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)

The AQUAS ECSEL Project Aggregated Quality Assurance for Systems: Co-Engineering Inside and Across the Product Life Cycle

There is an ever-increasing complexity of the systems we engineer in modern society, which includes facing the convergence of the embedded world and the open world. This complexity creates increasing difficulty with providing assurance for factors including safety, security and performance. In such a context, the AQUAS project investigates the challenges arising from e.g., the inter-dependence of safety, security and performance of systems and aims at efficient solutions for the entire product life-cycle. The project builds on knowledge of partners gained in current or former EU projects and will demonstrate the newly developed methods and techniques for co-engineering across use cases spanning Aerospace, Medicine, Transport and Industrial Control.A special thanks to all the AQUAS consortium people that have worked on the AQUAS proposal on which this paper is based, especially to Charles Robinson (TRT), the proposal coordinator. The AQUAS project is funded from the ECSEL Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n 737475, and from National funding

Development of semantic data models to support data interoperability in the rail industry

Railways are large, complex systems that comprise many heterogeneous subsystems and parts. As the railway industry continues to enjoy increasing passenger and freight custom, ways of deriving greater value from the knowledge within these subsystems are increasingly sought. Interfaces to and between systems are rare, making data sharing and analysis difficult. Semantic data modelling provides a method of integrating data from disparate sources by encoding knowledge about a problem domain or world into machine-interpretable logic and using this knowledge to encode and infer data context and meaning. The uptake of this technique in the Semantic Web and Linked Data movements in recent years has provided a mature set of techniques and toolsets for designing and implementing ontologies and linked data applications. This thesis demonstrates ways in which semantic data models and OWL ontologies can be used to foster data exchange across the railway industry. It sets out a novel methodology for the creation of industrial semantic models, and presents a new set of railway domain ontologies to facilitate integration of infrastructure-centric railway data. Finally, the design and implementation of two prototype systems is described, each of which use the techniques and ontologies in solving a known problem

Implementation of Building Information Modeling in Infrastructure Construction : Lessons from Norway and Vietnam

Industrialization, innovation, and infrastructure are important drivers in improving employment and income (United Nations, 2015b). To meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, developing countries need to invest more in research and innovation that aims to improve their infrastructure (United Nations, 2015a). More basic infrastructure, such as roads, information and communication technology (ICT) systems, and electrical power grids, is essential to improving standards of living and protecting the environment in developing countries (ibid.). Construction researchers have found that the use of ICT increases construction efficiency. Adwan and Al-Soufi (2016) classified 21 sets of ICT technologies used in construction, including web-based platforms, Building Information Modeling (BIM) based technologies, CAD- and 3D CAD–based technologies, virtual reality, and video conferencing. Among these, BIM is an information system that facilitates digital collaboration in construction. BIM provides an environment for data sharing based on 3D models, and it has been used to increase productivity and quality of building construction. In the context of transportation infrastructure, BIM reduces errors, provides better understandings of projects, and improves project performance (SmartMarket Report, 2017). In my construction industry experience, 3D modeling was applied to infrastructure projects that include roads, bridges, and railways. 3D models of infrastructure, such as that related to railways (stations and line alignments) and bridges, was used to detect design clashes and support communication with stakeholders. More broadly, BIM implementation is rapidly increasing in the context of infrastructure construction (Bradley et al., 2016), and examples include the integration of 3D infrastructure models with other technologies, such as geographic information systems, global positioning systems, laser scanners, and photogrammetry (Bradley et al., 2016; Costin et al., 2018). Researchers have also reported on BIM applications in different phases of the infrastructure life cycles (ibid.). In general, BIM supports infrastructure construction by reducing costs and risks and increasing reliability (Costin et al., 2018). The trend of rising use shows BIM’s potential to benefit the infrastructure sector. Infrastructure is critical if developing countries are to achieve their Sustainable Development Goals, which motivated me to explore BIM implementation in that context. Since developed countries is leading in BIM use, this thesis explores whether they can learn from the experiences of more advanced countries. To identify useful lessons, I conducted a comparative analysis of BIM implementation in a developed and a developing contexts. Moreover, BIM-related innovation communities were studied to understand how BIM practices can be further strengthened in infrastructure projects. This thesis focused on the following research question: “How can the implementation of Building Information Modelling be improved to support infrastructure projects in a developing context?”publishedVersio

Repurposing brownfields as urban greenspace with gentle remediation options: A circular outlook

Circular Economy (CE) is regarded as an efficient strategy to address the challenges arising from the linear ‘take-make-use-dispose’ system of exploitation of resources. Urban land and soil are among the most exploited resources wherein brownfields, the potentially contaminated and currently obsolete land, can be considered the waste of the linear land use system. Recent CE policies and action plans acknowledge soil as a finite resource and set out clear directives for circular management of both soil and land. Brownfields pose possibility to integrate Urban Greenspaces (UGS) in increasingly denser cities to provide a range of Ecosystem Services (ES) and are instrumental in ensuring the liveability of cities. To manage risks posed by contaminants present at these brownfields, UGS can be combined with Gentle Remediation Options (GRO). Gentle remediation options are remediation strategies involving plants, fungi, bacteria, and soil amendments for managing contamination risks and simultaneously improve or at least maintain the soil quality. The overall aim of this PhD project is to develop adequate tools and methods to facilitate bringing brownfields back in use by combining UGS and GRO. This thesis presents four studies: i) a framework for identification of different UGS at a brownfield, ii) a framework for identification of potential GRO strategies for a site, iii) a working process for stakeholder analysis to explore their interests, resources, and challenges related to different UGS at a site, and finally iv) a framework to support the exploration of combining UGS and GRO on a brownfield and which integrates the tools and methods in the aforementioned studies.. The final framework is demonstrated in the case study site Polstj\ue4rnegatan in Gothenburg, Sweden, and challenged in a workshop with relevant stakeholders. The necessity of such an approach is validated as it can potentially increase the value derived from the depreciated brownfields progressively and it can support the formulation of long-term goals for sites. \ua0Some additional needs are also identified to support the practical application of the framework and they are: procedures to monetise the value generation over time, tools for estimating the time required for risk reduction with GRO (and thus the cost), and tools for selecting suitable plants, bacteria, fungi and soil amendments for more detailed site desig