Air Taxis: A Technological Breakthrough to Beat the Traffic Woes

Traffic problems across the major cities around the world and the ever-growing population have put immense stress on countries’ smart infrastructure needs and requirements, particularly in emerging economies such as India. In such countries, existing urban transport modes have failed to accommodate the rising travel demand, which means traffic congestion will likely multiply further in the coming years. This distressing situation creates opportunities for automobile and aircraft makers to develop state-of-the-art urban air mobility (UAM) solutions. The electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles seem to represent the future of urban mobility. Commercialized air taxis have the potential to completely disrupt the urban transportation system and relieve the urban streets from congestion. The case discusses the factors facilitating a speedy drift towards adopting air taxis and the recent developments in the UAM industry. To explore the air taxi market opportunities and business feasibility, the case examines the UAM ecosystem, the related cost and technology components, the industry\u27s latest competitive landscape, and anticipated barriers to the successful implementation of the air taxi business. The case outlines allied businesses and complementary revenue streams that the UAM sector would encourage and, thus, help developing nations to grow technologically and economically

Security implications of digitalization: The dangers of data colonialism and the way towards sustainable and sovereign management of environmental data

Digitalization opens up new opportunities in the collection, analysis, and presentation of data which can contribute to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular, the access to and control of environmental and geospatial data is fundamental to identify and understand global issues and trends. Also immediate crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate the importance of accurate health data such as infection statistics and the relevance of digital tools like video conferencing platforms. However, today much of the data is collected and processed by private actors. Thus, governments and researchers depend on data platforms and proprietary systems of big tech companies such as Google or Microsoft. The market capitalization of the seven largest US and Chinese big tech companies has grown to 8.7tn USD in recent years, about twice the size of Germany's gross domestic product (GDP). Therefore, their market power is enormous, allowing them to dictate many rules of the digital space and even interfere with legislations. Based on a literature review and nine expert interviews this study presents a framework that identifies the risks and consequences along the workflow of collecting, processing, storing, using of data. It also includes solutions that governmental and multilateral actors can strive for to alleviate the risks. Fundamental to this framework is the novel concept of "data colonialism" which describes today's trend of private companies appropriating the digital sphere. Historically, colonial nations used to grab indigenous land and exploit the cheap labor of slave workers. In a similar way, today's big tech corporations use cheap data of their users to produce valuable services and thus create enormous market power.Comment: This study was prepared under contract to the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). The authors bear responsibility for the conten

Personal Data Privacy and Protective Federal Legislation: An Exploration of Constituent Position on the Need for Legislation to Control Data Reliant Organizations Collecting and Monetizing Internet-Obtained Personal Data

In the past twenty years, the business of online personal data collection has grown at the same rapid pace as the internet itself, fostering a multibillion-dollar personal data collection and commercialization industry. Unlike many other large industries, there has been no major federal legislation enacted to monitor or control the activities of organizations dealing in this flourishing industry. The combination of these factors together with the lack of prior research encouraged this research designed to understand how much voters know about this topic and whether there is interest in seeing legislation enacted to protect individual personal data privacy. To address the gap in research, and to gain deeper insight into constituent feelings on the topic, a 43-question closed-end survey instrument was created to gather demographic data from respondents and to assess individual sentiments in four construct areas: awareness, knowledge, concern, and desire. Based on a sample of 892 registered Democratic and Republican voters from California, Florida, New York, Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, descriptive statistics revealed high levels of awareness, concern, and desire among respondents, although low levels of knowledge, with 79% of participants demonstrating a poor to basic level of knowledge about existing data privacy legislation. When stepwise regression techniques were used to understand the extent to which demographic factors explained variation in the four constructs, age, race, education, location, and/or gender played some role in explaining variation in most of the constructs, although political affiliation was never a statistically significant factor. For example, higher levels of educational attainment were associated with increased levels of awareness, as was identifying as male and white; however, age was negatively associated with awareness. In another finding, identifying as white was associated with lower levels of concern, while age was positively correlated with higher levels of concern. Taken together, the construct regressions explained between 2% and 5% of the variation, suggesting the existence of other unexplored factors. The opportunity to use this research extends to individuals, legislators and businesses operating in the data collection industry. Based on the results, it appears that individuals identify protection as important and further exploration could be highly valuable

Why do consumers pay bills electronically? an empirical analysis

Why do consumers use electronic bill payment services? what do the differences between nonusers, low users, and high users imply about the potential future market these services? How might public policy evolve in the future? Analyzing a unique consumer survey conducted by the Federal Reserve's Retail Product Office, the author finds important differences between nonusers, low users, and high users of electronic bill payment. The analysis suggests that the industry will need to address fundamental customer needs before a broader portion of consumers will adopt these services.Electronic funds transfers ; Payment systems ; Internet ; Electronic commerce

Commercialization Strategy in Managing Online Presence in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Industry

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as Drones, originally gained international prominence for warfare and surveillance. Today, Drones are commercially made and distributed to the general public. Academic researchers have studied the technical aspects of Drones. However, with the public interest and demands for Drones, there is a need to study commercialization of Drones, specifically management issues and strategies. The purpose of this article is to shed some light on the commercialization of Drones by reviewing websites of companies that market Drones. We identified four countries where businesses have been established to capitalize on the public demand for Drones. We selected twenty-five companies in each of the four countries. Each of the selected companies sponsored websites aimed at capitalizing on the potential Drone market. We conducted a content analysis of each of the 100 company’s websites. The results of our content analysis identified two significant variables that differentiate advanced, or nascent commercial endeavours from those companies making a “sort-of attempt” to get on the Drone bandwagon. Our analysis identified two significant variables that distinguished the websites on mature Drone companies. The two variables: attention to legal compliance; and insurance coverage. Our analysis of website data supports our conclusion that a Drone company website should effectively communicate their management position regarding two crucial issues: legal compliance and insurance coverage