Life Cycle Management of Infrastructures

By definition, life cycle management (LCM) is a framework “of concepts, techniques, and procedures to address environmental, economic, technological, and social aspects of products and organizations in order to achieve continuous ‘sustainable’ improvement from a life cycle perspective” (Hunkeler et al.\ua02001). Thus, LCM theoretically integrates all sustainability dimensions, and strives to provide a holistic perspective. It also assists in the efficient and effective use of constrained natural and financial resources to reduce negative impacts on society (Sonnemann and Leeuw\ua02006; Adibi et al.\ua02015). The LCM of infrastructures is the adaptation of product life cycle management (PLM) as techniques to the design, construction, and management of infrastructures. Infrastructure life cycle management requires accurate and extensive information that might be generated through different kinds of intelligent and connected information workflows, such as building information modeling (BIM)

Experiments and niches

No abstract

Why renewables fail to breakthrough. Towards a new model of societal acceptance

No abstract

Duurzame energie in Nederland en de noodzaak van maatschappelijke acceptatie

No abstract. Publicatienummer: ECN- L--08-07

Niche-development as a socio-cognitive process : a comparative analysis of biogas in Denmark and the Netherlands

No abstract

Towards alternative trajectories? Reconfigurations in the Dutch electricity regime

Abstract In the early 2000s Dutch electricity companies are increasingly investing in technologies that enable them to replace coal with biomass. Replacing large amounts of coal (up to 40%) requires the companies to invest in technological trajectories alternative to the ones they have supported over the past decades. This paper aims to understand why these incumbent firms in the Dutch electricity regime are developing alternatives. The second aim of the paper is to provide a way for assessing the potential of innovations. The paper does so by bringing together insights from literature on (socio-) technical regimes and insights from literature on technological and market niches (strategic niche management). The main conclusion is that both niche processes (at the level of experimenting with alternatives) and changes in the incumbent regime are necessary for understanding the innovation journey of a new technology. A two-by-two matrix is developed that can be used for both analysis and governance purposes. Keywords: Socio-technical regime; Strategic niche management; Technological trajectories; Biomas

Modelling the dynamics of technological innovation systems

Currently there is no formal model describing the dynamics of technological innovation systems. This paper develops a system dynamics model that integrates the concept of ‘motors of innovation’, following the literature on emerging technological innovation systems, with the notion of ‘transition pathways’ that was developed as part of the multi-level-framework thinking. As such, the main contribution of this paper is a cross-over of two key-frameworks into a system dynamics model that can serve as underpinning for future research. The model’s behaviour is illustrated by means of analyses of TIS dynamics in the context of different transition pathways, under different resourcing conditions. The paper also provides a future research agenda, pursuable by means of experimentation and/or further development of the presented model

A practioner's view on strategic niche management

Strategic Niche Management (SNM) is a tool to support the societal introduction of radical sustainable innovations. SNM attempt to tackle the following barriers to successful implementation of sustainable technologies: • Technological factors: the new technology lacks technical stability, does not perform sufficiently, or there is a lack of complementary technologies. • Government policy and regulatory framework: the new technology does not fit existing laws and regulations. • Cultural and psychological factors: the new technology does not fit user (or societal) preferences and values. • Demand factors: the new technology does not fit user demands (e.g. it is too expensive). • Production factors: the new technology does not fit firms’ expectations about what the user wants or the new technology is expected to compete with firms’ core products. Therefore firms are reluctant to invest to take the new technology into large scale production (and therefore does not profit from economies of scale). • Infrastructure and maintenance factors: there is not yet an infrastructure of maintenance network. • Undesirable societal and environmental effects: new technologies may solve problems but also introduce new ones

Overcoming transformational failures through policy mixes in the dynamics of technological innovation systems

\u3cp\u3eThe need for challenge-led innovation policies to address grand societal challenges is increasingly recognised at various policy levels. This raises questions how to overcome a variety of ‘failures’ prohibiting innovations to flourish. A key-line of thought in theory and policy emerged since the late 1990s on the role of system failures, next to more conventional market-failure thinking. More recently, scholarly work introduced the notion of ‘transformational failures’, which implies an even broader perspective on innovation failures as resting in challenges related to transforming entire systems of production and consumption. This paper combines the literature on Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) with literature on multi-level approaches to sustainability transitions to make a contribution to this debate. In particular, this paper argues that the current literature, so far, has failed to explore how different kinds of policies, or policy mixes, can overcome transformational failures. The paper uses a simulation model (i.e. a system dynamics model) and illustrative examples on electric vehicles to explore relations between transformational failures and (mixes of) policy interventions. A key conclusion is that, in particular in the case where an emerging TIS is in a competitive relation with an incumbent system, overcoming transformational failures can be realised either by directly addressing the incumbent system, for instance by taking away its resources (which may be political challenging). Alternatively, the model results show that a clever mix of policy interventions elsewhere in the system may lead to sufficient performance improvements of the emerging TIS so that it can challenge the incumbent system on its own – albeit with a need for substantial additional resources.\u3c/p\u3