact it has had on a global scale, has served as a stark reminder that these challenges need to be urgently addressed, not least to ensure that countries — and R&I systems — are better prepared for the future and to help build resilience. RAND Europe and DAMVAD Analytics conducted a foresight study to provide evidence for the RCN's input to the 2022 revision of the Long-Term Plan for Research and Higher Education 2019-2028, which specifies the Norwegian government's ambitions, key objectives and priority areas for research and higher education. The study specifically identified a set of priority missions or targeted policy actions for the next ten years that the RCN could consider implementing in the future, and potential structural measures needed to aid the development of a resilient R&I environment in Norway. The research team adopted a mixed-methods, participatory approach to the research involving a variety of data collection tools such as trend analyses, literature reviews, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, an online survey of the public, crowdsourcing ideas and information from experts, future scenario analyses and workshops. The research team produced nine publications, all of which are available for download above.