Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

Construction IT in 2030: a scenario planning approach

Summary: This paper presents a scenario planning effort carried out in order to identify the possible futures that construction industry and construction IT might face. The paper provides a review of previous research in the area and introduces the scenario planning approach. It then describes the adopted research methodology. The driving forces of change and main trends, issues and factors determined by focusing on factors related to society, technology, environment, economy and politics are discussed. Four future scenarios developed for the year 2030 are described. These scenarios start from the global view and present the images of the future world. They then focus on the construction industry and the ICT implications. Finally, the preferred scenario determined by the participants of a prospective workshop is presented

Scenarios and futures in the governance of sustainable innovation pathways: the case of hydrogen energy

Global climate change and other sustainability challenges demand a transition to more sustainable systems. The long-term and complex nature of such transitions invites longterm planning, but it also suggests that the future is unpredictable and contested. Moreover, the act of envisioning, forecasting and planning for possible futures itself influences transitions, because visions and expectations form part of the institutional environment that shapes the behaviour of policymakers, innovators and others. Futures activities are thus part of the process of transition. A key source of technological expectations and visions are published technology futures documents, and the processes that are used to develop them. How are such published futures created, and why are they produced? How can we assess the quality of published futures? What role do computer models play in shaping such futures, and how can computer models be used to open up futures to alternative framings and perspectives? How can published futures be improved in order to facilitate the governance of transitions to sustainability? These are the questions that motivate this PhD, and which are the subject of the portfolio of publications and this commentary. These questions are addressed through a case: hydrogen energy technologies. A key theme that runs throughout the publications is that the future is a contested space in which actors bid for their preferred futures, express their interests and their perspectives, and attempt to influence the processes of both appraisal of and commitment to particular futures. The thesis presents a variety of ways in which participatory scenario development can be combined with other methods to ‘open up’ futures and enable consideration and representation of diverse perspectives, deep uncertainty, and plural pathways

Towards European Anticipatory Governance for Artificial Intelligence

This report presents the findings of the Interdisciplinary Research Group “Responsibility: Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence” of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Technology and Global Affairs research area of DGAP. In September 2019, they brought leading experts from research and academia together with policy makers and representatives of standardization authorities and technology organizations to set framework conditions for a European anticipatory governance regime for artificial intelligence (AI)

Escaping from American intelligence : culture, ethnocentrism and the Anglosphere

The United States and its closest allies now spend over $100 billion a year on intelligence. Ten years after 9/11, the intelligence machine is certainly bigger - but not necessarily better. American intelligence continues to privilege old-fashioned strategic analysis for policy-makers and exhibits a technocratic approach to asymmetric security threats, epitomized by the accelerated use of drone strikes and data-mining. Distinguished commentators have focused on the panacea of top-down reform, while politicians and practitioners have created entire new agencies. However these prescriptions for change remain conceptually limited because of underlying Anglo-Saxon presumptions about what intelligence is. Although intelligence is a global business, when we talk about intelligence we tend to use a vocabulary that is narrowly derived from the experiences of America and its English-speaking nebula. This article deploys the notion of strategic culture to explain this why this is. It then explores the cases of China and South Africa to suggest how we might begin to rethink our intelligence communities and their tasks. It argues that the road to success is about individuals, attitudes and cultures rather than organizations. Future improvement will depend on our ability to recognize the changing nature of the security environment and to practice the art of ‘intelligence among the people’. While the United States remains the world’s most significant military power, its strategic culture is unsuited to this new terrain and arguably other countries do these things rather better

CANDID PRIMER: Including Social Sciences and Humanities scholarship in the making and use of smart ICT technologies

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Smart Factories, Dumb Policy? Managing Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Risks in the Industrial Internet of Things

Interest is booming in the so-called Internet of Things (IoT). The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is one application of this trend and involves the use of smart technologies in a manufac- turing context. Even though these applications hold the promise to revolutionize manufacturing, there are a number of outstand- ing cybersecurity and data privacy issues impacting the realiza- tion of the myriad benefits promised by IIoT proponents. This ar- ticle analyzes some of these pressing issues, focusing on: (1) critical infrastructure protection and cybersecurity due diligence, (2) trends in transatlantic data privacy protections, and (3) the regulation of new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain. The aticle concludes with a list of recommendations for state and federal policymakers to consider in an effort to harden the IIoT along with the supply chains critical to the con- tinued development of smart factories