System design perspective of healthcare provision in humanitarian aid

This study focuses on the role of Systems Design in addressing the challenges of healthcare provision by international emergency relief organizations in developing countries. More specifically the challenges related with the safety and performance of medical devices that are transferred in the aftermath of a humanitarian crisis. Our aim is to describe this transfer on the basis of two field studies in Indonesia and Haiti and reflect on the value of Human Factors and Ergonomics for a Systems Design approach. The presented concepts support designers in handling a larger degree of complexity and support them to think more steps ahead in a design project. Future studies will involve collaborative design projects dedicated to bring this reflection further to the development of healthcare products and services

Exploring the role of servitization to overcome barriers for innovative energy efficiency technologies – the case of public LED street lighting in German municipalities

In this paper we analyse the case for public application of LED street lighting. Drawing from the energy services literature and transaction cost economics, we compare modes of lighting governance for modernisation. We argue that servitization can accelerate the commercialisation and diffusion of end-use energy demand reduction (EUED) technologies in the public sector if third party energy service companies (ESCo) overcome technological, institutional and economic barriers that accompany the introduction of such technologies resulting in transaction costs. This can only succeed with a supportive policy framework and an environment conducive towards the dissemination of specific technological and commercial knowledge required for the diffusion process

Transdisciplinarity seen through Information, Communication, Computation, (Inter-)Action and Cognition

Similar to oil that acted as a basic raw material and key driving force of industrial society, information acts as a raw material and principal mover of knowledge society in the knowledge production, propagation and application. New developments in information processing and information communication technologies allow increasingly complex and accurate descriptions, representations and models, which are often multi-parameter, multi-perspective, multi-level and multidimensional. This leads to the necessity of collaborative work between different domains with corresponding specialist competences, sciences and research traditions. We present several major transdisciplinary unification projects for information and knowledge, which proceed on the descriptive, logical and the level of generative mechanisms. Parallel process of boundary crossing and transdisciplinary activity is going on in the applied domains. Technological artifacts are becoming increasingly complex and their design is strongly user-centered, which brings in not only the function and various technological qualities but also other aspects including esthetic, user experience, ethics and sustainability with social and environmental dimensions. When integrating knowledge from a variety of fields, with contributions from different groups of stakeholders, numerous challenges are met in establishing common view and common course of action. In this context, information is our environment, and informational ecology determines both epistemology and spaces for action. We present some insights into the current state of the art of transdisciplinary theory and practice of information studies and informatics. We depict different facets of transdisciplinarity as we see it from our different research fields that include information studies, computability, human-computer interaction, multi-operating-systems environments and philosophy.Comment: Chapter in a forthcoming book: Information Studies and the Quest for Transdisciplinarity - Forthcoming book in World Scientific. Mark Burgin and Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Editor

Stakeholder involvement, motivation, responsibility, communication: How to design usable security in e-Science

e-Science projects face a difficult challenge in providing access to valuable computational resources, data and software to large communities of distributed users. Oil the one hand, the raison d'etre of the projects is to encourage members of their research communities to use the resources provided. Oil the other hand, the threats to these resources from online attacks require robust and effective Security to mitigate the risks faced. This raises two issues: ensuring that (I) the security mechanisms put in place are usable by the different users of the system, and (2) the security of the overall system satisfies the security needs of all its different stakeholders. A failure to address either of these issues call seriously jeopardise the success of e-Science projects.The aim of this paper is to firstly provide a detailed understanding of how these challenges call present themselves in practice in the development of e-Science applications. Secondly, this paper examines the steps that projects can undertake to ensure that security requirements are correctly identified, and security measures are usable by the intended research community. The research presented in this paper is based Oil four case studies of c-Science projects. Security design traditionally uses expert analysis of risks to the technology and deploys appropriate countermeasures to deal with them. However, these case studies highlight the importance of involving all stakeholders in the process of identifying security needs and designing secure and usable systems.For each case study, transcripts of the security analysis and design sessions were analysed to gain insight into the issues and factors that surround the design of usable security. The analysis concludes with a model explaining the relationships between the most important factors identified. This includes a detailed examination of the roles of responsibility, motivation and communication of stakeholders in the ongoing process of designing usable secure socio-technical systems such as e-Science. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Towards Systemic Evaluation

Problems of conventional evaluation models can be understood as an impoverished ‘conversation’ between realities (of non-linearity, indeterminate attributes, and ever-changing context), and models of evaluating such realities. Meanwhile, ideas of systems thinking and complexity science—grouped here under the acronym STCS—struggle to gain currency in the big ‘E’ world of institutionalized evaluation. Four evaluation practitioners familiar with evaluation tools associated with STCS offer perspectives on issues regarding mainstream uptake of STCS in the big ‘E’ world. The perspectives collectively suggest three features of practicing systemic evaluation: (i) developing value in conversing between bounded values (evaluations) and unbounded reality (evaluand), with humility; (ii) developing response-ability with evaluand stakeholders based on reflexivity, with empathy; and (iii) developing adaptive rather than mere contingent use(fulness) of STCS ‘tools’ as part of evaluation praxis, with inevitable fallibility and an orientation towards bricolage (adaptive use). The features hint towards systemic evaluation as core to a reconfigured notion of developmental evaluation

Key Factors Supporting Small-Scale Coastal Fisheries Management

This synthesis was designed to provide an evidence base on the success factors in small-scale coastal fisheries management in developing countries and, in turn, to assist the Rockefeller Foundation in developing its strategy for its Oceans and Fisheries Initiative. In doing so, it identifies and describes some 20 key factors believed to influence success in small-scale coastal fisheries management. The report was completed via a rapid review of key sources of knowledge from formal published literature, institutional literature, key informants and Internet searches. The focus was on key success factors in achieving a balance of social, economic and ecological benefits from the management of small-scale coastal fisheries. A summary of these success factors can also be explored via an interactive visualization that accompanies this report

Towards understanding interactions between Sustainable Development Goals: the role of environment–human linkages

Only 10 years remain to achieve all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) globally, so there is a growing need to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of action by targeting multiple SDGs. The SDGs were conceived as an ‘indivisible whole’, but interactions between SDGs need to be better understood. Several previous assessments have begun to explore interactions including synergies and possible conflicts between the SDGs, and differ widely in their conclusions. Although some highlight the role of the more environmentally-focused SDGs in underpinning sustainable development, none specifically focuses on environment-human linkages. Assessing interactions between SDGs, and the influence of environment on them, can make an important contribution to informing decisions in 2020 and beyond. Here, we review previous assessments of interactions among SDGs, apply an influence matrix to assess pairwise interactions between all SDGs, and show how viewing these from the perspective of environment-human linkages can influence the outcome. Environment, and environment-human linkages, influence most interactions between SDGs. Our action-focused assessment enables decision makers to focus environmental management to have the greatest impacts, and to identify opportunities to build on synergies and reduce trade-offs between particular SDGs. It may enable sectoral decision makers to seek support from environment managers for achieving their goals. We explore cross-cutting issues and the relevance and potential application of our approach in supporting decision making for progress to achieve the SDGs

Design interventions, prediction and science in the sustainable transition of large, complex systems,

The way that human beings live and consume the natural and environmental resources of the planet are not sustainable. Sustainability involves changes in individual beliefs, expectations, values and behaviours at the microlevel, changes in policy at the macrolevel of governments, and changes in the design of objects, social organisations and structures at the mesolevels. Design for sustainability has a big challenge: we need a ninety percent gain in energy and material efficiencies over the next thirty years. Bottom-up and top-down design and policy interventions are needed at all levels. These multilevel dynamics interact in ways not understood by conventional social and natural science: human beings and their physical environment form a bewilderingly complex multilevel system of systems of systems. The science of complex systems must, necessarily, conduct experiments through policy: scientists do not have the mandate or the money to perform large interventionist experiments. Policy can be construed as designing the future. Thus complex systems are entangled in both policy and design. We conclude that (i) the design professions impact on the community at all levels, and that 'good? design at any level is relative to design at all other levels, and the emergent design of the whole, (ii) design, complex systems science and policy must all work together to create a sustainable future, and (iii) policy and complex systems science must progress through a designerly way of thinking to achieve sustainable design coherently applied at all levels in the complex multilevel system of humankind living on planet earth in the decades, centuries and millennia of the future. This view puts design and complexity science at the centre of policy for sustainability

Values-Based Network Leadership in an Interconnected World

This paper describes values-based network leadership conceptually aligned to systems science, principles of networks, moral and ethical development, and connectivism. Values-based network leadership places importance on a leader\u27s repertoire of skills for stewarding a culture of purpose and calling among distributed teams in a globally interconnected world. Values-based network leadership is applicable for any leader needing to align interdependent effort by networks of teams operating across virtual and physical environments to achieve a collective purpose. An open-learning ecosystem is also described to help leaders address the development of strengths associated with building trust and relationships across networks of teams, aligned under a higher purpose and calling, possessing moral fiber, resilient in the face of complexity, reflectively competent to adapt as interconnected efforts evolve and change within multicultural environments, and able to figure out new ways to do something never done before