Technology Assessment and High-Speed Trains: facing the challenge of emergent digital society

The present PhD dissertation addresses the extension of selective environments of new technologies within the high-speed train technological system from business and regulations to the wider society. And, it argues the recognition of society as an actor in that system. Motivating it is the observed ever increase exposure of high-speed trains to public acceptance, caused by empowered society from fast ICT advancements. They refer to digitalization - the rise of social media and big data, combined with the widespread use of mobile technology - changing if not revolutionizing our understanding of product and service selection. Unprecedented societal demands, opening a new market segment, require new technologies to integrate with the emergent digital system. Moreover, societal actors became themselves innovators. Inevitable they have to become part of the value chain widening the collective of stakeholders. However, such raises the dilemma of promotion and control and adds complexity and uncertainty to the industry in deciding which technology to select. Statistical evidence shows that businesses are figuring out ways to embed societal actors in their value creation. In this dissertation, I demonstrate to the high-speed train industry how is it falling short in addressing societal embedding in their product creation and argue why requires improvement. Technology Assessment provides the approach for the orchestration of the necessary dialogue with societal actors for better anticipating potential development in the full system and for embedding the resulting technology options within. By exploiting it to the high-speed train industry innovation strategic management, the aim of my dissertation is, borrowing the words of Douglas K. R. Robinson, to “arrive to a better informed designs of future working worlds, which are structured by theory while empirically well grounded, so they are usable by decision makers”. With this work, I expect to contribute to the new governance structure for research and development set buy the railway industry SHIFT2RAIL (Joint Undertaking for Rail Research and Innovation)

frameworks and methods for impact assessment

This study provides an overview of existing approaches and methods for assessing the environmental impacts of trade and trade-related activities. It considers both approaches that are tailored to the assessment of trade- environment linkages and more generic approaches for environmental assessment and analyzes their respective usability in the context of trade-related development cooperation. The study thereby aims to contribute to a more extensive use of such tools, while improving the practice and application of environmental assessments of trade-related policies and programs. In doing so, the study will complement the existing study on the assessment of the socio- economic impacts from trade carried out by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI)1. The study is divided into two parts. Part I begins with a brief discussion on trade-related development cooperation followed by a short overview of the debate on trade, development and the environment. Next it provides an overview of existing approaches to conceptualizing environmental impacts from trade-related activities. After this, it provides a general introduction to impact assessment (IA) and the assessment of environmental impacts in this context. It closes with a brief overview of the assessment of environmental aspects in German development cooperation. Part II provides a more detailed review of existing frameworks and methods for assessing the environmental impacts from trade-related policies and programs

Evaluation of Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Strategies and Its Prospect in Saudi Arabia

Nowadays it is reiterated in the literature to put more emphasis on Transportation Demand Management (TDM) strategies rather than the traditional transportation strategies which are based on “supply-side” tactic specifically in rapidly growing developing countries. The experiences of many cities reveal that as capacity is increased, demand increases at a similar rate, and subsequently in the long-term, drivers experience no net travel time advantages and the society suffers from the impacts of costly road bills and environmental degradation. This paper suggests emphasizing on TDM strategies to ensure sustainable transportation. The increasing trend of passenger cars in Saudi Arabia makes it more important to concentrate on TDM strategies as a tool for curbing vehicular pollution and congestion. This paper investigated the concept of TDM strategies focusing on the effect of TDM strategies on vehicular emissions and congestion. The analysis of limited scale interviews with experts revealed that tele-working, E-government, electronic shopping, congestion and parking pricing, increased fuel pricing, preferential treatment of HOV, Light Rail Transit (LRT) might be the potential TDM measures. The concerned authorities should think of an innovative mode of public transit services and continuously improve the services to encourage people to switch to public transit. Finally, this paper recommends adopting a public participatory approach in developing TDM strategies which will significantly contribute in reducing vehicular emissions and congestion and ultimately ensure sustainable transportation

Data, Metrics and Monitoring in CGIAR - a strategic study

This document contains the final report of the Panel together with the ISPC commentary. The Panel Report presents an analysis of the current activities within CGIAR concerning data, metrics and indicators, and offers a series of recommendations to address the key issues and challenges identified

A joint stocktaking of CGIAR work on forest and landscape restoration

Despite the high level of political engagement and the wide range of organizations involved in restoration projects from local to global levels, beyond some success stories, restoration is not happening at scale. To address this issue, three CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs) – Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA); Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM) and Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) – decided to bring together their expertise in a joint stocktaking of CGIAR work on restoration. This publication illustrates with concrete examples the powerful contribution of forest and landscape restoration to the achievement of most, if not all the 17 sustainable development goals. It can be used to support the design of future restoration activities, programs and projects. We hope that this document will help upscale restoration efforts and deliver enhanced impact from our CGIAR research

Managerial decision making in indicating a disruption of critical infrastructure element resilience

Managerial decision making is an integral process used in public and private organizations. Critical infrastructure entities are a strategically significant group dependent on the quality of decision-making processes. They aim to provide services necessary to ensure state security and to satisfy basic human needs. The quality of decision making is an important factor in the management of these entities. The quality level is determined by many factors, the key of which is risk management. For this reason, it is necessary for the operators to minimize risks affecting the elements of the critical infrastructure through which these services are provided. Risk management is commonly used for this purpose, making it possible to assess and manage these risks. However, there is a specific group of threats that affects the resilience of these elements. The indication of these threats is not possible through common risk management. Therefore, it is necessary to develop specific scenarios of negative impacts and procedures for assessing their impact on the resilience of elements of the critical infrastructure. To this end, this conceptual article introduces an entirely new managerial decision-making process for indicating the resilience of critical infrastructure elements.Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic [VI20192022151]; VSB-Technical University of Ostrava [SP2020/40]Ministerstvo Vnitra České Republiky: VI20192022151; Vysoká Škola Bánská - Technická Univerzita Ostrava: SP2020/4

On Prospective Technology Studies

This volume includes papers to technological foresight, roadmapping and TA from two sources. On the one side it is based on a workshop in Budapest at the end of 2007, that was organized in the framework of the International Forum on Sustainable Technological Development. On the other side selected presentations from the symposium on History of Prospective Technology Studies, in the framework of the XXIII International Congress of History of Science and Technology, Budapest, July 2009