13,099 research outputs found

    Future scenarios to inspire innovation

    Get PDF
    In recent years and accelerated by the economic and financial crisis, complex global issues have moved to the forefront of policy making. These grand challenges require policy makers to address a variety of interrelated issues, which are built upon yet uncoordinated and dispersed bodies of knowledge. Due to the social dynamics of innovation, new socio-technical subsystems are emerging, however there is lack of exploitation of innovative solutions. In this paper we argue that issues of how knowledge is represented can have a part in this lack of exploitation. For example, when drivers of change are not only multiple but also mutable, it is not sensible to extrapolate the future from data and relationships of the past. This paper investigates ways in which futures thinking can be used as a tool for inspiring actions and structures that address the grand challenges. By analysing several scenario cases, elements of good practice and principles on how to strengthen innovation systems through future scenarios are identified. This is needed because innovation itself needs to be oriented along more sustainable pathways enabling transformations of socio-technical systems

    Foresight in governments – practices and trends around the world

    Get PDF
    This study provides the initial results of a survey of foresight activities undertaken by a select group of governments around the world.The study was begun following the recent initiative by European Union (EU) in- stitutions to build a joint foresight capacity (European Strategy and Policy Analysis System – ESPAS) that assesses long-term global trends to help them strengthen policy planning. In addition to contributing to the discussion about this new EU activity, the study is also intended to be of interest for the wider European policy planning community and to anyone interested in learning about how governments practise ‘the art of the long view’ (Schwartz, 1991).This study looks at the way governments approach foresight, the issues they try to grapple with and the challenges they face in connecting foresight and policy. Its focus is on foresight exercises that look ten years or more into the future. The study does not include within its scope foresight activities undertaken at the initiative of business, academic or non-governmental organisations, though some government-led activities do involve these other actors.Foresight work includes a range of activities related to the production of knowledge about possible futures. This knowledge is not of the future, nor any real future, but rather ‘the manufactured knowledge of [a] restricted number of possibilities’ (Sardar, 2010). The output of foresight work very often involves the creation of scenarios for the future which can be analysed for their likelihood and potential impact. Foresight also commonly uses practices such as ‘trend impact analysis’, ‘horizon scanning’, or the Delphi method.This study presents an initial tour d’horizon of a limited number of countries who undertake foresight activities: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). The countries were chosen to represent a diverse selection of countries based on location, economic profile, power status and political regime. The analysis is based on desk research and interviews conducted with professionals in government, academia and think tanks. This study also looked at the foresight activities of a range of international organisations with mandates for public service and which interact with governments as sources of knowledge and policy advice. As foresight activity tends to be scattered across departments and not always made public, it was not possible to be exhaustive in our analysis of the countries in this study. Time constraints and language barriers may also have affected the outcome of the study.The first part of the study identifies the main issues that governments grapple with and offers a preliminary historical overview to shed light on current practice. The second part compares the approaches to foresight taken by governments and the institutional setting for foresight activities. The third part tries to assess the conditions for fruitful foresight

    Scenarios for the development of smart grids in the UK: literature review

    Get PDF
    Smart grids are expected to play a central role in any transition to a low-carbon energy future, and much research is currently underway on practically every area of smart grids. However, it is evident that even basic aspects such as theoretical and operational definitions, are yet to be agreed upon and be clearly defined. Some aspects (efficient management of supply, including intermittent supply, two-way communication between the producer and user of electricity, use of IT technology to respond to and manage demand, and ensuring safe and secure electricity distribution) are more commonly accepted than others (such as smart meters) in defining what comprises a smart grid. It is clear that smart grid developments enjoy political and financial support both at UK and EU levels, and from the majority of related industries. The reasons for this vary and include the hope that smart grids will facilitate the achievement of carbon reduction targets, create new employment opportunities, and reduce costs relevant to energy generation (fewer power stations) and distribution (fewer losses and better stability). However, smart grid development depends on additional factors, beyond the energy industry. These relate to issues of public acceptability of relevant technologies and associated risks (e.g. data safety, privacy, cyber security), pricing, competition, and regulation; implying the involvement of a wide range of players such as the industry, regulators and consumers. The above constitute a complex set of variables and actors, and interactions between them. In order to best explore ways of possible deployment of smart grids, the use of scenarios is most adequate, as they can incorporate several parameters and variables into a coherent storyline. Scenarios have been previously used in the context of smart grids, but have traditionally focused on factors such as economic growth or policy evolution. Important additional socio-technical aspects of smart grids emerge from the literature review in this report and therefore need to be incorporated in our scenarios. These can be grouped into four (interlinked) main categories: supply side aspects, demand side aspects, policy and regulation, and technical aspects.

    Conceptual graph-based knowledge representation for supporting reasoning in African traditional medicine

    Get PDF
    Although African patients use both conventional or modern and traditional healthcare simultaneously, it has been proven that 80% of people rely on African traditional medicine (ATM). ATM includes medical activities stemming from practices, customs and traditions which were integral to the distinctive African cultures. It is based mainly on the oral transfer of knowledge, with the risk of losing critical knowledge. Moreover, practices differ according to the regions and the availability of medicinal plants. Therefore, it is necessary to compile tacit, disseminated and complex knowledge from various Tradi-Practitioners (TP) in order to determine interesting patterns for treating a given disease. Knowledge engineering methods for traditional medicine are useful to model suitably complex information needs, formalize knowledge of domain experts and highlight the effective practices for their integration to conventional medicine. The work described in this paper presents an approach which addresses two issues. First it aims at proposing a formal representation model of ATM knowledge and practices to facilitate their sharing and reusing. Then, it aims at providing a visual reasoning mechanism for selecting best available procedures and medicinal plants to treat diseases. The approach is based on the use of the Delphi method for capturing knowledge from various experts which necessitate reaching a consensus. Conceptual graph formalism is used to model ATM knowledge with visual reasoning capabilities and processes. The nested conceptual graphs are used to visually express the semantic meaning of Computational Tree Logic (CTL) constructs that are useful for formal specification of temporal properties of ATM domain knowledge. Our approach presents the advantage of mitigating knowledge loss with conceptual development assistance to improve the quality of ATM care (medical diagnosis and therapeutics), but also patient safety (drug monitoring)

    Collection and integration of local knowledge and experience through a collective spatial analysis

    Get PDF
    This article discusses the convenience of adopting an approach of Collective Spatial Analysis in the P/PGIS processes, with the aim of improving the collection and integration of knowledge and local expertise in decision-making, mainly in the fields of planning and adopting territorial policies. Based on empirical evidence, as a result of the review of scientific articles from the Web of Science database, in which it is displayed how the knowledge and experience of people involved in decision-making supported by P/PGIS are collected and used, a prototype of a WEB-GSDSS application has been developed. This prototype allows a group of people to participate anonymously, in an asynchronous and distributed way, in a decision-making process to locate goods, services, or events through the convergence of their views. Via this application, two case studies for planning services in districts of Ecuador and Italy were carried out. Early results suggest that in P/PGIS local and external actors contribute their knowledge and experience to generate information that afterwards is integrated and analysed in the decision-making process. On the other hand, in a Collective Spatial Analysis, these actors analyse and generate information in conjunction with their knowledge and experience during the process of decision-making. We conclude that, although the Collective Spatial Analysis approach presented is in a subjective and initial stage, it does drive improvements in the collection and integration of knowledge and local experience, foremost among them is an interdisciplinary geo-consensusPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

    Multi-agent knowledge integration mechanism using particle swarm optimization

    Get PDF
    This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.Unstructured group decision-making is burdened with several central difficulties: unifying the knowledge of multiple experts in an unbiased manner and computational inefficiencies. In addition, a proper means of storing such unified knowledge for later use has not yet been established. Storage difficulties stem from of the integration of the logic underlying multiple experts' decision-making processes and the structured quantification of the impact of each opinion on the final product. To address these difficulties, this paper proposes a novel approach called the multiple agent-based knowledge integration mechanism (MAKIM), in which a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) is used as a knowledge representation and storage vehicle. In this approach, we use particle swarm optimization (PSO) to adjust causal relationships and causality coefficients from the perspective of global optimization. Once an optimized FCM is constructed an agent based model (ABM) is applied to the inference of the FCM to solve real world problem. The final aggregate knowledge is stored in FCM form and is used to produce proper inference results for other target problems. To test the validity of our approach, we applied MAKIM to a real-world group decision-making problem, an IT project risk assessment, and found MAKIM to be statistically robust.Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Korea

    Future trends in social media use for strategic organisation communication: Results of a Delphi study

    Full text link
    This article examines current uses of social media for communication by enterprises, political organisations and non-profit organisations (NPOs) and identifies likely future trends. Based on a quantitative online survey among 860 communication professionals in Germany and a follow-up qualitative Delphi study with 32 identified experts from the organisational communication profession and academia, it explores the status quo and aims to identify future directions. While organisations show more advanced structures for social media communication compared to earlier research findings, the empirical data also identifies many shortcomings. The potentials of social media communication are not fully exploited due to missing prerequisites including governance structures, rules and resources. Looking into the future, the Delphi panel suggests that dedicated budgets, social media guidelines and other structural aspects will increase in the near future. However, many organisations will find specific ways to deal with the issue and common strategies are rare. At the same time, according to the qualitative findings, social media evaluation and cooperation across the boundaries of departments and organisational functions are likely to stay underdeveloped
    • 

    corecore