Nanotechnology,Risk, and Oversight: Learning Lessons from Related Emerging Technologies

Emerging technologies are defined by their novelty and thus are accompanied by significant uncertainty in determining appropriate ways to manage risks associated with them. Yet, there is a body of prior knowledge about risk management and oversight policy for other technologies that have already permeated society. Here, we describe two ways in which prospective oversight policy analysis for emerging technologies can draw upon these past experiences. One involves comparing specific products that have already been marketed to similar products of the emerging technology (cognate‐product approach). The other treats the emerging technology as a body of products and methods and relates it to another technological field that has already emerged and penetrated markets (whole‐technology approach). In this article, we describe our work using these approaches to inform risk and oversight policy for nanotechnology and its products. We draw parallels between biotechnology and nanotechnology as whole fields of development and also between genetically engineered organisms in the food supply and agricultural products of nanotechnology. Through these comparisons, we find that both approaches to historical learning have value and present lessons that could be applied to nanotechnology.     

GREPOM: An energy policy model

Energy policy analysis and energy modelling as applied in the case of Greece are reviewed. A complex of energy policy models in synergy is presented. These models have been developed by the Energy Policy Unit of the National Technical University of Athens and constitute the framework for analysing specific medium- and long-term policy options. A case study involving the use of new energy technologies is described. Scenarios relating to the penetration rate of new energy technologies are analysed and respective policy implications are discussed. A general conclusion to the research conducted is that with parallel work on both the content of specific policy issues and the policymaking process in general, substantial progress could be made in improving the decision-making potential of public policy organizations.     

An Integrated Approach to Oversight Assessment for Emerging Technologies

Analysis of oversight systems is often conducted from a single disciplinary perspective and by using a limited set of criteria for evaluation. In this article, we develop an approach that blends risk analysis, social science, public administration, legal, public policy, and ethical perspectives to develop a broad set of criteria for assessing oversight systems. Multiple methods, including historical analysis, expert elicitation, and behavioral consensus, were employed to develop multidisciplinary criteria for evaluating oversight of emerging technologies. Sixty‐six initial criteria were identified from extensive literature reviews and input from our Working Group. Criteria were placed in four categories reflecting the development, attributes, evolution, and outcomes of oversight systems. Expert elicitation, consensus methods, and multidisciplinary review of the literature were used to refine a condensed, operative set of criteria. Twenty‐eight criteria resulted spanning four categories: seven development criteria, 15 attribute criteria, five outcome criteria, and one evolution criterion. These criteria illuminate how oversight systems develop, operate, change, and affect society. We term our approach “integrated oversight assessment” and propose its use as a tool for analyzing relationships among features, outcomes, and tradeoffs of oversight systems. Comparisons among historical case studies of oversight using a consistent set of criteria should result in defensible and evidence‐supported lessons to guide the development of oversight systems for emerging technologies, such as nanotechnology.     

Applications of probabilistic risk assessments: the selection of appropriate tools

Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is an important methodology for assessing the risks of complex technologies. This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of PRA. Its application is explored in three different settings: adversarial policy processes, regulatory/licensing procedures, and plant safety audits. It is concluded that PRA is a valuable tool for auditing safety precautions of existing or planned technologies, especially when it is carried out as an interactive process involving designers and plant personnel who are familiar with actual, everyday operations. PRA has not proven to be as well-suited in providing absolute risk estimates in public-policy debates concerning the acceptability of a technology, or for the licensing and regulatory procedures. The reasons for this are discussed.     

Integration and Cospecialization of Emerging Complementary Technologies by Startups

We analyze the market entry problem faced by startups that must integrate their service or product with one or more complementary technologies. The problem is especially challenging when the complementary technologies have uncertain cost reduction potentials. The entrepreneurship literature suggests that startups should pursue focused strategies for various reasons, including bounded rationality and budget constraints, but generally overlooks startups entering markets with complementary technologies. The advice for mature firms investing in complementary technologies is often to diversify investment across multiple complements to manage technological uncertainty. Given competing guidance, we seek to extend the entrepreneurship literature by modeling startups' entry decisions for markets in which complementary technologies exhibit strong learning effects. We find that, consistent with the extant entrepreneurship literature, startups generally achieve higher expected returns by channeling their integration investment to only one complementary technology. However, the mechanisms driving our results differ significantly by hinging on nonlinear feedback effects that occur when firms concentrate integration investment in only one complementary technology. Interestingly, this focused strategy often does not yield the highest market share or the lowest likelihood of bankruptcy. We characterize the situations under which each finding holds and describe the implications of these findings for theory, practice, and policy.     

Environmental Taxes and the Choice of Green Technology

We study several important aspects of using environmental taxes to motivate the choice of innovative and “green" emissions‐reducing technologies as well as the role of fixed cost subsidies and consumer rebates in this process. In our model, a profit‐maximizing monopolistic firm facing price‐dependent demand selects emissions control technology, production quantity, and price in response to the tax, subsidy, and rebate levels set by the regulator. The available technologies vary in environmental efficiency as well as in the fixed and variable costs. Both the optimal policy for the firm and the social‐welfare maximizing policy for the regulator are analyzed. We find that the firm's reaction to an increase in taxes may be non‐monotone: while an initial increase in taxes may motivate a switch to a greener technology, further tax increases may motivate a reverse switch. For the regulator, we compare the social welfare achievable in the centralized system (which serves as an upper bound) to the highest level achievable under different classes of environmental policies. If the regulator is limited to a tax‐only policy, then when the regulator is moderately concerned with environmental impacts, the tax level that maximizes social welfare simultaneously motivates the choice of clean technology and closes the gap to the upper bound; however, both low and high levels of societal environmental concerns may lead to the choice of dirty technology and significant welfare losses as compared to the centralized case. Supplementing the environmental taxation with fixed cost subsidies and consumer rebates can eliminate this effect, expanding the range of parameters over which the green technology is chosen and often closing the welfare gap to the centralized solution.     

Avoiding skill shortages in the new technologies

In many countries skill shortages are acting as a constraint on the development of the new technologies, such as information technology (IT), microelectronics and biotechnology. As the lead times to develop skilled people can be 5–10 years, the planning of future education and training provision to meet these needs can be extremely difficult. Drawing on current research in the U.K., this paper identifies the types of key skills needed to develop the new technologies and shows the critical role of higher education in providing the basic supply of skilled manpower. The extent of current shortages is considered as well as the likely direction of future demand. The past linkages between higher education and labour market demand are explored and directions for future policy to alleviate likely future shortages are suggested. The paper concludes that future supply and demand trends need to be monitored and better understood, and employment, education and training policies adjusted accordingly if skill shortages are not to be a recurring problem.     

Nuclear Risk Management on Stage: A Decision Analysis Perspective on the UK's Committee on Radioactive Waste Management

In 2003, the UK government set up a broad-based Committee on radioactive waste management (CoRWM) to look at the UK's policy on radioactive waste management with a view to jumpstarting a stalled policy process. The committee's brief was to come up with a set of recommendations that would protect the public and the environment, and be capable of inspiring public confidence. After consulting widely with the public and stakeholders, and drawing on advice from scientists and other experts, CoRWM arrived at a remarkably well-received set of recommendations. On the basis of our experiences of working on CoRWM's multi-criteria decision analysis of different management options, study of CoRWM documentation, and interviews with committee members, we describe the explicit and implicit principles that guided CoRWM. We also give an account of the process by which CoRWM arrived at its conclusions, covering four phases: framing, shortlisting, option assessment, and integration; and four cross-cutting activities: public and stakeholder engagement (PSE), science and engineering input, ethics and social science input, and learning from overseas practice. We finish by outlining some of the key developments in the UK's radioactive waste management process, which followed on from the publication of CoRWM's report, and present our reflections for the benefit of the risk and decision analysts of future committees that, like CoRWM, are charged with recommending to government on the management of technically complex and risky technologies, drawing on extensive public and stakeholder consultation.     

低碳技术组合应用下纵向合作减排的随机微分对策模型

在低碳电力调度准则下,基于考虑减排技术及其协同效应对低碳负荷需求的影响与电网公司购电的有限理性学习过程,建立了发电商采用3种低碳技术组合应用时的纵向合作减排的随机微分对策模型。运用汉密尔顿-雅可比-贝尔曼方程分别求得了Stackelberg博弈和合作博弈下均衡的减排技术投入、稳定的购电电量期望与方差以及Stackelberg博弈下最优的减排支付比例。考察了发电商减排技术的对称性及其应用数量对反馈均衡结果的影响,并对此两种博弈结构进行了比较分析。运用基于双向加权Rubinstein-Stahl讨价还价模型的利润共享契约使得决策系统达到协调,并将模型拓展到多种减排技术投入下的合作减排模型。研究发现:在一定条件和范围内,减排投入提高电网公司购电电量,同时发电商为此所带来的风险增大;合作博弈更适于优化电力市场电源结构,顺应低碳电力调度政策的导向;最优的减排技术应用、稳定的购电电量期望与方差以及系统均衡利润都与发电商选择的低碳技术投资效率、技术之间的协同作用以及数量正相关。     

How Much Uncertainty is Too Much and How Do We Know? A Case Example of the Assessment of Ozone Monitor Network Options

Limited time and resources usually characterize environmental decision making at policy organizations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In these climates, addressing uncertainty, usually considered a flaw in scientific analyses, is often avoided. However, ignoring uncertainties can result in unpleasant policy surprises. Furthermore, it is important for decisionmakers to know how defensible a chosen policy option is over other options when the uncertainties of the data are considered. The purpose of this article is to suggest an approach that is unique from other approaches in that it considers uncertainty in two specific ways-the uncertainty of stakeholder values within a particular decision context and data uncertainty in the light of the decision-contextual data-values relationship. It is the premise of this article that the interaction between data and stakeholder values is critical to how the decision options are viewed and determines the effect of data uncertainty on the relative acceptability of the decision options, making the understanding of this interaction important to decisionmakers and other stakeholders. This approach utilizes the recently developed decision analysis framework and process, multi-criteria integrated resource assessment (MIRA). This article will specifically address how MIRA can be used to help decisionmakers better understand the importance of uncertainty on the specific (i.e., decision contextual) environmental policy options that they are deliberating.     

审计合谋的一个博弈均衡分析框架

当前审计环境中,审计合谋现象普遍存在,双重审计制度可以看作是阻止审计合谋的一种制度设计.在分析审计合谋成因的基础上,建立了一个包括引入第二个审计师的概率因子、融合外部监督惩罚与激励机制的博弈模型,对阻止审计合谋的条件进行了均衡分析.研究结果显示,当外部监督惩罚力度强化后与适当的激励机制存在时,双重审计制度有利于降低对审计师的监督成本,从而为其实施提供了理论依据;从多期博弈角度看,这一制度还有利于削弱审计师的"合谋偏好",最终使双重审计回归到单一审计路线上来,节约对审计师的社会监督成本.     

"引进-模仿-改进-创新"模型与韩国企业技术学习的演进过程

韩国企业通过技术的引进-模仿-改进-创新,实现了自主创新和技术跨越,对我国现实发展阶段的创新型国家建设具有重要的启发和借鉴意义.本文以技术学习理论为研究基础,考察了韩国企业技术学习过程,分析了韩国半导体行业、汽车行业和电子行业的技术学习路径,构建了基于技术学习的知识创新过程模型,最后提出了值得中国企业研究和借鉴的地方.     

Supply Chains and Global Health: An Imperative for Bringing Operations Management Scholarship into Action

Many people in developing countries do not have access to effective vaccines, medicines, and other life‐saving health technologies. Shortage of health care workers, severe financial constraints, and lack of awareness are some of the major obstacles that prevent higher access. However, ineffective and poorly designed supply chains for purchasing and distributing the medicines, vaccines, and health technologies are one of the most important barriers to increasing access. We argue that the ineffectiveness of the global health supply chain can be attributed largely to: coordination problems across multiple stakeholders with widely divergent objectives, lack of careful supply chain design, and use of myopic operational objectives and metrics. The operations management research community can contribute to improving this by applying existing knowledge to the field of global health delivery and by researching new frameworks of analysis which would then become the cornerstones for policy advice to those who design, operate, or finance these supply chains.     

Technology Choice and Capacity Portfolios under Emissions Regulation

We study the impact of emissions tax and emissions cap‐and‐trade regulation on a firm's technology choice and capacity decisions. We show that emissions price uncertainty under cap‐and‐trade results in greater expected profit than a constant emissions price under an emissions tax, which contradicts popular arguments that the greater uncertainty under cap‐and‐trade will erode value. We further show that two operational drivers underlie this result: (i) the firm's option not to operate, which effectively right‐censors the uncertain emissions price; and (ii) dispatch flexibility, which is the firm's ability to first deploy its most profitable capacity given the realized emissions price. In addition to these managerial insights, we also explore policy implications: the effect of emissions price level, and the effect of investment and production subsidies. Through an illustrative example, we show that production subsidies of higher investment and production cost technologies (such as carbon capture and storage technologies) have no effect on the firm's optimal total capacity when firms own a portfolio of both clean and dirty technologies, but that investment subsidies of these technologies increase the firm's total capacity, conditionally increasing expected emissions. A subsidy of a lower production cost technology, on the other hand, has no effect on the firm's optimal total capacity in multi‐technology portfolios, regardless of whether the subsidy is a production or investment subsidy.     

Elusive Critical Elements of Transformative Risk Assessment Practice and Interpretation: Is Alternatives Analysis the Next Step?

This article argues that “game‐changing” approaches to risk analysis must focus on “democratizing” risk analysis in the same way that information technologies have democratized access to, and production of, knowledge. This argument is motivated by the author's reading of Goble and Bier's analysis, “Risk Assessment Can Be a Game‐Changing Information Technology—But Too Often It Isn't” (Risk Analysis, 2013; 33: 1942–1951), in which living risk assessments are shown to be “game changing” in probabilistic risk analysis. In this author's opinion, Goble and Bier's article focuses on living risk assessment's potential for transforming risk analysis from the perspective of risk professionals—yet, the game‐changing nature of information technologies has typically achieved a much broader reach. Specifically, information technologies change who has access to, and who can produce, information. From this perspective, the author argues that risk assessment is not a game‐changing technology in the same way as the printing press or the Internet because transformative information technologies reduce the cost of production of, and access to, privileged knowledge bases. The author argues that risk analysis does not reduce these costs. The author applies Goble and Bier's metaphor to the chemical risk analysis context, and in doing so proposes key features that transformative risk analysis technology should possess. The author also discusses the challenges and opportunities facing risk analysis in this context. These key features include: clarity in information structure and problem representation, economical information dissemination, increased transparency to nonspecialists, democratized manufacture and transmission of knowledge, and democratic ownership, control, and interpretation of knowledge. The chemical safety decision‐making context illustrates the impact of changing the way information is produced and accessed in the risk context. Ultimately, the author concludes that although new chemical safety regulations do transform access to risk information, they do not transform the costs of producing this information—rather, they change the bearer of these costs. The need for further risk assessment transformation continues to motivate new practical and theoretical developments in risk analysis and management.     

Socioeconomic Risk in Development of Energy Systems

A soft mathematical model, taking stock of the stochastic and cooperative features of the economy of thinking in the decision making, is aggregated to unveil hidden connections between energy policy and the energy technology choices of an establishment. Starting from several assumptions on the nature of the collective decisional behavior, one obtains a probabilistic interpretation of the mechanism of penetration of energy technologies. The probability that the establishment bets on a certain technological profile is given as a solution to a Fokker-Planck equation accounting for the decision game. It provides a topological variety that accomodates possible states of the system and their trajectories, and indicates ways in which different attractors drive the technology choice in the space of the energy policy.
In this framework, a series of concepts (i.e., logistic evolution, resilience, stability, risks of disruption or crisis, energy security) can find in a natural way strikingly intuitive interpretations. Strategic games are possible on this ground, confirming facts of life and also showing predictive power. The complex and difficult to manage interdependence between energy policy and technology appears as a challenge to the long-term planning of alternative energy systems. To meet the challenge, preparedness for changes through a large freedom of choice on the technological options appears as a necessary complement to the faithful observance of the market drives, which stresses the importance of having available perceptive, coherent, reliable, and responsible mechanisms of decision making.     

The Role of Interdisciplinary Analysis in Bridging the Gap Between the Technical and Human Sides of Risk Assessment1

It is readily observable that there is a wide gulf between the manner by which the lay public and the manner by which technical experts assess the risks of complex technologies and assimilate these assessments in decisions regarding the acceptance or rejection of technological options. On the public side, this gap in methods and value assessments is a major source of distrust of technical experts and disaffection with the social management of technology. From the viewpoint of the technical experts who introduce or regulate technologies, this gap is both a cauldron of frustration and a perceived justification for paternalistic technocratic decision-making that further alienates important segments of the public. It is the author's belief that unless our society learns how to progress in bridging these gaps within the framework of a comparative mode of risk-cost-benefit analysis of options, the potential net benefits of certain technologies such as commercial nuclear power could well be lost to our society. Research on public risk perception, while potentially an important component in achieving this objective, needs to be restructured from its present static orientation to meet the needs of forward-looking decision-making that accommodates dynamic learning processes of both the public and technical experts as well as the “learning curves” of technological improvements historically accompanying successful innovations. Moreover, no less attention needs to be devoted to improved benefit assessment along with ethical and equity considerations in decision-making involving the reconciliation of conflict between individual and societal interests. This paper examines the vital importance of interdisciplinary analysis in fulfilling these needs.     

Does the best practice of rational-style model-based policy analysis already include ethical considerations?,

This paper deals with ethics in the context of the real-world practice of operations research (OR), once an analyst has taken on the responsibility of carrying out a rational-style model-based policy study for a client. OR models are often used by policy analysts to assist decisionmakers in choosing a good course of action based on multiple (and competing) criteria from among a variety of alternatives under uncertain conditions as part of the policy analysis process. The paper suggests that if applied operations researchers (acting as rational-style model-based policy analysts, and not as policy analysts playing a different role or as policy advocates) use the scientific method and apply the generally accepted best practices of their profession, they will be acting in an ethical manner. It, therefore, describes the steps of a typical rational-style model-based policy analysis study, and specifies the tenets of good practice in each step. It also provides a list of questions and statements that the analyst and those evaluating an analyst's work (both internally and externally) can use to help make sure that the study adheres to the tenets of good practice for rational-style model-based policy analysis and remains within ethical bounds.     

Information and communications technologies, strategic asymmetry and national security

In the history of warfare, there are a number of examples of strategic uses of asymmetric technologies. Consistent with history and theory, individuals, organizations and nations have spotted opportunities to employ information and communications technologies to gain and exploit asymmetric advantages and to counter asymmetric weaknesses. This article discusses various asymmetries associated with institutions, nations and organizations that influence the ICT-national security nexus. Regulative, normative and cognitive institutions in a country provide various mechanisms that affect the nature of positive and negative asymmetries. Nations and organizations also differ in terms of their capability to assimilate ICT tools to gain positive asymmetries and deal with vulnerabilities of negative asymmetries. Integrative approaches that combine policy and technological measures at various levels are likely to make the world more secure.     

Industry and the environment: a case study of cleaner technologies in selected European countries

The aim of this case study is to discuss the role of technology in addressing environmental problems. The paper tries to scratch beneath the surface of the increasingly frequent ‘quick-fix’ solutions to the present environmental problems, based on such beguiling catchwords as Cleaner Technologies, Best Available Technologies, and Best Available Technologies Not Exceeding Excessive Costs, etc., in an attempt to discover whether there is any substance in them, or whether they are just full of hot air. Recent data from case studies performed by the author in Germany and Finland as well as a postal questionnaire in Denmark are presented. The paper analyses and discusses the roles and responsibilities of designers, industrialists, and government policy-makers. It is argued that existing regulatory regimes, supranational industrial structures, and market mechanisms do not favour the development of cleaner technologies, nor do they promote a reduction in consumption patterns. Evidence from ongoing empirical research in Northwest Europe suggests that industry is far from developing and/or implementing cleaner technologies. The paper closes with a discussion of some of the policy implications involved and some examples of urgently needed further research.