Digital Participatory Platforms for Civic Engagement: A New Way of Participating in Society?

The article is focused on the digital participatory platforms (DPPs) as a tool to enhance civic engagement through dialogue and interaction with the Public Administration and to reduce Digital Divide. To this end, the article presents the objectives and the outcomes of “My Smart Quartier,” a project funded within the ERASMUS + 2017 Program, in which the Department of Architecture and Design (DAD) of the Politecnico di Torino participates with a consortium of European partners. The aim of this project is the setting up and testing strategies and actions to reduce digital illiteracy and increase citizen participation. Best practices from the project partner countries (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal) are selected and analyzed in order to understand if they can constitute innovative ways of participation and civic engagement. Specifically, the article identifies some parameters and indicators that can be used to bring out key success factors of digital participatory platforms.

Evaluating researcher and stakeholder perspectives on socially responsible research and innovation practices in research performing organisations

The European Commission-funded GRRIP (Grounding RRI Practices) project aims to embed sustainable Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) practices in five research performing organisations (RPOs), focusing on the marine and maritime sector. The project’s goal is to achieve institutional and cultural change through a cycle of evaluation, evidence-based interventions and further evaluation. For this purpose, a set of three surveys were designed and implemented in the first part of the project (2020) to establish a baseline measurement of RRI-related practices within the project partner institutions and their stakeholders. Each survey was specifically designed to target a relevant category of people for each of the five RPOs implementing RRI actions. These five institutions are research departments and centres linked to the marine and maritime sector in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France and the UK. This paper presents the design of these survey-based evaluation instruments and the linked datasets generated by their implementation.

Lifbak spinal load reduction exoskeleton commercialisation project report

<p>This research investigates the product and market development requirements forbuilding a medical device intended to assist patients rehabilitating from back injuries. It looks at the competitive landscape, potential customers segments, path to market, research and development requirements, and funding requirements. This document provides background research for the included business case which will be presented to my project partner, Lifbak. Lifbak is developing a device for customers seeking to accelerate their rehabilitation from a back injury.</p>

Lifbak spinal load reduction exoskeleton commercialisation project report

<p>This research investigates the product and market development requirements forbuilding a medical device intended to assist patients rehabilitating from back injuries. It looks at the competitive landscape, potential customers segments, path to market, research and development requirements, and funding requirements. This document provides background research for the included business case which will be presented to my project partner, Lifbak. Lifbak is developing a device for customers seeking to accelerate their rehabilitation from a back injury.</p>

CATCH-ON Connect: A Program to Increase Technology Access Among Older Adults During COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, technology became an essential tool to maintain connections to social support, health professionals, and services. However, many older adults do not have access to technology or do not feel comfortable using it. CATCH-ON Connect provides cellular-enabled tablets and individual, personalized technical assistance to older adults. Adults age 65+ in project partner primary care clinics who do not have an internet-ready device or who lack digital literacy are eligible to participate. Older adults learn how to access their electronic health record portal, use pre-installed apps (e.g., Lyft, Zoom), and receive education about COVID-19 and the 4Ms. Of the 40 participants enrolled to date, 46% have never accessed the internet with a tablet or smartphone. Initial qualitative outcomes indicate high satisfaction and increased electronic socialization. Quantitative results of participant technology challenges, loneliness, and utilization of telehealth services will be discussed.

Enhancing the diagnostic performance of Condition Based Maintenance through the fusion of sensor with maintenance data

Although Maintenance data is crucial for authoritative reporting reasons and is generally used to optimizemaintenance planning in terms of budget, scheduling and logistics, the potentials of the implicit given informationfor Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) frameworks are not yet completely leveraged. Traditional PHMframeworks typically rely only on sensor data to derive a system’s health status, while maintenance, repair andoverhaul (MRO) data is not investigated. However, maintenance data contains valuable information on which partof a system is checked, serviced or replaced. At the same time, maintenance data is necessary for the labelling ofsensor data, the differentiation of multiple failure modes and includes the expert knowledge of the worker. Theoverall goal of the presented work is enable a model update through the integration of this information into atraditional (sensor-based) PHM/condition monitoring framework.In this context, the underlying data bases and structures will be analyzed and a generalized methodology isproposed to include maintenance data directly into the forward-modelling phase of a PHM/condition monitoringframework. The main goal is not only to use the labels derived from maintenance data for evaluation purposes(which is a common practice in PHM research), but to use this data to build a memory of the maintenance andhealth state history and thereby enhance the diagnostic capabilities of the framework. Methods from the field ofProbabilistic Programming and Bayesian Statistics seem promising and are implemented in order to incorporatefor uncertainties and to enable a confidence level for the diagnosis. The proposed concept is developed, tested andassessed in a simulation environment, allowing to investigate the influence of data confidence and label uncertaintyon the results. Furthermore, this allows to derive specific requirements for the input data and hence for the dataacquisition in the real world. The proposed concept is described in a generic way to be applicable on differentengineering domains (e.g. wind turbine or production machinery industry), but it will be tested and evaluated on areal world aviation use case. This concluding use case is defined in the context of the project INDI at TU Darmstadt(Intelligent Data Utilization in Maintenance) in cooperation with the project partner Lufthansa Technik AG.

Chapman: To be or not to be

<p>Declining core business in the conventional beverage categories of beer and carbonated sodas has compelled companies to turn to innovation to grow their sales and profitability. The research focus of this project was to determine, through adjacent category innovation whether my new branded premium craft carbonated soda product range was a consumer relevant innovation, scalable and therefore able to sustainably enhance market growth and profitability for my project partner, DB Breweries. A mixed methods research approach using qualitative and quantitative surveys revealed strong consumer preferences for the product to be authentic, artisanal, premium, health focussed and particularly targeted to females, older consumers and as an alternative to alcohol. These findings represented market opportunities, however, the clear-cut preference for a homespun, handcrafted, local and small batched produced product as opposed to mass machine manufactured, was an unexpected finding with significant implications for the project. This core finding created a tension between the preference for authenticity and the original concept of leveraging my project partner’s scale machine based manufacturing capacity. These findings and my advisory board’s guidance reshaped the business model canvas, proposing a joint venture between Chapman (my company) and my project partner, which as an established beverage company would bring know-how and distribution with my company being the entrepreneurial, authentic, artisanal, small batch producer. The reshaped strategy and business model shifted the adjacent category innovation from a product to a geographical perspective, with export potential to China and possibly the Muslim market. The online sales channel in China has significant export appeal with its deep retail market penetration and rapid growth, but very low current penetration in the beverage category which is forecast for significant growth. Successful export entry into China would establish a potential platform to enter segments of the global Muslim market, a commercially attractive market for premium non-alcoholic beverages. A deeper understanding of the rapidly growing negative consumer perception of artificial sweeteners led to a further innovative opportunity emerging from this project. As a consequence of this intersectional thinking a sub-project to develop a New Zealand natural sweetener based on indigenous plants, fruits or trees commenced. This research project has revealed the new branded premium carbonated soda product range to be a consumer relevant innovation, scalable but not as a straight forward product adjacent category innovation and with export success has the potential to significantly enhance market growth and profitability for DB Breweries. This project is now on a trajectory to be commercialised.</p>

Infrastructure asset diagnostics: Enabling smarter asset management decisions within the electricity distribution industry

<p>This thesis examines the opportunities for better asset management within the electricity distribution industry. The project partner, a supplier of distribution products, observed their customers are often purchasing incorrect equipment for maintenance operations. This observation led the project partner to believe a lack of accurate asset knowledge exists within these electricity distribution businesses (EDBs). Coupled with the information that much of the installed asset base of these EDBs is approaching end of life, it was proposed to investigate the suspected lack of asset condition and type knowledge with the intention of developing the Infrastructure Asset Diagnostic Tool (IADT). A literature review was conducted to determine the current state of asset diagnostics within the electricity distribution industry. The principles of lean start-up business development have been used to isolate the most needed technology within the New Zealand marketplace through interviews with industry personnel. These interviews helped identify a possible Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the IADT, and also indicated that providing the IADT as a professional service would be the most appropriate model for the MVP variant. Condition and type knowledge of wooden poles, conductors and line hardware was found to be the most lacking. It was recommended to focus product development on the assessment of these assets. The project partner has contracted two smart tool suppliers for the analysis of poles and conductor clearances. These products were then integrated to enable accurate assessments of wooden poles. An additional product identified as an aside during the interviews, was for a simple pole designing application which could be used in the field. An existing product from one of the smart tool suppliers contracted can fulfil this requirement. Possible benefits from IADT use were calculated for a sample EDB. These calculations indicated accurate condition assessment of wooden poles could lead to a saving of up to $5.4 million per year. This saving would equate to a possible reduction in time for securing pole integrity on this network from 30.8 years to just 5.9 years through more effective use of available funding. This reduction would lead to enhanced network reliability and improved public safety in a much shorter time frame than present, therefore this study recommends implementing the MVP form of the IADT at an initial EDB.</p>

Infrastructure asset diagnostics: Enabling smarter asset management decisions within the electricity distribution industry

<p>This thesis examines the opportunities for better asset management within the electricity distribution industry. The project partner, a supplier of distribution products, observed their customers are often purchasing incorrect equipment for maintenance operations. This observation led the project partner to believe a lack of accurate asset knowledge exists within these electricity distribution businesses (EDBs). Coupled with the information that much of the installed asset base of these EDBs is approaching end of life, it was proposed to investigate the suspected lack of asset condition and type knowledge with the intention of developing the Infrastructure Asset Diagnostic Tool (IADT). A literature review was conducted to determine the current state of asset diagnostics within the electricity distribution industry. The principles of lean start-up business development have been used to isolate the most needed technology within the New Zealand marketplace through interviews with industry personnel. These interviews helped identify a possible Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the IADT, and also indicated that providing the IADT as a professional service would be the most appropriate model for the MVP variant. Condition and type knowledge of wooden poles, conductors and line hardware was found to be the most lacking. It was recommended to focus product development on the assessment of these assets. The project partner has contracted two smart tool suppliers for the analysis of poles and conductor clearances. These products were then integrated to enable accurate assessments of wooden poles. An additional product identified as an aside during the interviews, was for a simple pole designing application which could be used in the field. An existing product from one of the smart tool suppliers contracted can fulfil this requirement. Possible benefits from IADT use were calculated for a sample EDB. These calculations indicated accurate condition assessment of wooden poles could lead to a saving of up to $5.4 million per year. This saving would equate to a possible reduction in time for securing pole integrity on this network from 30.8 years to just 5.9 years through more effective use of available funding. This reduction would lead to enhanced network reliability and improved public safety in a much shorter time frame than present, therefore this study recommends implementing the MVP form of the IADT at an initial EDB.</p>

Chapman: To be or not to be

<p>Declining core business in the conventional beverage categories of beer and carbonated sodas has compelled companies to turn to innovation to grow their sales and profitability. The research focus of this project was to determine, through adjacent category innovation whether my new branded premium craft carbonated soda product range was a consumer relevant innovation, scalable and therefore able to sustainably enhance market growth and profitability for my project partner, DB Breweries. A mixed methods research approach using qualitative and quantitative surveys revealed strong consumer preferences for the product to be authentic, artisanal, premium, health focussed and particularly targeted to females, older consumers and as an alternative to alcohol. These findings represented market opportunities, however, the clear-cut preference for a homespun, handcrafted, local and small batched produced product as opposed to mass machine manufactured, was an unexpected finding with significant implications for the project. This core finding created a tension between the preference for authenticity and the original concept of leveraging my project partner’s scale machine based manufacturing capacity. These findings and my advisory board’s guidance reshaped the business model canvas, proposing a joint venture between Chapman (my company) and my project partner, which as an established beverage company would bring know-how and distribution with my company being the entrepreneurial, authentic, artisanal, small batch producer. The reshaped strategy and business model shifted the adjacent category innovation from a product to a geographical perspective, with export potential to China and possibly the Muslim market. The online sales channel in China has significant export appeal with its deep retail market penetration and rapid growth, but very low current penetration in the beverage category which is forecast for significant growth. Successful export entry into China would establish a potential platform to enter segments of the global Muslim market, a commercially attractive market for premium non-alcoholic beverages. A deeper understanding of the rapidly growing negative consumer perception of artificial sweeteners led to a further innovative opportunity emerging from this project. As a consequence of this intersectional thinking a sub-project to develop a New Zealand natural sweetener based on indigenous plants, fruits or trees commenced. This research project has revealed the new branded premium carbonated soda product range to be a consumer relevant innovation, scalable but not as a straight forward product adjacent category innovation and with export success has the potential to significantly enhance market growth and profitability for DB Breweries. This project is now on a trajectory to be commercialised.</p>