2021 Biennial Report

The Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington has become a leading source for tech policy research and education and an indispensable resource to local, national, and international policymakers. In its seven-year history, the Lab has built a strong network and increased credibility that allows us to work directly with policymakers, publish research and guides on emerging technologies, and provide opportunities for the public to learn from experts. The last two years found not only our state, but our nation and the world in a time of great uncertainty. American society strives to reconcile centuries of racial and other injustice even as it faces down a global pandemic. The insights and expertise of the Tech Policy Lab mean that we can—and must—step up to address technology’s role in these vital issues to continue to achieve our mission of helping policymakers generate wiser, more inclusive tech policy. At the same time, the Lab had to adapt and find new ways to engage remotely. The Lab has shown the ability to be nimble, experimental, and deep. In these last two years, these unique attributes have positioned the Lab to engage the demands of our times.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/techlab/1015/thumbnail.jp

Every student counts: promoting numeracy and enhancing employability

This three-year project investigated factors that influence the development of undergraduates’ numeracy skills, with a view to identifying ways to improve them and thereby enhance student employability. Its aims and objectives were to ascertain: the generic numeracy skills in which employers expect their graduate recruits to be competent and the extent to which employers are using numeracy tests as part of graduate recruitment processes; the numeracy skills developed within a diversity of academic disciplines; the prevalence of factors that influence undergraduates’ development of their numeracy skills; how the development of numeracy skills might be better supported within undergraduate curricula; and the extra-curricular support necessary to enhance undergraduates’ numeracy skills

Empirical Software Engineering in Industry Short Courses

This paper reports on a pilot project that incorporated small empirical studies in three industry short courses. These laboratory experiments were one component of a larger leveled study on the effects of test-driven development (TDD) on internal software quality. The approach is proposed to have pedagogical value to student-developers by improving their understanding and appreciation for empirical evidence, to instructors by providing feedback through surveys and exercises, and to the community at large by reporting results of the studies. Pre-experiment surveys in the three pilot experiments revealed large differences in programmer opinions of TDD. Possible correlations to development environment and programmer experience will be proposed. Post-experiment surveys revealed improvements in programmer opinions of TDD following the experiment exercises. Crafting sufficiently small but interesting assignments proved to be challenging. Few complete solutions were submitted and some developers were unwilling to submit their partial solutions. Positive observations will be made regarding the use of experiments in short courses. For instance, participating in the study encourages analytical thinking, prompts developers to evaluate alternative approaches, and instills the value of empirical evidence. Ethical concerns regarding threats to validity are raised and addressed. The authors find that ethical considerations not only support performing such studies, but encourage it as the duty of software professionals

The Role and relevance of mathematics in the maritime industry

Maritime activities occupy more than three-quarters of the world space and provide a huge occupational industry for mankind. Of late, ship construction and usage including space management onboard the vessels and the ports have brought about a great dependency on mathematical principles or models such as time series, linear programming and queuing theories among others. These models, however, hardly come in the form of direct mathematics but rather embedded in technology which, again, is built on the advancement of mathematics. This study was aimed at investigating the relevance (utility value) of mathematics in the changing trends of Maritime Business, Education and Training. The paper discusses the various domains of occupational practice where maritime education and training practitioners encounter the use and application of mathematics. It also identifies specific types or areas of mathematics applicable to and/or by Maritime Business, Education and Training practitioners in their day to day activities. The paper concludes by making recommendations for curriculum considerations on issues bordering on the mathematics teaching and learning for Maritime Business, Education and Trainin

Organizational concepts and interaction between humans and robots in industrial environments

This paper is discussing the intuitive interaction with robotic systems and the conceptualisation connected with known organisational problems. In particular, the focus will be on the manufacturing industry with respect to its social dimension. One of the aims is to identify relevant research questions about the possibility of development of safer robot systems in closer human-machine intuitive interaction systems at the manufacturing shop-floor level. We try to contribute to minimize the cognitive and perceptual workload for robot operators in complex working systems. In particular that will be highly relevant when more different robots with different roles and produced by different companies or designers are to be used in the manufacturing industry to a larger extent. The social sciences approach to such technology assessment is of high relevance to understand the dimensions of the intuitive interaction concept

Verifying Noninterference in a Cyber-Physical System the Advanced Electric Power Grid

The advanced electric power grid is a complex real-time system having both cyber and physical components. While each component may function correctly, independently, their composition may yield incorrectness due to interference. One specific type of interference is in the frequency domain, essentially, violations of the Nyquist rate. The challenge is to encode these signal processing problem characteristics into a form that can be model checked. To verify the correctness of the cyber-physical composition using model-checking techniques requires that a model be constructed that can represent frequency interference. In this paper, RT-PROMELA was used to construct the model, which was checked in RT-SPIN. In order to reduce the state explosion problem, the model was decomposed into multiple sub-models, each with a smaller state space that can be checked individually, and then the proofs checked for noninterference. Cooperation among multiple clock variables due to their lack of notion of urgency and their asynchronous interactions, are also addressed

The potential of public participation geographic information systems in UK environmental planning: Appraisals by active publics

The paper draws on an empirical study of two workshops in which the issues that arise from the use of geographic information systems (GIS) as a planning tool in public participation settings were explored by local residents who take an active interest in local planning matters in their London borough. The paper demonstrates how issues concerned with the democratization of GIS and public participation GIS (PPGIS) informed the structure and conduct of the workshops and the qualitative analysis of the workshop discussions. Key themes raised by participants included: the potential of PPGIS as a means of extending knowledge networks; issues of data ownership and the responsiveness of data providers to public concerns; and the role that institutional norms and practices play in democratizing information availability and the transparency of the decision-making process. The paper concludes that the potential of PPGIS as a planning tool cannot be separated from public concerns about the legitimacy of the planning process or local government