The proposal depart on the hypothesis, based on numerous scientific precedents, that the development of the Information Society in Households and Individuals (ICT-H) generates impacts in all areas of sustainable development, social, cultural, economic and ecological, with ICT being a binding element of all these dimensions. However, a number of shortcomings and limitations have been identified in the studies for Europe. In particular, there has been no in-depth study of: the evolution of the contribution of ICT-H to sustainable development achievements at different territorial scales (country, region, province); the identification of the multiple factors associated with the geographical, socio-economic and political characteristics of each spatial scale; and the territorial disparities resulting from the relationship between ICT-H and sustainable development in Europe.

In this sense, the project aims to study the evolution of ICT-H and its effect on progress in sustainable development in European countries (NUTS0), their regions (NUTS2) and Spanish provinces (NUTS3) from 2011 to date by means of a comparative spatial-temporal and multi-scale analysis. In order to achieve this objective, it is proposed to: i) Define, construct and validate the spatial-temporal theoretical models of the effects of ICT-H in the transition towards sustainable development at different spatial scales; ii) Verify these models at different scales in order to measure the spatial disparity and identify the different behaviours in the effects of ICT-H on sustainable development; and iii) Analyse the role played by the hierarchical and functional dependence between the scales in the effects of ICT-H on sustainable development.

In order to achieve these objectives, data from the homogenized official statistical series provided by Eurostat and INE at the regional, national and international levels on ICT-H and sustainable development are available. With this information, own databases will be built to carry out different multivariate and geospatial analyses with GIS.