| As the pace of global competition increases, a country's competitiveness becomes of greater concern. Technology drives competitiveness and is a crucial factor for economic development in developed and developing economies. This poses a need for governments to be involved in supporting technology research and development in their countries. A government must not only provide support when an emerging technology is being considered, it should also nurture and guide its development. The effective national technology policies and strategies should go beyond merely identifying the critical technologies.;This research has developed a systematic and comprehensive approach for policy makers to strategically define the national technology policy for emerging technologies. A hierarchical decision model was built and expert opinions were quantified. There are four levels in the hierarchy: mission, objectives, technological goals, and research strategies.;This research has also demonstrated several approaches for the validation and analysis of results. The inconsistency measure, intraclass correlation coefficient, and statistical test for the reliability of the experts and group agreement were used for this purpose. Finally, HDM sensitivity analysis was used to study the robustness of the rankings, especially at the technology level. Change may be caused at this level when the national policies change, which is a relatively common occurrence.;The approach developed in this research was applied to the assessment of nanotechnologies for Thailand's agriculture. The seven nanotechnologies such as nanosensors, nanodevices for identity preservation and historical tracking, novel tools, smart treatment delivery system, nanomaterials, nanoparticles, and agro-environment were assessed and evaluated with respect to the national mission, "Be the world leader in developing a sustainable food and agricultural-based economy." According to the experts, the top three nanotechnologies supporting Thailand's agricultural development are novel tools (26%), smart treatment delivery systems (24%), and nanosensors (23%). Research strategies supporting specific nanotechnologies were also identified and evaluated. As a result, a ranking of research strategies according to theirs contributions to the overall mission was developed. |
