Grand Societal Challenges Research Articles

FEEDING KENYA 2015 AND BEYOND –WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY?

<em>In the world, food insecurity remains an enormous challenge. Food insecurity is still a great concern for many households in Kenya. This situation is connected to high level of poverty that exists in the country, particularly in rural areas. Each year , between one to four million people receive relief food from both the national and donor agencies such as the world food program. Unfortunately policy responses have almost always inclined towards responding to emergencies of food shortages rather than on putting in place systems responsible for feeding Kenya in 2015 and beyond. This paper highlights key paradigm shift approaches to achieving food security in Kenya. The expected quick win outputs with regard to commitment to feed Kenya and methodologies on how to increase food security in Kenya have been discussed. Kenya’s new constitution has devolved many responsibilities to the community level and therefore Kenya is poised to succeed in a ground up approach to boost food productivity. This is key to addressing food insecurity and feeding Kenya 2015 and beyond. This is the responsibility of national government through the ministry of Agriculture, livestock and fisheries and government through the County Agriculture docket. The arguments in this paper are informed by a number of secondary sources from which I gathered information. I have no doubt in my mind that this paper will allow the researcher to work with other global leaders in food security research to tackle one of the societal grand challenges of the 21st century: feeding a global population of 9 -10 billion people by 2015.</em>

The future imagined: Exploring fiction as a means of reflecting on today’s Grand Societal Challenges and tomorrow’s options

European science policy (so-called Horizon 2020) is guided by Grand Societal Challenges (GSCs) with the explicit aim of shaping the future. In this paper we propose an innovative approach to the analysis and critique of Europe’s GSCs. The aim is to explore how speculative and creative fiction offer ways of embodying, telling, imagining, and symbolising ‘futures’, that can provide alternative frames and understandings to enrich the grand challenges of the 21st century, and the related rationale and agendas for ERA and H2020. We identify six ways in which filmic and literary representations can be considered creative foresight methods (i.e. through: creative input, detail, warning, reflection, critique, involvement) and can provide alternative perspectives on these central challenges, and warning signals for the science policy they inform. The inquiry involved the selection of 64 novels and movies engaging with notions of the future, produced over the last 150 years. Content analysis based on a standardised matrix of major themes and sub-domains, allows to build a hierarchy of themes and to identify major patterns of long-lasting concerns about humanity’s future. The study highlights how fiction sees oppression, inequality and a range of ethical issues linked to human and nature’s dignity as central to, and inseparable from innovation, technology and science. It concludes identifying warning signals in four major domains, arguing that these signals are compelling, and ought to be heard, not least because elements of such future have already escaped the imaginary world to make part of today’s experience. It identifies areas poorly defined or absent from Europe's science agenda, and argues for the need to increase research into human, social, political and cultural processes involved in techno-science endeavours.

Revisiting the Data Lifecycle with Big Data Curation

As science becomes more data-intensive and collaborative, researchers increasingly use larger and more complex data to answer research questions. The capacity of storage infrastructure, the increased sophistication and deployment of sensors, the ubiquitous availability of computer clusters, the development of new analysis techniques, and larger collaborations allow researchers to address grand societal challenges in a way that is unprecedented. In parallel, research data repositories have been built to host research data in response to the requirements of sponsors that research data be publicly available. Libraries are re-inventing themselves to respond to a growing demand to manage, store, curate and preserve the data produced in the course of publicly funded research. As librarians and data managers are developing the tools and knowledge they need to meet these new expectations, they inevitably encounter conversations around Big Data. This paper explores definitions of Big Data that have coalesced in the last decade around four commonly mentioned characteristics: volume, variety, velocity, and veracity. We highlight the issues associated with each characteristic, particularly their impact on data management and curation. We use the methodological framework of the data life cycle model, assessing two models developed in the context of Big Data projects and find them lacking. We propose a Big Data life cycle model that includes activities focused on Big Data and more closely integrates curation with the research life cycle. These activities include planning, acquiring, preparing, analyzing, preserving, and discovering, with describing the data and assuring quality being an integral part of each activity. We discuss the relationship between institutional data curation repositories and new long-term data resources associated with high performance computing centers, and reproducibility in computational science. We apply this model by mapping the four characteristics of Big Data outlined above to each of the activities in the model. This mapping produces a set of questions that practitioners should be asking in a Big Data project

Public Engagement in Energy Research

Public Engagement in Research is a key element in “Responsible Research and Innovation”; a cross-cutting issue in current European research funding. Public engagement can advance energy R&D, by delivering results that are more in-line with society’s views and demands; and collaboration also unlocks societal skills and knowledge. This paper structures the ways to look at engagement, and gives some pointers on how to implement it in energy R&D, with various levels of intensity. The publics to engage with can be citizens, future users, affected persons, but also organisations that represent them. We have selected methods and tools that showcase a broad range of types of engagement that have been applied in The Netherlands or the UK. The cases are grouped based on the role of the researcher in the engagement process. These roles relate to discussing with, consulting, involving, collaborating with and supporting the various publics. This study shows that there is a diversity of tools and methods already available—open to variation, combinations and further development- that facilitate the participation of society in energy research. Not only for democratic reasons, but also for instrumental benefits in creating innovations to help solve the Grand Societal Challenge of the energy transition.

Building Interactive Communication Tools to Support Interdisciplinary Responsible Innovation

Recent science policy encourages the installation of Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI) practices, which should help solve grand societal challenges and be more readily adopted by society. RRI may be implemented by setting up interdisciplinary innovation development teams, bringing together technical and non-technical experts from various disciplines and backgrounds, enabling engineers to let their work become inspired by – or even partly co-shaped by – societal insights and viewpoints, while societal actors get acquainted with techno-scientific context. We developed a Decision Support Tool to support interdisciplinary innovation teams, that visualizes innovation project performance and success chances. It supports communication and collaboration in interdisciplinary teams by proposing practical improvement areas, based on shared expertise, including socio-ethical, societal, economic and management related aspects. Still, further investigation is needed to learn how such a tool can be used to systematically integrate RRI in practice, to harness its full innovative potential.

Anstößiges Anstoßen? – Kritische Beobachtungen zur „Nudging“-Diskussion im deutschen Kontext

Nudging refers to a much-debated political steering approach that relies on gentle interventions in decision architectures of individuals with the aim to shape their behaviour in a direction that is beneficial for them and/or for the society as a whole. For some, nudges have the potential to address grand societal challenges in an efficient and effective manner; others regard nudges as inappropriate means of political steering that open the door for manipulating citizens. But the existing criticism is characterized by dramatization, lack of differentiation, normative exaltation, problematic demarcations and comparisons as well as numerous omissions. However, a more differentiated, contextualized and politicized discussion would open the view for the specific potential of democratically legitimized pro-social nudges to contribute to tackling grand societal challenges.

Europe’s territorial futures between daydreams and nightmares

Europe is changing. The grand societal challenges which shape the European development have a considerable influence on our governance systems and the possible development paths in different parts of Europe, its regions and cities. Based on the results of the FP7 research project FLAGSHIP, this article discusses possible governance and territorial futures for Europe – constantly balancing between daydreams and nightmares. The end of this article contains a plea for shared territorial vision for Europe.

Core drivers of change for future of healthy lives and diets

The complex area of food, nutrition, health and physical activity is considered to be one of the grand societal challenges at the European level. The future prospects of this area are thus of a crucial importance for future well-being of European citizens. To understand the forces driving the possible future development paths, the article brings together knowledge from various future-oriented activities in this area with the aim to summarize the key driving forces. These were clustered into eight so-called core drivers of change, further emphasizing the complexity and holistic nature of the area of food, nutrition, health and physical activity, implying that addressing the issues should be done from a truly global perspective.

Guest editorial: governing the challenges of climate change and energy transition in cities

Cities form the key context within which social, economic and environmental challenges for sustainable development will manifest in the years to come. As they face the grand societal challenges of climate change and the greening of energy systems, city governments are confronted with the challenge of designing and implementing workable policy strategies. We find that although much attention has been paid to low carbon energy transition in cities, there is surprisingly little attention to the dimension of governance, policy and politics in the scholarly literature. The main question in this guest editorial of the thematic issue, entitled ‘Governing the Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Transition Challenges in Cities’, is: How can effective policy strategies be designed and implemented to govern the challenges of climate change and energy transition in cities? We develop some preliminary answers to this question based on seven research papers that form the contribution to the thematic series. In particular, the various roles that cities play in governing the climate change challenges and energy transition require further description and analysis, specifying the different governing roles of urban actors and how the city—socially, institutionally or geophysically—forms the context within which governance initiatives and arrangements are formed and implemented, while cities themselves are in turn part of larger physical, infrastructural and institutional networks that influence and condition the local governance opportunities. A research agenda to explore the topic further must include particularly the following areas: the role of local government in the interplay between governance initiatives at multiple levels, the influence and the confluence of current (sectoral) policies, learning from a variation of practices of local low carbon policy, mapping the institutional dimension, mapping design and implementation practices of urban low carbon policy, assessing the effects and legitimacy of urban low carbon policies, further understanding of strategic action fields and lines of conflicts between (coalitions of) actors and identifying workable governance frameworks and policies supporting community-led energy initiatives.

Aligning innovation with grand societal challenges: Inside the European Technology Platforms in wind, and carbon capture and storage

This paper investigates the European Technology Platforms (ETPs) in wind power and in CO 2 capture and storage supported by the European Commission (EC). It examines the role of these Platforms in shaping the trajectory of European energy technology policy, and shows that the EC’s support for the ETPs marks a change from a solely evidence-based policy approach to the use of bottom-up policies designed to mobilize human capital based on social actors’ expectations, uncertainties and visions. These two ETPs include hitherto missing ‘key players’ who can enhance commercial legitimacy on both the input and output sides of the system. This constitutes an important, though narrow, type of legitimacy in regard to specific technology developments, and questions remain about the performance of the ETPs in relation to small and medium-sized enterprises and social representation. This paper provides a valuable first qualitative analysis of this phenomenon which is emerging as a new policy instrument.

Self-determination and archival autonomy: advocating activism

This paper explores the role of archival activism in supporting social movements linked to human rights and social justice agendas. Taking a records continuum perspective, it presents an Australian case study relating to the Stolen Generations, Former Child Migrants, Forgotten Australians and Forced Adoption communities to illustrate imperatives for advocacy and activism in support of the “archival autonomy” of communities. Framed by critical theory, the study identifies and analyses systemic problems in meeting the recordkeeping and archival identity, memory, accountability, redress and recovery needs of these key communities. The devastating impact of both finding and not finding relevant information is highlighted, along with how systemic and structural difficulties in seeking access to vital evidence can be re-traumatising. Using reflexivity and the Movement Action Plan as an analytical tool, the case study reflects on the activist role archival research and development projects can potentially play, using the Who Am I? and Trust and Technology Projects as exemplars. The paper explores how an extended suite of rights in records, stretching beyond discovery and access to appraisal, description and disclosure, and linked to records continuum concepts of co-creation and multiple provenance, and the emergent concept of the participatory archive, might support community self-determination in the context of human rights and social justice agendas, with particular reference to the rights of the child. Additionally, the paper explores a new concept of archival autonomy and its relationship to community self-determination. Archival autonomy is tentatively defined as the ability for individuals and communities to participate in societal memory, with their own voice, and to become participatory agents in recordkeeping and archiving for identity, memory and accountability purposes. The achievement of archival autonomy is identified as a grand societal challenge, with the need for archival activism to become an integral part of social movements on a local and global scale. The paper concludes with a proposed National Summit on the Archive and the Rights of the Child, envisaged as a vehicle for archival advocacy and activism leading to transformative action to address social justice and human rights agendas in Australia.

Computational Fluid Dynamics for urban physics: Importance, scales, possibilities, limitations and ten tips and tricks towards accurate and reliable simulations

Urban physics is the science and engineering of physical processes in urban areas. It basically refers to the transfer of heat and mass in the outdoor and indoor urban environment, and its interaction with humans, fauna, flora and materials. Urban physics is a rapidly increasing focus area as it is key to understanding and addressing the grand societal challenges climate change, energy, health, security, transport and aging. The main assessment tools in urban physics are field measurements, full-scale and reduced-scale laboratory measurements and numerical simulation methods including Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). In the past 50 years, CFD has undergone a successful transition from an emerging field into an increasingly established field in urban physics research, practice and design. This review and position paper consists of two parts. In the first part, the importance of urban physics related to the grand societal challenges is described, after which the spatial and temporal scales in urban physics and the associated model categories are outlined. In the second part, based on a brief theoretical background, some views on CFD are provided. Possibilities and limitations are discussed, and in particular, ten tips and tricks towards accurate and reliable CFD simulations are presented. These tips and tricks are certainly not intended to be complete, rather they are intended to complement existing CFD best practice guidelines on ten particular aspects. Finally, an outlook to the future of CFD for urban physics is given.

Strengthening College Students’ Integrative Leadership Orientation by Building a Foundation for Civic Engagement and Multicultural Competence

Integrative leadership theories are thriving in the literature, yet very few studies have explored individual characteristics of integrative leadership and conditions that may promote individuals’ integrative leadership orientation. In particular, little is known about the factors that may promote undergraduate college students’ development of an orientation toward integrative leadership, although many colleges and universities are charged with developing future leaders to tackle grand societal challenges. The purpose of this study was to examine higher education institutions’ contributions to college students’ civic engagement and multicultural competence as well as the relationships between these contributions and students’ development of an integrative leadership orientation. Using a multi-institutional survey of college seniors (n = 5,922), the results of this study suggest institutional efforts to develop students’ multicultural competence and civic engagement are positively associated with undergraduate students’ development of an integrative leadership orientation.

Seeing the Environment through the Humanities: A New Window on Grand Societal Challenges

The Environmental Humanities draw from insights of the human and natural sciences for proposing new concepts and solutions to society's pressing environmental problems.

Innovation for a Steady State: A Case for Responsible Stagnation

The proponents of responsible innovation (RI) have often opened their discussions with the reassurance that while they are against irresponsible innovation, they are also not advocating irresponsible stagnation. However, in the two-by-two matrix generally used to illustrate this model of innovation, the quadrant for responsible stagnation has so far gone largely unmentioned, let alone explored. This paper draws on existing real-world cases to examine what arguments drawn from ecological economics might contribute to the discussion of RI, and whether opening the black box of 'Responsible Stagnation' might also open the door for a reasoned discussion about the need for controlled, responsible degrowth of unproductive or over-productive sectors and technologies, as an intrinsic part of responsibly innovating to meet the Grand Societal Challenges facing an increasingly overburdened world.

Foresight in support of European research and innovation policies: The European Commission is preparing the funding of grand societal challenges

A foresight hub within the Directorate General Research and Innovation (DG RTD) of the European Commission will support the decision-making procedures of the EU Horizon 2020 research, technology, and innovation programme. Foresight in particular is seen as an instrument defining research priorities for European society’s needs in support of the ‘grand societal challenges’. The new initiative marks the recent success of the institutional and administrative application of foresight and derives from a long history of approaches to foresight taken by the European Commission. In fact, the Commission has been implementing measures to both internalise and externalise foresight during various periods since the 1970s. This paper outlines the various phases and approaches of foresight at the European Commission. It contextualises the new attempt of the foresight hub that is assumed to support the next European Commission’s research and innovation policies.

A European Roadmap for Thermometry

A technical roadmap for thermometry has been constructed by the EURAMET Technical Committee for Thermometry (TC-T). The roadmap first identified the key triggers that need to be addressed; these included societal grand challenges and the essential scientific metrology to ensure the continued fitness and relevance of the SI unit, the kelvin. In addition, triggers focusing on innovation to support industrial competitiveness such as improvement in product quality and energy efficiency were considered. Clear targets to help address the triggers were formulated; these in turn provide direction to the required temperature measurement research until 2025 and beyond. Although constructed by EURAMET TC-T, the identified societal grand challenges are common within all metrology regions; hence, the roadmap has wider applicability beyond the EURAMET region. A roadmap only ever captures current thinking at the time of formulation, and hence, as with all roadmaps, requires regular revision. For this roadmap this revision will be performed around 2016. This exercise identified that significant research and development were required by the thermometry community if it is to contribute to meet the grand challenges faced by society. The research areas identified here will inform and guide the direction of thermometry research of the national measurement institutes in the EURAMET region over the next decade.

Research Driven Clusters at the Heart of (Trans-)Regional Learning and Priority-Setting Processes

Smart Specialisation has become the catchword for innovation policy approaches to optimally leverage regional dynamism in knowledge creation and application, and thus achieving comparative advantages in a globalised knowledge economy. It can support innovation policies putting the grand societal challenges of the twenty-first century high on the political agenda by intelligently investing the available resources in harnessing unique regional assets (as well as their inter-regional combinations), which were identified and capitalised on by ‘entrepreneurial discovery’ processes. This paper argues that research driven clusters as local nodes of global knowledge flows and as ‘microcosms’ in a complex world of cross-cutting regional and sector innovation systems, provide promising ‘targets’ for strategic policy support fostering smart specialisation. By being integrated in global value chains, and at the same time embedded in their regional innovation systems, higher-order learning and priority-setting processes of (quadruple helix) cluster stakeholders can lead to increased return on public and private investments within and across regions: they enable the application of technological know-how for innovative solutions to address global challenges, and thus help optimise the application of ‘localised’ knowledge capabilities for regional prosperity. Our case study—MicroTEC Sudwest, a German “Spitzen” cluster in the top-ranking, ‘associational’ innovation system of Baden-Wurttemberg—spans an area of more than five million inhabitants, comparable in size with some countries in Europe. With this, we can exemplify elements of promising Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3) outlining the participatory processes implemented to develop better-informed outward-looking (across sectors, borders, etc.), and more forward-looking strategies for evidence-based priority-setting and focusing investments.

Reconceptualising the co-evolution of firms-in-industries and their environments: Developing an inter-disciplinary Triple Embeddedness Framework

This inter-disciplinary theory-building paper is motivated by the debate on grand societal challenges and by calls in the innovation studies literature for frameworks that offer a better understanding of the co-evolution of industries and their economic, political, cultural, and social environments. In response to these debates, the paper develops a new triple embeddedness framework (TEF), which conceptualizes firms-in-industries as embedded in two external (economic and socio-political) environments and in an industry regime which mediates strategic actions towards the external environments. The TEF's theoretical logic draws on the adaptation-selection debate, which suggests that the co-evolution phenomenon can be approached from two angles. With regard to (population-level) selection theories, which highlight pressures on industries from external environments, the TEF accommodates insights from evolutionary economics, neo-institutional theory, and economic sociology. With regard to (firm-level) adaptation theories, the TEF accommodates insights from externally-oriented strategy schools (economic positioning strategy, innovation strategy, corporate political strategy, discursive strategy, issue management) and internally-oriented strategy approaches (linked to knowledge/capabilities and cognition/sensemaking). The combination of insights produces a multi-dimensional framework with bi-directional interactions between firms-in-industries and their environments. Implications for the grand challenge agenda are discussed in a separate section and illustrated with examples.

Using System Dynamics for Grand Challenges: The ESDMA Approach

In this paper, we argue and show how system dynamics modelling can be combined with exploratory modelling and analysis in order to address grand societal challenges, which are almost without exception characterized by dynamic complexity and deep uncertainty. Addressing such issues requires the systematic exploration of different hypotheses related to model formulation and model parametrization and their effect on the kinds of behavioral dynamics that can occur. Through two cases, we illustrate the combination of system dynamics and exploratory modelling. The first case illustrates its use for discovering different types of dynamics related to metal and mineral scarcity. The second case illustrates its use for worst‐case discovery in water scarcity. We conclude that exploratory system dynamics modelling represents a promising approach for addressing deeply uncertain dynamically complex societal challenges. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.