Low interest rates: Is the ECB’s policy correct? Bertelsmann Stiftung EUROPA Briefing 2017

Since 2013, inflation in the euro area has been too low. In order to revive the economy and bring inflation back to target, the European Central Bank has implemented a low interest-rate policy which includes a bond-buying programme known as quantitative easing or QE. The ECB’s measures, including historically ultra-low interest rates, also bear risks. For example, some observers fear the formation of a bubble in real estate and stock markets or complain about one-sided capital gains for wealthy household

MISSIONS FOR EU INNOVATION POLICY WHY THE RIGHT SET-UP MATTERS. Bertelsmann Stiftung Policy Paper N0. 224 29 May 2018

The proposed introduction of research & innovation (R&I) missions in Horizon Europe, the next EU research programme, seems to be the most significant and ambitious change on previous programmes, especially given its implications for the governance of research projects. R&I missions are an innovation policy instrument where the government sets the objective of solving a certain technological or societal problem within a pre-defined time-frame that cannot yet be reached technologically. Governments may employ various policy instruments ranging from financial support for R&I activities to regulation to achieve this objective

Banking Union: How stable are Europe’s banks? EUROPA Briefing 2017

The euro crisis was, besides an economic and sovereign debt crisis, a full-blown banking crisis. The Banking Union was thus created precisely to break the vicious circle of ailing banks and weak government finances in the Eurozone. For the moment, it consists of a European banking supervision and a single resolution framework. But the project remains incomplete. How stable are Europe's banks almost eight years after the start of the euro crisis and what is in store for the Banking Union

How are you doing, Europe? Mapping social imbalances in the EU

At the end of May, Europeans will elect a new Euro- pean Parliament and soon after a new European Commis- sion will begin its five-year mandate. The political chang- ing of the guard in the European Union (EU) comes at a time of economic recovery: per capita income has been growing by about two percent annually for the last three years, and growth has recently returned to every EU mem- ber state. Unemployment has been falling across the EU in the last year and now stands at an average of 6.7 per- cent – marking a new all-time low. It seems that Europe is doing well: the economic tide is rising and, for the first time since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, all boats are lifting

Adapting workflows to intelligent environments

Intelligent environments aim at supporting the user in executing her everyday tasks, e.g. by guiding her through a maintenance or cooking procedure. This requires a machine processable representation of the tasks for which workflows have proven an efficient means. The increasing number of available sensors in intelligent environments can facilitate the execution of workflows. The sensors can help to recognize when a user has finished a step in the workflow and thus to automatically proceed to the next step. This can heavily reduce the amount of required user interaction. However, manually specifying the conditions for triggering the next step in a workflow is very cumbersome and almost impossible for environments which are not known at design time. In this paper, we present a novel approach for learning and adapting these conditions from observation. We show that the learned conditions can even outperform the quality as conditions manually specified by workflow experts. Thus, the presented approach is very well suited for automatically adapting workflows in intelligent environments and can in that way increase the efficiency of the workflow execution

Real-Life Lying, Stealing Kicks Off Book Project for Teen and Dad, Patrick and Dennis Doyle

News release announces that Patrick Doyle wrote a book with his father, Dennis Doyle, called Rumors at School: A Tale of Honesty

A model-based approach for Objectification of the Risk Analysis according to ISO 26262

Die Entwicklung elektrischer Fahrzeugsysteme wird in Zukunft voraussichtlich immer mehr von der ISO 26262 beeinflusst. Eine wesentliche Anforderung der Norm ist die Durchführung einer Gefährdungsidentifikation und Risikobewertung (GuR). Ziel dieser GuR ist es vom zu entwickelnden System ausgehende Gefährdungen zu identifizieren und hinsichtlich ihres Risikopotenzials zu bewerten. Sind potenzielle Gefährdungen erkannt, können diese mittels des in ISO 26262 vorgeschlagenen Ansatzes zur Ableitung eines Automotive Safety Integrity Levels (ASIL) hinsichtlich des von ihnen ausgehenden Risikos bewertet werden. Diese Bewertung basiert in hohem Maße auf der subjektiven - meist konservativen - (Experten-)Einschätzung der den ASIL charakterisierenden Parameter Expositionswahrscheinlichkeit (E), Schadensausmaß (S) und Kontrollierbarkeit (C), weswegen Sicherheitsfunktionen häufig überdimensioniert werden. In dieser Arbeit wird eine Methode beschrieben, wie diese subjektiven Einflüsse durch Simulation und Analyse von Petrinetz-Modellen reduziert werden können. Hierbei wird sich nach intensiver Diskussion der die ASIL-Parameter bestimmenden Faktoren auf die modellbasierte Objektivierung des Parameters E beschränkt. Die Methode und die Struktur der, wie zunächst angenommen, einem deterministischem Verhalten folgenden Modelle werden im Sinne einer Anwendbarkeitsstudie zur Einstufung der Expositionswahrscheinlichkeit exemplarisch angewendet, validiert und plausibilisiert. Im Folgenden wird davon ausgegangen, dass eine Vielzahl von reale Fahrsituationen charakterisierenden Faktoren einem stochastischem Verhalten folgen. In diesem Fall stößt die analytische Berechnung von E an ihre Grenzen, weswegen deren Plausibilität nur noch durch den Vergleich mit herkömmlichen Schätzungen überprüft werden kann. Die entwickelte Methode kann sowohl zu einer ASIL-Reduktion, und damit einhergehenden Einsparpotenzialen bei den Entwicklungskosten, als auch zu einer ASIL-Erhöhung,und damit verbundenem Mehraufwand bei der Entwicklung, führen. In beiden Fällen kann die Methode aufgrund ihres strukturierten modellbasierten Ansatzes helfen die ASIL-Einstufung gegenüber Entscheidungsträgern zu vertreten, wodurch die praktische Verwertbarkeit der Methode gegeben ist.The development of future electrical systems in motor vehicles is expected to be more and more influenced by the standard ISO 26262. This standard provides requirements for the entire safety lifecycle. One essential requirement of ISO 26262 consists in performing a hazard analysis and risk assessment. The objective of this phase is to identify and categorize the hazards emanating from the item to be developed in terms of their risk potential. Once the hazards have been identified, these can be evaluated in terms of the risk posed by them, using the approach recommended in ISO 26262 to determine an Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL). This assessment is largely based on subjective - mostly conservative - (experts`)estimations of the ASIL-characterizing parameters: probability of exposure (E), severity (S) and controllability (C). This is the reason why safety related systems are often oversized. In this thesis a method is described thanks to which these subjective evaluations can be reduced by simulation and analysis of Petri net models. After an intensive discussion of the ASIL-determining parameters (E, S and C), the scope of the method is limited to the model-based objectification of the parameter E. The developed Petri net models, initially supposed to be obeying a deterministic behavior, are used to determine E and to validate the gleaned values and the correctness of the model against the results of an event tree analysis. Moreover, the determined parameter E is validated with respect to its plausibility by comparing it with the result of an assessment carried out conventionally under the terms of ISO 26262. In the following it is assumed that a large number of factors characterizing real driving situations are following a stochastic behavior. In this case, the analytical calculation of E is limited and the determined values` plausibility can only be validated by comparison with the results of a conventional estimation. The developed method logically can lead to both, an ASIL-reduction, and thus to a reduction of the development costs, as well as an ASIL-increase, and thus to related additional effort in the development. In both cases due to its structured model-based approach, the presented method can back up an ASIL-classification in front of decision-makers. Thus the practical usefulness of the method is given