atlas ↗Six design rules and ten ORRI principles, read on four levels.
SYFERS is the research and documentation framework of the Syntrociety federation. A Lab reads its own practice against sixteen conditions and places itself on each one: absent, emerging, established or embedded. Every Lab works from the same written definitions, so a placement means the same wherever it is made, and a Lab can follow its own changes over the years.
i. What it covers
SYFERS describes the conditions under which a regenerative Lab holds together over time: how it decides, how value moves, how it grows, how it learns, and how it works with government, research and business. It names sixteen of them. Six are design rules taken from how living systems work, set out in Heal the System (April 2026). Ten are the ORRI principles as defined by REINFORCING, a Horizon Europe project on responsible research and innovation (grant agreement 101094435).
The conditions span three areas: ecological regeneration, social and relational governance, and economic and learning activities. The physical state of a site (water security, soil-building potential, land tenure) is not among the sixteen. It belongs in a separate site assessment with measured thresholds.
ii. Six design rules
Each rule comes with one line that says what it asks. Three are marked structural: a low level on one of them threatens the whole Lab, however strong it is elsewhere, and a high total does not make up for it.
- Diversity first. Every element serves multiple functions.
- Circulation over accumulation. Structural. Value that stops moving kills the system.
- Succession, not imposition. Build conditions for the next stage.
- Soil before harvest. Invest in relationships before productivity.
- Feedback over control. Structural. Conflict is information. Documentation is memory.
- Scale follows rhythm. Structural. Growth beyond integration capacity is not growth.
iii. Ten ORRI principles
The ten principles are used as REINFORCING defines them. Each points to a folder in the SYFERS repository where a Lab keeps its evidence; Inclusive Governance, for example, points to 01-governance. Three are marked structural.
- Inclusive Governance. Structural. A consent-based process in use, decisions documented, a vision written and shared.
- Societal Goals. Ecological, social and economic goals named and pursued in practice.
- Multi-Stakeholder (quadruple helix). Relationships across the four helices: government, knowledge, enterprise and civil society.
- Anticipation and Reflexivity. Regular, recorded reflection that changes later decisions.
- Addressing Market Deficits. Structural. An economic model with several income streams, not dependent on a single source or on subsidy.
- Broadening Representation. A documented way in for new people, and deliberate attention to who is represented.
- Monitoring and Accountability. Structural. Defined indicators, measured on a set cadence, by a named person, in a set format.
- Experimental Approach. Deliberate trials, observed, adjusted and documented.
- Ethics and Integrity. Mistakes are documented and the lessons drawn openly.
- Science Education and Citizenship. What the Lab learns is taught and shared outside it.
iv. Four levels
Every condition is read on the same four levels, and each level is written out for each condition. A level is a stage you can recognise, not a grade. The conditions describe maturity, not an entry requirement: a new Lab is not expected to be embedded anywhere, but to know where it stands and to name its weak points.
- Absent (0). Not present, or actively avoided.
- Emerging (1). Present, but ad hoc, informal, inconsistent and undocumented.
- Established (2). Documented, practised, and used when needed.
- Embedded (3). Routine, reflexive and self-correcting; part of how the Lab works.
v. How a Lab uses it
A Lab places itself on the sixteen conditions in compass, the federation’s self-assessment instrument. The placements are self-report. They mean the same from one Lab and one year to the next because everyone works from the same definitions, not because anyone checks them from outside. Where more confidence is needed, a placement can be tied to evidence: a link to the matching folder in the repository.
The records behind the placements are kept in the other instruments: chart holds meetings, proposals and plantings, lens archives incoming documents, and rrl documents how people live on a piece of land. What a Lab decides to publish goes to the public repository at github.com/syntrociety/SYFERS, organised in ten folders from 01-governance to 10-orri-compliance.
vi. What it does not do
SYFERS does not certify anything, and nobody awards a level. No total ranks one Lab above another, and a high level on one condition does not cancel out a weak structural one. A Lab that publishes its placements is not claiming to be sustainable; it is showing how it reads its own practice, in terms a reader can check against the repository.
vii. Versions and changes
SYFERS is maintained by the Syntrociety federation. Version 1.0 dates from June 2026. The structural tags are a first proposal and can be adjusted. Proposals for changes go to the repository on GitHub as a pull request; CONTRIBUTING.md there explains how.