Framework in development · Foundational Design Charter Draft 0.9 · Public reviewRead the Charter
Framework
A common basis for judgement, action and learning.
The Framework sets out what is examined when industry and technology change, what commitments are expected, which evidence routes are acceptable, and where judgement must stop. The Framework and its assessment methodology remain in development; Charter Draft 0.9 is the foundation on which they are being developed.
Framework 2.0 · in developmentCharter Draft 0.9 · public review
Definition
Industry 5.0 places technology within human, social and ecological purpose.
i5Benchmark makes that relationship actionable, verifiable and open to challenge. Each application examines a declared subject within a defined scope.
What it produces is an examinable account: the value created, how benefit and risk are distributed, the evidence behind each claim, and who is responsible for improvement.
Concept illustration of the five operational domains.
W1
What it examines
Outcomes as experienced by affected people, environmental burden against a stated boundary, and continuity under disruption.
W2
What it requires
Declared scope and period, evidence with provenance, named responsibility, and visible limitations.
W3
How findings are qualified
Each finding states its scope, supporting evidence, review status and material limitations.
Charter overview
The Charter binds the Framework’s own development.
A framework that examines accountability must itself be accountable. The Charter states what the Framework may claim, which judgements it may not make, and how disagreement is recorded rather than resolved silently. It is published for public review, and the commitments below are the Charter’s own.
Foundational Design Charter
Industry 5.0 Benchmark Framework
Draft 0.9 · 5 September 2026 · Public review
Developed by Sustainable Intelligence ASBL and SUSTIN C.I.C.
Framework Version 2.0 · Charter Draft 0.9 · 5 September 2026
The Charter establishes the stable foundational baseline of the Industry 5.0 Benchmark Framework: why the Framework exists, the values and boundaries it must preserve, its domain architecture, and the methodological commitments that all later specifications, requirements, implementation profiles, assessments and digital services must follow.
It is principle-level by design. Technology-specific controls, indicators, thresholds and scoring rules are deliberately excluded from the constitutional baseline and maintained in separately governed and versioned instruments. Draft 0.9 denotes a mature pre-adoption charter, not the maturity of the initiative as a whole.
Formal definition
i5Benchmark is a global consensus and verification framework for human-centred industrial transformation. It discovers shared values through diverse cultural traditions and the lived experience of affected people, translates them into actionable and verifiable commitments interoperable with international standards, and examines whether the value created by technology and industry genuinely and fairly benefits people, society and the planet.
3 · Core principles
Seven foundational commitments, as stated in the Charter.
EU leadership
Acknowledge the European Union’s policy leadership and strengthen the practical and global reach of its Industry 5.0 vision.
Human benefit
Judge transition from the rights, dignity, health, agency, capabilities and lived experience of affected people—not from technological novelty alone.
Shared value
Examine who receives the value created, who bears costs and risks, and whether concentrated or exclusionary outcomes are corrected.
Evidence traceability
Connect every material claim and judgement to identifiable sources, provenance, scope, time and version.
Local legitimacy
Make requirements locally intelligible and contextually relevant, with affected people participating in interpretation and validation.
Independent judgement
Keep organisational claims distinct from evidence and findings, preserve dissent, and provide challenge, correction and remedy.
Continuous improvement
Translate findings into owned actions, test effectiveness and renew commitments as conditions and evidence change.
5 · Five-domain assessment baseline
Three Core Domains define the primary outcome conditions of an Industry 5.0 transition. Two Enabling Domains provide the means to implement, govern and verify those outcomes.
Human Experience Core
What do affected people experience in practice, and are rights, health, safety, dignity, agency, inclusion, capabilities and opportunity demonstrably improved?
Sustainable Practices Core
Do operations and value chains reduce environmental burdens, respect ecological limits and move towards circular, restorative or regenerative practice?
Resilience & Adaptability Core
Can critical functions persist, recover, learn and adjust to disruption and long-term change without transferring unacceptable costs or vulnerability?
Responsible Innovation Enabling
Is a new or materially changed technology or arrangement necessary, responsibly selected, designed, tested and supported by the capabilities, resources and operations required for beneficial use?
Accountability Enabling
Who answers for decisions, claims, impacts and value distribution, and how can affected parties obtain explanation, scrutiny, correction and remedy?
Every assessed matter shall have one clear primary home, an identifiable evidence route and an independent judgement. Related domains may be linked, but the same achievement shall not be counted repeatedly and strength in one domain shall not erase a material failure in another.
6 · Cultural grounding and contextual legitimacy
A Cultural Grounding & Contextual Legitimacy Layer applies across all five domains. Five horizontal tests are applied to every requirement.
Local intelligibility
Can affected people understand the requirement through their own language and experience?
Contextual relevance
Does it respond to actual ways of living and producing, and to local social and ecological conditions?
Participatory legitimacy
Did local people help interpret and shape its application rather than merely receive an external framework?
Rights compatibility
Does the interpretation remain within fundamental rights, safety and non-discrimination safeguards?
Knowledge provenance
Whose knowledge, thought and data are used, and who may interpret, use and communicate them?
6.1 · Consensus-to-verification cycle
1Discover common concerns
2Form contextual consensus
3Translate into commitments
4Act and distribute value
5Evidence and judge
6Incentivise, remedy and renew
8 · Four-source reference architecture
The first two layers establish normative and technical credibility; the latter two establish cultural intelligibility and contextual legitimacy. Together they prevent both ungrounded local relativism and context-blind external prescription.
Normative Basis
International conventions, law, standards and policy establish non-negotiable rights, safety and environmental safeguards and support interoperability.
Empirical & Technical Basis
Research, data and professional methods support indicators, evidence design, causal reasoning and judgement rules.
Cultural Resonances
Classical thought, local traditions, literature and ethical traditions explain why a commitment has meaning in context and reveal possible common ground.
Lived & Local Validation
Affected workers, users, communities and knowledge holders test whether the interpretation is authentic, applicable and properly represented.
11 · Governed document and data suite
The Charter is the first instrument in a controlled suite. Separation between instruments protects the foundational baseline while allowing operational knowledge, requirements, mappings and evidence to evolve at the appropriate pace.
Foundational Design Charter
Definition, purpose, origin, principles, domain architecture, global boundaries and non-negotiable methodological commitments.
Framework Constitution
Stewardship, decision rights, adoption and amendment, independence, conflicts, appeals, recognition governance, profile approval and contribution rules.
Methodology Specifications
Consensus and cultural-grounding procedures; object schemas; evidence, causality, judgement, scoring, temporal and validation methods.
Requirement & Mapping Registry
Controlled modules, requirements, indicators, evidence rules, judgement rules, improvement routes, source records and edition-specific crosswalks.
Evidence & Rating Layer
Assessment-instance records, claim–evidence links, findings, actions, score snapshots, period ratings, reviewer provenance, audit history and user-facing outputs.
Charter structure
Twelve sections. This page is a Charter overview — a summary of the Charter's structure and commitments, not its full text. The complete Charter, including the full wording of every section and the selected foundation references, is the PDF linked below.
1
Function, scope and lineage
Establishes the stable foundational baseline: why the Framework exists, the values and boundaries it must preserve, its domain architecture, and the methodological commitments all later specifications must follow. The Charter is principle-level and keeps technology-specific controls, indicators, thresholds and scoring rules out of the constitutional baseline.
2
Origin, purpose and contribution
Grounds the Framework in the European Union’s Industry 5.0 vision, states its purpose of turning that vision into accountable practice, and describes its contribution as an independent, complementary implementation framework connecting EU policy leadership with international standards, local knowledge and evidence from practice.
3
Core principles
Seven foundational commitments: EU leadership, human benefit, shared value, evidence traceability, local legitimacy, independent judgement and continuous improvement.
4
Global Core, implementation profiles and collaboration
A common Global Core preserves the formal definition, principles, domain boundaries, evidence logic and judgement integrity required for global comparability. EU and UK Implementation are the first two profiles. Profiles may specify jurisdictional sources, evidence routes, terminology and contextual thresholds, but must not redefine the Global Core’s intended outcomes.
5
Five-domain assessment baseline
Three Core Domains define the primary outcome conditions; two Enabling Domains provide the means to implement, govern and verify them. Every assessed matter has one clear primary home, an identifiable evidence route and an independent judgement.
6
Consensus, cultural grounding and contextual legitimacy
Consensus is a method for cross-cultural adoption and stakeholder participation. It does not require unanimity and cannot override fundamental rights, safety, non-discrimination or ecological limits. A Cultural Grounding & Contextual Legitimacy Layer applies across all five domains.
7
Human-centred industrial transition and positive value
Technological progress constitutes human-centred progress only when its purpose can be commonly understood, its process meaningfully participated in, its results reasonably shared, its impacts independently verified, and harms corrected. The Framework is technology-open but not technology-indifferent.
8
Four-source reference architecture
Every governed requirement and indicator is developed through four source layers. The first two establish normative and technical credibility; the latter two establish cultural intelligibility and contextual legitimacy.
9
Methodological baseline and machine-readable chain
The authoring sequence runs from implementation module to requirement, indicator, evidence requirement, judgement rule and improvement action. The Framework preserves a complete, machine-readable chain of responsibility, claim, evidence, judgement, action and time.
10
Interoperability, evidence and controlled evolution
Evidence once, map many. Mappings are provision- and edition-specific. Each assessment freezes its requirement set, profile, evidence period and decision rules, so historical findings remain attached to the method used.
11
Governed document and data suite
The Charter is the first instrument in a controlled suite. Separation between instruments protects the foundational baseline while allowing requirements, mappings and evidence to evolve at their own pace.
12
Integrity, adoption and next development gate
Method transparency, competence and independence, stakeholder legitimacy, recognition discipline and improvement orientation. Charter Draft 0.9 records the proposed baseline for external review and formal adoption.
Charter Draft 0.9 records the proposed baseline for external review and formal adoption. On adoption, the Charter may be issued as Charter Version 1.0 while Framework 2.0 and downstream instruments retain their own controlled version histories. The next development gate is the Framework Constitution and Domain Boundary Specification, followed by the Methodology Specifications, Requirement & Mapping Registry, Evidence & Rating Layer, EU and UK profiles, bounded pilots and recognition protocols.
The Charter is the constitutional baseline. The Methodology Specifications, Requirement & Mapping Registry and Evidence & Rating Layer are being developed as supporting instruments.
Five Domains
Three domains of outcome. Two domains that make them governable.
Human Experience, Sustainable Practices and Resilience & Adaptability describe what industrial activity produces over time. They are the core domains.
Responsible Innovation and Accountability determine whether those outcomes can be examined, explained and improved. Without them, outcome claims cannot be verified or contested.
Core domains — outcomes01 — 03
Purpose
To establish what industrial activity actually produces for the people it affects, as they experience it, rather than as it is intended or reported.
Example evidence routes
Worker, user and community accounts gathered with protection against retaliation
Operational and incident records covering health, safety and psychosocial risk
Organisational documents on participation, accommodation and progression
Public information and inspection outcomes relevant to the declared scope
Purpose
To establish the environmental burden the declared subject creates, over which boundary it is measured, and what that boundary leaves out.
Example evidence routes
Measured resource, waste and emissions data with a stated measurement boundary
Procurement and design records relevant to material retention and recovery
Research on the relevant ecological limits for the activity and place
Public information, including regulatory filings and inspection outcomes
Purpose
To establish whether services continue, recover and adjust under disruption, and whether that is achieved without moving unacceptable risk onto others.
Example evidence routes
Dependency records for people, suppliers, systems and place-based infrastructure
Incident and recovery records showing demonstrated rather than documented capability
Accounts from workers, suppliers and affected communities during disruption
Research and public information on comparable disruption in the same context
Enabling domains — what makes the outcomes governable04 — 05
Purpose
To establish whether a change was necessary and responsibly introduced, so that outcome claims in the core domains can be attributed and examined. Artificial intelligence is examined here as one class of technology change among others.
Example evidence routes
Change approval records showing necessity, alternatives and scope of review
Pre-deployment testing for intended effect and foreseeable harm
Accounts from the people affected by the change, gathered before and after
Capability, resourcing and maintenance arrangements supporting the change
Purpose
To establish who answers for the result, whether affected people can obtain explanation and correction, and how benefit, cost and risk are distributed.
Example evidence routes
Named responsibility for material decisions, and whether it survives reorganisation
Concern, complaint and escalation records traced through to recorded remedy
Explanation given to affected people, including for data-assisted decisions
Records of value distribution, and who answers for it
Cross-cutting
Cultural Grounding & Contextual Legitimacy
local intelligibility
contextual relevance
participatory legitimacy
rights compatibility
knowledge provenance
A shared contextual layer across all five domains.
Cultural Grounding
Universal wording does not produce universal meaning.
A requirement can be technically correct and still unusable elsewhere, because the terms, institutions and evidence it assumes do not exist in that context. This layer treats that as a Framework requirement rather than a translation task.
A Global Core protects a common floor for rights, safety, dignity and accountability. Jurisdictional, sector and cultural profiles adapt language, evidence expectations and implementation routes without lowering that floor.
Local intelligibility
The requirement is expressed in terms people in the context can understand and apply, using institutions and concepts that exist there.
Contextual relevance
The requirement addresses a concern that is material in the context, rather than importing one that is material elsewhere.
Participatory legitimacy
Affected people had a route to influence how the requirement is interpreted and evidenced in their context.
Rights compatibility
Contextual adaptation does not reduce recognised rights, safety, dignity or accountability below the Global Core floor.
Knowledge provenance
The knowledge used to justify a requirement or its adaptation is attributed, dated and open to examination, including local and practitioner knowledge.
Profiles are in development for pilot testingImplementation profiles will connect the Charter’s principles with jurisdictional and sector contexts. Pilot protocols will state the proposed requirements, scope and evidence needs.
Method, Evidence & Judgement
Evidence has a source, a time and a point of view.
Each assessment is bound to a declared subject, scope, evidence period, implementation profile and Framework version. Organisational claims, source evidence, analytical findings and improvement actions remain visibly distinct.
Where sources disagree on the same scope and period, the disagreement is retained. An open contradiction constrains what may be concluded, and a finding that depends on the contradicted point is published with that dependency stated, or not published as a finding.
Common evidence forms
These are practical forms in which evidence may be supplied. They do not replace the four evidence foundations, and a single item may support more than one foundation.
Organisational documents
Policies, plans, board records, disclosures. Strong on intent and formal control; weak as proof of practice.
Operational and incident records
Measurement, logs, incident and complaint data. Strong on what happened; bounded by what is measured and recorded.
Public information
Regulatory filings, inspection outcomes, media, published research. Useful for triangulation; variable in scope and currency.
Research
Peer-reviewed and practitioner research relevant to the concern. Strong on mechanism; requires care in transferring findings to a specific subject.
Experience of affected people
Workers, users and communities. Necessary for outcomes as experienced; requires protection against retaliation and selection bias.
Evidence lineage
Source
Where the material came from — a document, a record, a published study or an account from an affected person. The origin, date and scope are recorded before anything is inferred from it.
Context
The jurisdiction, sector and cultural setting in which the source has meaning. A requirement that cannot be understood or evidenced in its context has not been met, however correct its wording.
Commitment
The specific commitment the source is being used to examine, with a named owner and an acceptable evidence route. Without this link, material is information rather than evidence.
Evidence
The item as it enters the assessment, retaining origin, date, scope, review status and relevant limitations. Where sources disagree on the same scope and period, the disagreement is retained.
Judgement
What an accountable person concluded, within declared boundaries. Where the evidence cannot support a conclusion, a limitation is recorded instead of a weaker finding.
Response
Explanation, named ownership, correction and remedy for the people affected — and a record of what actually reached them.
Update
What changed as a result, re-evidenced against the same declared basis. Method findings, including failures, return to the Framework version record.
Conditions for a supported judgement
J1
Findings identify the supporting evidence, review status and any unresolved limitations.
J2
Self-assessment and independent review are identified separately.
J3
External mappings record both correspondence and divergence; certification and compliance decisions remain with the responsible authority or scheme.
J4
Comparative outputs disclose their cohort, evidence period and inclusion rules.
Mappings support implementation without implying equivalence.
Most organisations already hold management systems, policies, disclosures and measurement relevant to i5Benchmark requirements. Controlled mappings help locate that material instead of duplicating it.
For each external source a mapping records correspondence and divergence in purpose, authority, scope and meaning. Certification or compliance decisions remain with the responsible authority or scheme.
M1
Coverage
What the external source actually covers, and what it does not.
M2
Correspondence
Which requirement the source can support, and how strongly.
M3
Divergence
Where purpose, authority, scope or definition differ in ways that affect interpretation.
M4
Evidence reuse
Which existing artefacts and measures can serve as evidence, and with what limitation.
Interoperability developmentThe mapping method is defined, with automated monitoring and mapping in development. Confirm source requirements against authorised standard publications.
Interoperability is being developed alongside the planned Sust.in evidence workspace for private organisational evidence and responses. Explore Sust.in ↗
Governance & Versions
Every assessment names the version in force.
Changes to requirements, evidence routes or judgement boundaries are versioned and recorded so earlier results remain interpretable. Two assessments are only comparable when subject type, scope, period, profile and version are compatible.
Sustainable Intelligence ASBL leads Framework development, research and methodology. SUSTIN C.I.C. leads technology development and practical implementation. Sustainable Intelligence ASBL is registered in Belgium; SUSTIN C.I.C. is registered in the United Kingdom.
A change to domain structure, requirement architecture, evidence routes or judgement boundaries. Results across a major version boundary are not directly comparable.
Minor version
Clarification, added guidance, or a new implementation profile that does not alter requirements. Earlier results remain interpretable.
Charter draft
A change to design commitments. Charter drafts are numbered separately and published for review before adoption.
Prototype configuration
A change to a demonstration configuration such as the Mapper question set. This never amends the Framework and is dated separately.
Development and document versions
Framework 2.0
In development. Five domains — three outcome domains and two enabling domains — with Cultural Grounding & Contextual Legitimacy as a cross-cutting layer. The requirement architecture and assessment methodology are being developed on the basis of Charter Draft 0.9.
Foundational Design Charter Draft 0.9
Published for public review. The foundation on which the Framework is being developed. Charter Draft 0.9 denotes a mature pre-adoption charter, not the maturity of the initiative as a whole.
Prototype Mapper Configuration — September 2026
Dated demonstration configuration for the i5 Readiness Mapper, maintained separately from Framework versions.
Implementation profiles
In development for pilot testing.
i5Index
In development as a governed coordinate system for eligible benchmark results.
Superseded structureThe earlier model of Human-centric Experience, Safety & Wellbeing, Accountability & Responsiveness, Sustainability and Resilience is superseded by Framework 2.0. Safety and wellbeing are now examined inside Human Experience. Material still using the earlier five dimensions should be read as historical.
