Increasing Resilience via the Use of Personal Data: Lessons from COVID-19 Dashboards on Data Governance for the Public Good – Corrigendum

The authors apologise that Panel C of Figure 1, which refers to the highest level of education of the total sample population, was inadvertently excluded from the final published version of this article (Li, V and Yarime M., 2021). We include Figure 1 in its entirety here to correct the scholarly record, with legend below

Introducing Flexibility to Complex, Resilient Socio-Ecological Systems: A Comparative Analysis of Economics, Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Evolutionary Biology, and Supply Chain Management

In this paper, a framework incorporating flexibility as a characteristic is proposed for designing complex, resilient socio-ecological systems. In an interconnected complex system, flexibility allows prompt deployment of resources where they are needed and is crucial for both innovation and robustness. A comparative analysis of flexible manufacturing systems, economics, evolutionary biology, and supply chain management is conducted to identify the most important characteristics of flexibility. Evolutionary biology emphasises overlapping functions and multi-functionality, which allow a system with structurally different elements to perform the same function, enhancing resilience. In economics, marginal cost and marginal expected profit are factors that are considered to be important in incorporating flexibility while making changes to the system. In flexible manufacturing systems, the size of choice sets is important in creating flexibility, as initial actions preserve more options for future actions that will enhance resilience. Given the dynamic nature of flexibility, identifying the characteristics that can lead to flexibility will introduce a crucial dimension to designing resilient and sustainable socio-ecological systems with a long-term perspective in mind

University partnerships for co-designing and co-producing urban sustainability

Universities are playing an increasingly central role in advancing sustainability at the local, regional and national scale through cross-sector collaborations. Accompanying the launch of Future Earth, interest is mounting in the co-design and co-production of knowledge and solutions for advancing global sustainability, particularly in urban areas. Place-based university partnerships appear as particularly significant vehicles for enacting co-design and co-production in the context of urban sustainability. However, the nature and role of these partnerships are not well understood, in part due to the absence of systematic analyses across multiple cases. To fill this gap, the objectives of this paper were to conduct a large-scale international survey focusing on university partnerships for urban sustainability in industrialised Europe, Asia and North America to (1) determine defining features such as focus areas, geographical scales, mechanisms, actors and motivations, and (2) identify commonly encountered drivers, barriers and potential impacts. Results indicate that partnerships most typically target energy, buildings, governance and social systems, unfold at local or city-scales, and involve collaborations with local or regional government. Our analysis shows that potential outcomes of university initiatives to co-design and co-produce urban sustainability are not limited to knowledge and policy. They also encompass the creation of new technological prototypes, businesses and new socio-technical systems, in addition to transformations of the built and natural environment. Findings also suggest that individual partnerships are making strong social, environmental and sustainability impacts, with less evidence of economic contributions. Strategies are required to enhance project management and ensure that projects address contrasting priorities and time horizons in academia and local government. Implications for policy include findings that targeted funding programmes can play a key role in fostering partnerships. Measures are also required to challenge academic norms and incentive structures that, in some cases, hinder university efforts to engage in place-based initiatives to co-design and co-produce urban sustainability

Spatial Prioritization for Wildfire Mitigation by Integrating Heterogeneous Spatial Data: A New Multi-Dimensional Approach for Tropical Rainforests

Wildfires drive deforestation that causes various losses. Although many studies have used spatial approaches, a multi-dimensional analysis is required to determine priority areas for mitigation. This study identified priority areas for wildfire mitigation in Indonesia using a multi-dimensional approach including disaster, environmental, historical, and administrative parameters by integrating 20 types of multi-source spatial data. Spatial data were combined to produce susceptibility, carbon stock, and carbon emission models that form the basis for prioritization modelling. The developed priority model was compared with historical deforestation data. Legal aspects were evaluated for oil-palm plantations and mining with respect to their impact on wildfire mitigation. Results showed that 379,516 km2 of forests in Indonesia belong to the high-priority category and most of these are located in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and North Maluku. Historical data suggest that 19.50% of priority areas for wildfire mitigation have experienced deforestation caused by wildfires over the last ten years. Based on legal aspects of land use, 5.2% and 3.9% of high-priority areas for wildfire mitigation are in oil palm and mining areas, respectively. These results can be used to support the determination of high-priority areas for the REDD+ program and the evaluation of land use policies

Network of Research and Policy Communities for Innovation: An Analysis of Co-Evolution of Technology and Institution

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2009This presentation was part of the session : Policy Actors and RelationshipsThis material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. ©2009 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.Note: This is part of the panel presentation "Knowledge Use and Exchange for Policy and Society in Japan: Concepts and Practices." In this paper, we examine how collaboration networks involving academia, industry, and the public sector are formed and how technology and institution are co-evolved leading to innovation. A case study is conducted on the development of lead-free solders in the electric and electronic industry in Japan, Europe, and the United States. The structure and evolution of university-industry collaboration networks in Japan, Europe, and the United States are analyzed with expensive data on the participants in research and development projects and consortia as well as scientific papers, patent applications, and commercialization of products related to lead-free solders. Proposals to regulate the use of lead for soldering in products, including electronic equipment, were initially made in the United States. While the proposed legislation was not enacted in the end, the move to develop lead-free soldering technologies was started at the industrial level in Japan, through the initiative of university professors, who set up a working group on lead-free solders within academic society. Since then, several research and development projects have been established, with the later ones receiving financial support from the public sector. These have involved not only large manufacturers of consumer electronic products but also small firms producing materials and equipment for solders, as well as universities and public research institutes. Through these projects, technological development and evaluation were conducted cooperatively, with the formulation of roadmaps headed by university professors being particularly effective in coordinating the views and behavior of the diverse actors, with clearly specified milestones towards the development of lead-free soldering technologies. The establishment of extensive collaboration networks in Japan, linking academia, industry, and the public sector, was critical in promoting innovation on lead-free solders. On the other hand, although a legislative move toward regulating the use of lead was made earlier in the United States than in other regions, the formation of networks between universities, companies, and public institutes did not proceed quickly, as discussions on regulation ceased, although the U.S. networks have been growing rapidly, with several public institutes centrally positioned along with large electronic companies. Compared with Japan and the United States, the formation of networks in Europe has been delayed. While there are several European universities that have been very active in conducting scientific research on lead-free solders, the European networks have been created with universities and companies positioned in separate parts of the networks, which could have contributed to inhibiting close collaboration between universities and industry for the development of lead-free solders. One of the reasons for the delay in forming networks in Europe and the United States could be that university researchers in Europe and the United States did not play the critical role of taking the initiative, at least at an early stage of technological development, to create networks linking academic researchers, public institutes, and companies producing materials and equipment in industry for cooperation and coordination in technological evaluation and standardization. Technological progress which was promoted through the formation of university-industry collaboration networks, however, did not induce corresponding institutional changes in Japan. The university researchers who played a major role in the technological network for developing lead-free solders were not involved in the institutional network for discussing environmental regulations. This separation of technological and regulatory networks can also be observed in Europe and the United States. In that sense, technology and institution did not co-evolve through overlapping domestic networks. On the other hand, technological and institutional changes influenced each other beyond national or regional boundaries. The initiatives to introduce stringent regulations on the use of lead in the United States encouraged university-industry networks for technological development in Japan. The demonstration of the feasibility of lead-free solders through university-industry collaboration in Japan prompted the introduction of strict regulations in Europe. This regulatory development in turn encouraged further innovative activities in each region. In that process, the university researchers who made significant contributions to the development of lead-free solders through university-industry collaboration networks in Japan also initiated creating international networks for establishing technical specificities and standards at the global level

Technology Assessment in Japan, the US and EU Countries: Reconstruction of the Concepts and History

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2009This presentation was part of the session : Policy Actors and Relationship

The state’s role in governing artificial intelligence: development, control, and promotion through national strategies

AbstractNumerous governments worldwide have issued national artificial intelligence (AI) strategies in the last five years to deal with the opportunities and challenges posed by this technology. However, a systematic understanding of the roles and functions that the governments are taking is lacking in the academic literature. Therefore, this research uses qualitative content analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling methodologies to investigate the texts of 31 strategies from across the globe. The findings of the qualitative content analysis highlight thirteen functions of the state, which include human capital, ethics, R&D, regulation, data, private sector support, public sector applications, diffusion and awareness, digital infrastructure, national security, national challenges, international cooperation, and financial support. We combine these functions into three general themes, representing the state’s role: development, control, and promotion. LDA topic modeling results are also reflective of these themes. Each general theme is present in every national strategy’s text, but the proportion they occupy in the text is different. The combined typology based on two methods reveals that the countries from the post-soviet bloc and East Asia prioritize the theme “development,” highlighting the high level of the state’s involvement in AI innovation. The countries from the EU focus on “control,” which reflects the union’s hard stance on AI regulation, whereas countries like the UK, the US, and Ireland emphasize a more hands-off governance arrangement with the leading role of the private sector by prioritizing “promotion.