Societal Drivers Research Articles

Innovation policy roadmapping as a systemic instrument for forward-looking policy design

The systemic characteristics of science, technology and innovation policies have been much discussed recently. This paper presents innovation policy roadmapping (IPRM) as a methodological framework for linking R&D results to systemic policy contexts and to forward-looking policy design. The paper explores the methodological background of the IPRM method and outlines its policy rationale. It also illustrates IPRM with two case studies from Australia and Finland. The case studies reflect on how the policy perspectives can be constructed in a dynamic context of societal drivers, solution and market development, and enabling technologies. The paper concludes by assessing the policy implications of the IPRM approach. Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Possible Drivers of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus Transmission in Kosova

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) has long been a disease of concern in Kosova; however, little is known about the enzootic cycles of the virus in this country. Since the first documented case in 1954, sporadic cases and occasional outbreaks have been recorded with cases more consistently reported following the conflict in 1999. CCHF virus exists in enzootic cycles between wild animal species and ticks. The infection rates within ticks and hence the exposure to humans is determined by both the biology and seasonal dynamics of ticks, and the population dynamics and structure of the wild animals. These, in turn, are affected by complex interactions between climatic variables, changes in agricultural practices, land management, and wild animal density. If we are to understand the spatial and temporal occurrence of human disease, we must understand the ecology of the virus in nature. This article discusses the possible ecological, societal, political, and economic drivers that may impact the enzootic cycle of the virus and contribute to an increase in virus amplification and/or human exposure to infected ticks in Kosova.

Digital Earth 2020: towards the vision for the next decade

This position paper is the outcome of a brainstorming workshop organised by the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) in Beijing in March 2011. It argues that the vision of Digital Earth (DE) put forward by Vice-President Al Gore 13 years ago needs to be re-evaluated in the light of the many developments in the fields of information technology, data infrastructures and earth observation that have taken place since. The paper identifies the main policy, scientific and societal drivers for the development of DE and illustrates the multi-faceted nature of a new vision of DE grounding it with a few examples of potential applications. Because no single organisation can on its own develop all the aspects of DE, it is essential to develop a series of collaborations at the global level to turn the vision outlined in this paper into reality.

Present and future environmental impacts on the coastal zone of Berau (East Kalimantan, Indonesia), a deductive scenario analysis

Using the drivers–pressures–state–impact–responses (DPSIR) analytical framework, local stakeholder respondents and experts were interviewed to construct and prioritize a causality network that links ecosystem state of the coastal waters of Berau (East Kalimantan, Indonesia) with societal drivers of change. Particularly on the perceived top priority drivers and pressures, consensus among respondents was considerable. The constructed network was found to be consistent with literature findings from elsewhere in SE Asia. This causality network was then confronted with a local articulation of the SRES scenarios (IPCCs Special Report on Emissions Scenarios: A1, A2, B1, B2), and four plausible trajectories of future change were deduced over a period of 20 years, until 2030. Our scenario articulations differed greatly in the projected immigration influx into the region, in local economic growth and in institutional strength of governance. Under business-as-usual conditions, it is foreseen that fisheries will continue to overexploit the resource, and inland and mangrove deforestation, as well as sediment and sewage loading of the coastal waters, will increase, leading to declines in coral and seagrass extent and depleted fisheries. Scenarios with continued immigration (~A1, A2) will probably aggravate this pattern, whereas those with reduced immigration (~B1, B2) would appear to lead to considerable improvements in the state of the coastal waters of Berau.

Are You Being Served?

In terms of public services, governments do not yet know how to treat users as different and unique individuals. At worst, users are still considered an undifferentiated mass, or at best as segments. However, the benefits of universal personalisation in public services are within reach technologically through e-government developments. Universal personalisation will involve achieving a balance between top-down government- and data-driven services, on the one hand, and bottom-up self-directed and user-driven services on the other. There are at least three main technological, organisational and societal drivers. First, top-down data-driven, often automatic, services based on the huge data resources available in the cloud and the technologies enabling the systematic exploitation of these by governments. Second, increasing opportunities for users themselves or their intermediaries to select or create their own service environments, bottom-up, through ‘user-driven’ services, drawing directly on the data cloud. Third, a move to ‘everyday’, location-driven e-government based largely on mobile smart phones using GPS and local data clouds, where public services are offered depending on where people are as well as who they are and what they are doing. This paper examines practitioners and researchers and describes model current trends based on secondary research and literature review.

Fostering Forensic Innovation

Forensic science has a significant current and future role in crime detection, policing and the criminal justice system. Government and societal drivers, police priorities and advances in science and technology are demanding, as well as providing opportunities, for its impact and potential to be expanded, evaluated and assessed further. Within this, there is a need for the Criminal Justice System to be clear what it is looking for in respect of forensic science and to identify what the priorities, opportunities and processes are for development and possible expansion (of some areas, such as Digital Forensics, Biometrics and Imaging technologies). For example, if the police service's primary forensic science requirements are for reductions in unit costs, improvements in detection rates or faster turn-around times then this should be clearly specified to internal and external providers, while recognising that such requirements could have consequences for the development and delivery of forensic science, as well as policing, in other ways. A key area of agreement within the forensic community is the importance of establishing a vehicle for identifying future possibilities, potential and priorities which fosters innovation, maintains investment and shapes (rather than directs) the forensic science market; together with the need for engagement with the broader based academic community, in relation to research and development.

Medical and Health-Care Robotics

The aim of this article is to propose some of the most important capabilities and technical achievements of medical and health-care robotics needed to improve human health and well-being. The paper describes application areas, societal drivers, motivating scenarios, desired system capabilities, and fundamental research areas that should be considered in the design of medical and health-care robots.

Clinical Pharmacology, Biomarkers and Personalized Medicine: Education Please

Over the past decades, the scope of clinical pharmacology within the pharmaceutical industry has widened considerably. Key growth has been in the area of translational science and exploratory medicine, where clinical pharmacologists are nowadays the mediator between basic research and establishment of clinical usefulness. This role has led to and is supported by the rapid developments in pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modeling and simulation, a strong focus on biomarkers for early informed decision-making, and the advent of pharmacogenomics into safety and efficacy predictions and evaluations. The ultimate goal--safer, more efficacious drug prescription--is shared with that of today's drive for more personalized medicine. This article reviews the evolution of clinical pharmacology within the industry, the regulatory, clinical and societal drivers for this evolution, and the analogy with the establishment of personalized medicine in clinical practice. Special attention is given to the integration of biomarkers into clinical practice and the concurrent need for education of clinicians, pharmacists, payers and patients.

An empirical study of green supply chain management practices amongst UK manufacturers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the extent and nature of greening the supply chain (SC) in the UK manufacturing sector; and the factors that influence the breadth and depth of this activity.Design/methodology/approachBased on the findings from a sample of manufacturing organisations drawn from the membership of The Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply. Data are collected using a questionnaire, piloted and pre‐tested before distribution with responses from 60 manufacturing companies.FindingsOn average manufacturers perceive the greatest pressure to improve environmental performance through legislation and internal drivers (IDs). The least influential pressures are related to societal drivers and SC pressures from individual customers. Green supply chain management (GSCM) practices amongst this “average” group of UK manufacturing organisations are focusing on internal, higher risk, descriptive activities, rather than proactive, external engagement processes. Environmental attitude (EA) is a key predictor of GSCM activity and those organisations that have a progressive attitude are also operationally very active. EA shows some relationship to legislative drivers but other factors are also influential. Operational activity may also be moderated by organisational contingencies such as risk, size, and nationality.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation to this paper is the relatively small manufacturing sample.Practical implicationsThis paper presents a series of constructs that identify GSCM operational activities companies to benchmark themselves against. It suggests which factors are driving these operational changes and how industry contingencies may be influential.Originality/valueThis paper explores what is driving environmental behaviour amongst an “average” sample of manufacturers, what specific management practices take place and the relationships between them.

Translational nanomedicine: status assessment and opportunities

Nano-enabled technologies hold great promise for medicine and health. The rapid progress by the physical sciences/engineering communities in synthesizing nanostructures and characterizing their properties must be rapidly exploited in medicine and health toward reducing mortality rate, morbidity an illness imposes on a patient, disease prevalence, and general societal burden. A National Science Foundation–funded workshop, “Re-Engineering Basic and Clinical Research to Catalyze Translational Nanoscience,” was held 16–19 March 2008 at the University of Southern California. Based on that workshop and literature review, this article briefly explores scientific, economic, and societal drivers for nanomedicine initiatives; examines the science, engineering, and medical research needs; succinctly reviews the US federal investment directly germane to medicine and health, with brief mention of the European Union (EU) effort; and presents recommendations to accelerate the translation of nano-enabled technologies from laboratory discovery into clinical practice. From the Clinical Editor An excellent review paper based on the NSF funded workshop “Re-Engineering Basic and Clinical Research to Catalyze Translational Nanoscience” (16-19 March 2008) and extensive literature search, this paper briefly explores the current state and future perspectives of nanomedicine.

Ann Hendrich, RN, MS, FAAN

Ann Hendrich, RN, MS, FAAN

Testing Theories to Explore the Drivers of Cities' Atmospheric Emissions

Despite a growing body of evidence demonstrating the importance of cities as sources of many local, regional, and global impacts on the atmosphere, ecosystems, and human populations, most theories on the relationship between society and the environment have focused on the global or national level. A variety of theories exist on human-environment interactions; for example, ecological modernization, urban transitions, and human ecology. However, with the exception of urban transitions, these theories have been mainly concerned with nation states and have ignored the subnational and local (city) levels. This article aims at filling this gap by employing ordinary least squares regression to examine these theories at the city level using the STIRPAT formula. It finds that with the exception of population (which shows an unstable relationship with the impacts indicators applied in the analysis) a remarkable level of variation exists in the importance of drivers across the three exercises. This led us to conclude that urban atmospheric pollutants result from diverse activities (e.g., transportation, industrial), are formed through different processes (vehicle combustion, biomass burning), have a residence time ranging from hours to years, and are the outcome of diverse sets of societal and environmental drivers.

A Watershed in Our Profession

As ground water professionals, we have reached a watershed in our profession. Over the past 50 years, ground water hydrology has developed and matured into a quantitative and sophisticated discipline. The scientific maturity of ground water hydrology is such that researchers are now extending old subject boundaries into interdisciplinary areas such as ground water dependent ecosystems, contaminant biogeochemistry, and societal drivers for ground water use. Are we about to see a gradual deemphasis of ground water skills and decreasing interest as new fields rise to prominence? No, on the contrary; I believe we are just embarking on a path that will reinforce and reinvigorate ground water hydrology as a discipline. In fact, it is likely that our discipline will soon be regarded as fundamental to our very survival. Our world is changing. United Nations statistics show that humans are congregating in urban centers at an astonishing rate. In 1950, the percentage of humanity living in urban centers was 29%; now it is 49% and is expected to reach approximately 60% in the next two decades. Over the same period, global population will climb from 2.5 billion to approximately 8.2 billion, and almost 5 billion people will live in urban centers by 2030. Yet the total amount of accessible fresh water on the earth, held in lakes, rivers, and aquifers, is constant. The United Nations estimates that, currently the global population appropriates 54% of the accessible fresh water, and this fraction will exceed 70% by 2025. With almost 70% of this fresh water demand currently expended on agriculture, it is clear that the amount of accessible fresh water available for domestic use is disturbingly close to a limit. If we assume that the projections are correct, then the need for change in the way we regard our water resource is clear—both quantity and quality are paramount. Even developed nations are now experiencing water shortages, and an estimated 6000 people die each day from drinking contaminated water. Urbanization is not a guarantee of population health. The incredible growth of Asian, African, and South American megacities has generated intractable problems of ground water supply, management, and regulation. As one example, the population of Karachi in Pakistan has grown almost fiftyfold to at least 16 million in the past five decades and the water infrastructure is collapsing. Arsenic and fluoride are found in ground water beneath large areas of densely populated Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, threatening the health of hundreds of millions. In some urban locations, there is rapid transmission of effluents to ground water and potential for hazardous chemical species to persist through the water treatment and disposal trains, thereby increasing in concentration in successive passages through the urban water cycle. Of particular concern here are pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors, which may affect a range of life forms at trace concentrations. As fresh water in easily accessible surface water systems is exploited, ground water will become the priority drinking water resource for the future. This simple and expedient choice of water resource will have profound impacts on our relation to water. To use water sustainably in our heavily urbanized future, ground water resources must be protected and managed now through every step of the urban water cycle. Failure to do so may render valuable supplies unusable just when we need them the most. The global call for ground water professionals will only increase. Better identification and characterization of ground water assets will become a growth industry as urban centers proliferate across the world. Application of geospatial characterization techniques from other disciplines may boost productivity and reduce costs associated with this major ground water exploration effort. At the same time, ground water professionals will be required to develop new levels of expertise in assessing ground water quality to secure and manage resources of potable drinking water in heavily urbanized areas where sources of contamination are many and varied. The focus of ground water research will shift from exploitation of supply to sustainability and protection of human and environmental health. Communities around the world will demand high-quality scientific and engineering advice as they deal with the demographic and environmental consequences of expanding urbanization in the face of water limitation. Ground water professionals must be ready to embrace the expanding challenges ahead. This represents a great opportunity for our profession, but the global consequences of failure are unthinkable. It is not a time to be disinterested.

Societal Drivers in the Applications of Telehealth

The application of telemedicine and e-health tools and the integration of these tools in healthcare is no longer a demonstration, pilot project, or idea. The changing landscape of humanity dictates that new solutions be implemented to address old problems. The landscape is changing with diminishing resources of fossil fuels, aging population, a shortage of skilled labor in healthcare (doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals), and emerging technologies for the personal space, culture, and consumer demand. All are key drivers in altering healthcare delivery, access, and education. The very foundation of medicine needs to change to meet these demands. Access using telehealth will widen and enable our ability to respond to public health issues. This paper addresses the many societal issues facing healthcare delivery and demonstrates how telehealth solutions are key components of the future of healthcare delivery across the globe.

Shifting Epidemiology of Flaviviridae

The dengue, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis and yellow fever viruses are important mosquito-borne viruses whose epidemiology is shifting in response to changing societal factors, such as increasing commerce, urbanization of rural areas, and population growth. All four viruses are expanding geographically, as exemplified by the emergence of West Nile virus in the Americas and Japanese encephalitis virus in Australasia. The large, recent global outbreaks of severe neurological disease caused by West Nile virus, the increasing frequency of dengue hemorrhagic fever outbreaks in the Americas, and the emergence of yellow fever virus vaccination-associated viscerotropic disease, are new clinical epidemiologic trends. These worrisome epidemiologic trends will probably continue in coming decades, as a reversal of their societal and biological drivers is not in sight. Nevertheless, the substantial reductions in Japanese encephalitis virus incidence resulting from vaccination programs and economic development in some Asian countries provide some encouragement within this overall guarded outlook.

Future Forensics: Opportunities and Challenges

DNA is probably the most well-known example of forensic science in practice. The UK has the world's largest DNA database in terms of the percentage of the population covered, over four million people, representing 6% of the UK population and covering the majority of the active criminal population. This growth was enabled as a result of the DNA expansion programme and during 2006/2007 alone, I, 175 violent/sex crimes, 852 drugs cases and 7,892 domestic burglaries were linked to one or more individuals on the National DNA Database. However, public confidence in DNA and forensic science has been tested as a result of issues surrounding the growth of the national DNA database and cases such as the Omagh Bombing and Damilola Taylor, which has prompted important ethical issues and concerns to be raised. Despite these concerns, forensic science users and providers are under increasing pressure to build on the success of the DNA expansion programme to ensure that forensic science is used effectively across all crime types. Identifying and articulating a vision for forensic science should enable the impact of forensic science to be maximised, but will also require many areas to be addressed and evaluated. This needs to be done in terms of system drivers, technological drivers and societal drivers and in the context of these there is a need to paint the possible future forensic landscape and boundaries; clearly identifying what we are trying to achieve, what the priorities are and the extent to which we would like to shape the future rather than to merely respond to it.

Jorge Saavedra: committed campaigner on HIV/AIDS in Mexico

Jorge Saavedra is the Director of Mexico's National Centre for the Prevention and Control of HIV/AIDS, known as CENSIDA. He is an articulate and openly gay physician who lives with HIV in a predominantly Catholic country, where homophobia and the machismo culture continue to be the societal drivers of HIV transmission. Saavedra has been an inspirational leader of Mexico's efforts to tackle HIV/AIDS says Julio Frenk, Mexico's Minister of Health from 2000 to 2006: “Jorge is one of the most committed persons I have ever worked with.

Societal and individualistic drivers as predictors of organic purchasing revealed through a portrait value questionnaire (PVQ)‐based inventory

Abstract The Schwartz's Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) has extensively been used in personal values research. The present survey validates and tests in a value‐based segmentation task a 17‐item PVQ‐based inventory that includes consumer values related to organic food purchasing, using a nationally representative sample of 1043 Greek consumers. The main assumption of the survey is that consumer segments that place more emphasis on specific organic food‐related values would present different magnitude of beliefs and purchasing behaviour towards organic products. Two 2nd‐order value factors (named ‘individualistic’ and ‘societal’, respectively) emerged from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses comprising 14 out of the initial 17 PVQ values. In the next phase of the analysis, hierarchical clustering was implemented based on those factors. Through the clusters emerged, a clear relation between consumers' ‘societal’ (universalism and benevolence) value similarity, higher frequency of organic purchasing and higher likelihood of organic‐related beliefs was clearly identified. This fact supports the applicability of the PVQ typology in predicting consumer behaviour in various product contexts. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Achieving durable repaired concrete structures: a performance-based approach

Societal drivers are encouraging the life extension of existing buildings and infrastructure and some 50% of Europe's annual construction budget is spent on remediation and refurbishment. Owners require greater certainty in the performance of concrete structures in order to manage their assets more effectively. This has generated a requirement for more durable and effective measures for the protection and repair of concrete structures. To help address these issues, a European-funded thematic network Conrepnet was launched in 2003. The network has looked at the performance of previously repaired concrete structures, reviewed current industry practices and research activities, examined the concept of a performance-based approach and developed a vision and for its application. While the outcomes of the first two areas are of considerable interest by virtue of the findings from three questionnaire surveys, it is in the latter area that the greatest impact may arise and, accordingly, was the main focus of the network.

Societal, Environmental and Stakeholder Value Drivers

There is a shift in the role of business in society where societal, environmental and stakeholder value drivers could reshape the basis of economic competitive advantage. Investors are willing to pay a premium for well-governed companies because of positive perceptions of CSR. Organizations respond to the value drivers to endure and function effectively along the societal, environmental and stakeholder dimensions. In this article case analysis is performed for four international firms, chosen from USA/Europe and Asia, with distinguished records of sustainability. The case studies were based on the company sustainability reports and related material published in EthicalCorp, CSRWire and Covalence online publications. Assessments were performed using publicly available information. The non-parametric correlation analysis shows that firms with better commitment to CSR respond more to societal, environmental and stakeholder drivers through strategic initiatives. This improves their competitive advantage as assessed by economic value added.