SWOT Report I - Central Europe

0. SUMMARY
This report is the fifth output of the academic work group within the ReSOURCE project
(Project Output 3.3.1.): Strengths, weaknesses, options and threats (SWOT) of the mining
regions under investigation. It includes all 6 SWOT Analyses” of the participating regions in
ReSOURCE and an additional report from the associated Polish research partner on the
region of Wałbrzych. The reports were compiled by the responsible academic work group
partners. Also the document contains a “Combined SWOT Analysis”-chapter where common
findings across all 7 regions are discussed. Responsible partner for the overall coordination
(including concept development, discussion of contents, summary and combined analysis)
was the Leibniz Institute of Ecological and Regional Development (IOER) in Dresden.
This paper gives a short introduction of the framework and the aims of the first phase of the
SWOT Analysis and its place in the overall work programme of the ReSOURCE project. A
second phase will follow 2011 to assess the strategic approaches of the involved regions.
The document is structured in four parts:
The first one provides an overview of the general aims of the “SWOT I Report” and the
methodology behind the research approach. Also the general results of the analysis are
summarised, giving an indication of what this step of the research has achieved, especially in
terms of the general research agenda. The second part includes the seven single “SWOT I
Analyses”, which examine the SWOT results for each region along the guiding questions of
utilisation of potentials, local and regional management of potentials and framework
conditions. As a third part of the analysis the document contains a “Combined SWOT I
Analysis”. Based on the single SWOT reports, this chapter highlights common SWOT factors
valid in all case-study regions. In addition to this, a fourth part of the paper includes an annex
containing additional documentation on methodology, as well as comparative statistical data
analysis for all regions.
5