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Knowledge engineering is the process of creating and maintaining knowledge-producing systems. Throughout the history of computer science and AI, knowledge engineering workflows have been widely used given the importance of high-quality knowledge for reliable intelligent agents. Meanwhile, the scope of knowledge engineering, as apparent from its target tasks and use cases, has been shifting, together with its paradigms such as expert systems, semantic web, and language modeling. The intended use cases and supported user requirements between these paradigms have not been analyzed globally, as new paradigms often satisfy prior pain points while possibly introducing new ones. The recent abstraction of systemic patterns into a boxology provides an opening for aligning the requirements and use cases of knowledge engineering with the systems, components, and software that can satisfy them best, however, this direction has not been explored to date. This paper proposes a vision of harmonizing the best practices in the field of knowledge engineering by leveraging the software engineering methodology of creating reference architectures. We describe how a reference architecture can be iteratively designed and implemented to associate user needs with recurring systemic patterns, building on top of existing knowledge engineering workflows and boxologies. We provide a six-step roadmap that can enable the development of such an architecture, consisting of scope definition, selection of information sources, architectural analysis, synthesis of an architecture based on the information source analysis, evaluation through instantiation, and, ultimately, instantiation into a concrete software architecture. We provide an initial design and outcome of the definition of architectural scope, selection of information sources, and analysis. As the remaining steps of design, evaluation, and instantiation of the architecture are largely use-case specific, we provide a detailed description of t

This paper responds to previous calls for a deeper sociotechnical understanding of Internet of Things (IoT) adoption within healthcare. Through a systematic literature review, it synthesizes existing empirical research on the factors influencing IoT adoption, identifying 94 distinct factors grouped into 24 themes. By leveraging sociotechnical systems theory, the paper thoroughly analyzes these factors and proposes a specialized sociotechnical systems framework tailored specifically to IoT adoption in healthcare settings. This study underscores the current dearth of empirical research in this area and emphasizes the need for more studies, particularly those focused on the actual adoption processes of IoT solutions in healthcare contexts. By addressing these gaps, the review aims to significantly contribute to the literature, offering a novel sociotechnical perspective on IoT adoption that complements and enriches prior reviews that have predominantly focused on technical aspects. © 2024 The Authors

Managing a system can be critical for its successful functioning. This is especially crucial for the socio-technical systems of systems (SoS) that characterize many of modern society's critical operations. However, the management of SoS becomes complex as systems are increasingly interconnected and the dependence among connected systems intensifies. This paper explores the current state of the art on SoS management and governance from a risk management perspective. Our findings show a higher focus on SoS management; however, many studies do not holistically deal with the SoS. Moreover, our findings indicate fewer studies in SoS governance. Hence there is still a research gap. The study contributes to the body of knowledge by adding insight into how risk management fits in these domains and provides direction on the possible areas of mitigating risks.

A socio-technical system of systems (SoS) is a collaboration of independently operated and managed systems. These constituent systems join the SoS to work together for a common goal: to achieve positive emergent behaviors such as greater capability, efficiency, resource utilization, reliability, and robustness. To achieve such a goal, an SoS needs to be well-managed with mitigation plans for all system risks. However, existing risk management strategies were developed for individual, non-integrated systems and are therefore inadequate for use with SoS. This paper uses the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden as a case study for exploring risk analysis for SoS management. We performed a risk analysis of this SoS based on STAMP (System-Theoretical Accident Model and Processes), an existing method from the safety domain, as part of developing a preliminary risk analysis process for practitioners. Preliminary results reveal that extended SoS structures, uncertainty-driven decision-making, emerging behavior, and changes in trust, policy, and legislation pose significant challenges. The study's contribution is that our findings provide a knowledge base to act as a guide for risk management of SoS. Applying a method for safety analysis to crisis management also extends the body of knowledge on methods for SoS risk analysis.

Technological changes such as the use of Augmented Reality (AR) along with the advent of new organizational changes such as digitalization are on the one hand positively changing the way of working but on the other hand they are introducing new risks, potentially leading to not only normal but also post-normal accidents. In our previous work, we have incrementally proposed a novel framework, called FRAAR, for risk assessment of AR-equipped socio-technical systems (i.e., systems integrating human, organizational and technical entities (such as AR)). We have also partly evaluated our framework via an industrial automotive study and by providing comparison and positioning with respect to other related works in a systematic literature review. In this paper, we conduct a new study to evaluate the applicability and effectiveness of our framework in a different domain. To do that, we choose a digitalized socio-technical factory system, focusing on the human–robot collaboration for a realistic diesel engine assembly task using AR-based user interface in an organization affected by organizational changes. Then, we design and execute our study to apply our framework and we discuss about the extent the conceptualizations provided by the framework are effective to capture the essential information for risk assessment in socio-technical robotic manufacturing, the extent the robotic safety standards are supported (to demonstrate the applicability of the framework in the robotic domain) and the extent of effectiveness of the risk assessment with respect to AR and organizational changes. Finally, we discuss about validity of our work and we provide our findings and intended future work.

This paper presents a systematic literature review of risk assessment methods in the chemical process industry (CPI), focusing on process safety, process security, and resilience. We analyzed peer-reviewed articles from 2000 to 2022 using the PRISMA methodology and identified twelve predominant methods. Our findings reveal a shift towards dynamic, systemic-based assessments like the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) and System-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP). These methods are particularly effective at capturing the complexities of sociotechnical systems in the CPI. However, a significant observation from our review is the limited emphasis on the resilience paradigm within many existing methods when addressing both process safety and process security risks, which is crucial for preventing and recovering from disruptions. Given the evolving challenges in system safety and security threats, there is an urgent need for holistic methods that integrate process safety, process security, and resilience. Our review highlights the opportunity for further research to better prepare the industry for future challenges, ensuring safer, more secure, reliable, and resilient operations., Safety and Security Science

The purpose of this thesis is to develop knowledge about visual information seeking and how it might be affected by socio-technical circumstances, with its focus on GeoGuessr players’ research through Google Street View. The study asks two research questions: 1. How do GeoGuessr players use Google Street View to do research? and 2. How can Google Street View’s socio-technical circumstances affect this visual information seeking?. Using information practices and socio-technical systems as theoretical frameworks, the study analyzes empirical material gathered from five interviews with GeoGuessr players with experience of doing research, as well as from literature offering critical viewpoints on Google Street View and Google Maps. The study has found that GeoGuessr players use Google Street View in the ways that are considered most useful to them and in ways that Google surely did not intend or foresee. These information practices are dependent on the context of the GeoGuessr community as well as the context of Google Street View and its socio-technical circumstances. It is common to research potential clues by inspecting a large number of locations and thereby mapping the occurrence of the visual phenomenon. Importantly, information sharing is common within the community and this affects what information other players might seek. Google Street View’s socio-technical circumstances may affect GeoGuessr players’ information seeking in at least three ways: 1. what images actually exist, considering the varied amount of Google Street View coverage around the world; 2. what these images look like and what knowledge can be derived from them; and 3. the features that are – or aren’t – offered on Google Street View and Google Maps.

This research looked into Algorithmic Systems used in the execution of the SUWI-law by executing agencies. It analysed the use and governance of these systems and their possible harms to citizens and society by means of an Actor Analysis and System-Theoretical Process Analysis (STPA), supported by semi-structured interviews. It aimed to answer the following research question: How can a systems safety perspective combined with an actor perspective be used to provide a sociotechnical description of algorithmic systems, their governance and possible hazards at agencies executing the SUWI-law? By means of the Actor Analysis, this research was able to describe the actor field and implications of it on the problem situation. The main insight from the actor field was the presence of ‘double binds’, several value conflicts that trouble use of AS. STPA, a method that focusses on safety of a system as a whole rather than individual components, provided the ability to map algorithmic systems within their sociotechnical context. It focussed on three hazards, which are system states that lead to accidents. These three hazards were the use of flawed logic in algorithmic systems, the use of flawed information in algorithmic system, and the flawed understanding citizens have of the role of the systems. They were explored through a Safety Control Structure, which displays controlled processes and those controlling them, and the construction of causal scenarios. Semi-structured interviews focussed on the governance of algorithmic systems, and possible improvements. They provided empirical input for STPA. The main contributions of this research are the proposal it makes for a sociotechnical description of algorithmic systems and their harms, using concepts derived from STPA. Such descriptions can be used to build shared understanding of algorithmic systems and their harms. It showed how such a description can be constructed using an Actor Analysis, int, Complex Systems Engineering and Management (CoSEM)

Using the PRISMA approach, we present the first systematic literature review of digital twin (DT) research in healthcare systems (HSs). This endeavor stems from the pressing need for a thorough analysis of this emerging yet fragmented research area, with the goal of consolidating knowledge to catalyze its growth. Our findings are structured around three research questions aimed at identifying: (i) current research trends, (ii) gaps, and (iii) realization challenges. Current trends indicate global interest and interdisciplinary collaborations to address complex HS challenges. However, existing research predominantly focuses on conceptualization; research on integration, verification, and implementation is nascent. Additionally, we document that a substantial body of papers mislabel their work, often disregarding modeling and twinning methods that are necessary elements of a DT. Furthermore, we provide a non-exhaustive classification of the literature based on two axes: the object (i.e., product or process) and the context (i.e., patient’s body, medical procedures, healthcare facilities, and public health). While this is a testament to the diversity of the field, it implies a specific pattern that could be reimagined. We also identify two gaps: (i) considering the human-in-the-loop nature of HSs with a focus on provider decision-making and (ii) implementation research. Lastly, we discuss two challenges for broad-scale implementation of DTs in HSs: improving virtual-to-physical connectivity and data-related issues. In conclusion, this study suggests that DT research could potentially help alleviate the acute shortcomings of HSs that are often manifested in the inability to concurrently improve the quality of care, provider wellbeing, and cost efficiency.

For a military organisation capability is a central concept. The definitions vary with different nations and organizations, but here the military capability is defined as the ability of a sociotechnical system to solve military tasks performed under certain circumstances in a set environment. To create new or develop existing military capability, military innovation can be a crucial piece of the puzzle. It might be innovative systems solving tasks in the existing organization or existing technology used in an innovative manner.The aim of this thesis is to create a structure for discussing technology, innovation, and capability in a relevant way, where the capability lifecycle presents an overview of the desired capability when planning for future compositions of technology and units, instead of focusing on the individual systems. Therefore, this work is governed by a thematic aim that at least requires a multidisciplinary research approach which contains different research areas to understand how the technical systems can contribute within its context.To visualise this context, different aspects of the system is here divided into three layers. The technology level represents the technology itself, in this case Maritime Uncrewed Systems, which needs to be understood with its opportunities and limitations. The system also needs to be understood in its sociotechnical layer where the technical system is interacting with people, organization, and other units. The final layer is the governance layer with both the legal and ethical considerations in the use of the technology, in this case, an uncrewed system.The overall conclusion is that capability development is not doing things the same way as before with different technology. It is about trust in the overall system and developing how the available resources, both technical and sociotechnical, can contribute to solving a task as efficiently as possible in an altered organization., För en militär organisation är förmåga ett centralt begrepp. Definitionerna varierar med olika nationer och organisationer, men här definieras den militära förmågan som förmågan hos ett sociotekniskt system att lösa militära uppgifter som utförs under vissa omständigheter i en bestämd miljö. För att skapa ny eller utveckla befintlig militär förmåga kan militär innovation vara en avgörande pusselbit. Det kan vara innovativa system som löser uppgifter i den befintliga organisationen eller befintlig teknik som används på ett innovativt sätt.Syftet med detta examensarbete är att skapa en struktur för att diskutera teknik, innovation och förmåga på ett relevant sätt, där förmågans livscykel ger en överblick över den önskade förmågan vid planering av framtida sammansättningar av teknik och enheter, i stället för att fokusera på det individuella systemet. Därför styrs detta arbete av ett tematiskt syfte som åtminstone kräver en multidisciplinär forskningsansats som innehåller olika forskningsområden för att förstå hur de tekniska systemen kan bidra inom sitt sammanhang.För att visualisera detta sammanhang är de olika aspekterna av systemet här indelade i tre lager. Tekniklagret representerar själva tekniken, i detta fall marina obemannade system, som måste hanteras med dess möjligheter och begränsningar. Systemet behöver också förstås i det sociotekniska lager där det tekniska systemet interagerar med människor, organisation och andra enheter. Det sista lagret är det övervakande lagret med både de juridiska och etiska övervägandena vid användandet av tekniken, i detta fall ett obemannat system.Den övergripande slutsatsen är att förmågeutveckling inte innebär att göra saker på samma sätt som tidigare fast med annan teknik. Det handlar om tillit till det övergripande systemet och att utveckla hur tillgängliga resurser, både tekniska och sociotekniska, kan bidra till att lösa en uppgift så effektivt som möjligt i en förändrad organisation., QC 230928

Over the last thirty years, suggestions for how to develop defence capability have developed rapidly. However, supporting theory and structured concept development lag behind. Despite this imbalance, countries need to continuously spend resources on defence development. This study identifies central challenges in relation to the scientific perspectives and approaches needed to support the development of defence capability. The results show that the support for developing interactions between technology and social components is especially weak and that relevant supporting theories and methods from related fields are not considered. This study also shows that it is important to be able to address these questions from various perspectives and not to be limited by a specific scientific tradition. Finally, this study also identifies a possible emerging cluster of reports on capability-related research that provide a base for a much-needed cross-disciplinary approach to the development of defence capability., QC 20230804

As artificial agents become increasingly embedded in our society, we must ensure that their behavior aligns with human values. Value alignment entails value inference, the process of identifying values and reasoning about how humans prioritize values. We introduce a holistic framework that connects the technical (AI) components necessary for value inference. Subsequently, we discuss how hybrid intelligence'the synergy of human and artificial intelligence'is instrumental to the success of value inference. Finally, we illustrate how value inference both poses significant challenges and provides novel opportunities for multiagent systems research., Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public., Interactive Intelligence, Information and Communication Technology

Values, such as freedom and safety, are the core motivations that guide us humans. A prerequisite for creating value-aligned multiagent systems that involve humans and artificial agents is value inference, the process of identifying values and reasoning about human value preferences. We introduce a framework that connects the value inference steps, and motivate why a hybrid intelligence approach is instrumental for its success. We also highlight the multidisciplinary research challenges that hybrid value inference entails., Interactive Intelligence, Information and Communication Technology

This study seeks to enhance current understandings of the risk communication challenges associated with theinformation-related means employed in cyber space to exert inappropriate influence, which frequently focus onparalyzing people and undermining stability. These means can be part of a hybrid warfare strategy located in thegray zone between the poles of peace and war, which indicates the long-term and subtle character of such a strategy.Maneuvers to conceal invasive interventions that mask activities, confuse responses, and disguise actual intentionsconstitute particular challenges. This paper presents the results of a literature review that applied a snowballsampling approach and concentrated on uncovering the threat landscape and recognition of the gray zone. The resultshighlight the emergence of information and cyber conflicts, including state operations and discreditation, along withspecific techniques, such as trolling and bots, in the Swedish context and beyond. The findings illustrate somechallenges for risk communication in information and cyber warfare and their implications for research and practice.

Workers in community organisations in Amsterdam and Bogota daily use smartphones for personal reasons. However, smartphone apps have been outside their organisational reach. Thus, our paper explores sociotechnical systems’ opportunities to bridge community organisations and female migrants to macrosystems such as healthcare systems. Our selected community organisations, Casa Migrante in Amsterdam and Kilombo Yumma in Bogota, were born out of serving peer migrants from Latin American and Afro-Colombian backgrounds. Their services provide support to female migrants who suffer abuse and poverty. Built on cultural practices and social structures of their own, these organisations live on the periphery of macrosystems. They struggle to be appreciated and integrated into macrosystems and digital networks. Thus, our paper highlights the core of their services, using asset-based design, and translates their social capital into sociotechnical systems such as smartphone apps. This is intended to reveal, consolidate and integrate their efforts into wider systems.

This paper examines how connectivity is accomplished in absence of a workplace. Connectivity is a theoretical framework to analyze how people connect and disconnect with each other through technologies. Digital nomads travel while they work, an example of workers who do not belong to a workplace or an organization. This absence of a workplace will affect how they connect and disconnect both within their work and outside work. An interview study with a grounded theory-based analysis found six themes that describe how the digital nomads interviewed connect and disconnect: first to and from a place, second to and from a place, and third two themes on how these patterns are reinforced. This is mobilized by a sociomaterial assemblage encompassed of more than just individuals communicating through technology. Previous research has focused on this, instead of focusing on the situatedness of connectivity. This contributes to research on connecting and disconnecting in connectivity and to research on digital nomads as part of a socio technical system.

By studying the early development stages of the free-to-play game Valorant (Riot Games, 2020), this research draws connections between game studies and recent platformization research. Traditionally, game scholars have treated the game industry as focused on selling premium-priced games. An alternative approach presents games as services that attempt to foster a long-term relationship with the player base. This paper zooms in on the latter, by studying the role of livestreaming in the service model of digital games. This sheds light on how service games can become intertwined with participatory modes of production, which benefits the longevity of service games. It points to a situation in which games, users, and platforms together make up one coherent system. The deployment of sociotechnical system scholarship identifies mechanisms that have been put in place to facilitate the interaction between users and platforms. With that in mind, this paper presents a qualitative content analysis of Twitch streams using a transcription method in which content creation is considered vital to the proliferation of the platform ecosystem. This work contributes to a growing body of literature bridging the fields of platform studies and game studies by taking into account the extended cultural practices and paratexts of both livestreaming and videogames.

Users of sociotechnical systems often have no way to independently verify whether the system output which they use to make decisions is correct; they are epistemically dependent on the system. We argue that this leads to problems when the system is wrong, namely to bad decisions and violations of the norm of practical reasoning. To prevent this from occurring we suggest the implementation of defeaters: information that a system is unreliable in a specific case (undercutting defeat) or independent information that the output is wrong (rebutting defeat). Practically, we suggest to design defeaters based on the different ways in which a system might produce erroneous outputs, and analyse this suggestion with a case study of the risk classification algorithm used by the Dutch tax agency., Ethics & Philosophy of Technology

This thesis focuses on how the implementation context for a surgical telementoringservice can be understood as a complex, adaptive sociotechnical system.Teleguidance was a service for remote surgical consultation in Endoscopic RetrogradeCholangiopancreatography (ERCP), a highly specialized clinical procedure.The solution had been developed in a participatory design setting andhad also been successfully trialed in a pilot study. It was to be deployed atfour additional hospitals, but differences between the implementation contextswould make it challenging to understand clinical outcomes, and could also affectmatters such as adoption.This thesis includes four papers which converge on user needs and the sociotechnicalimplementation context for teleguidance. The aim was to demonstratehow a sociotechnical systems oriented approach could be used to identifyfactors that could interact with the implementation. The first paper describesan investigation of attitudes and expectations among end-users and other stakeholders.The second paper shows how modelling the sociotechnical work systemmade it possible to investigate and proactively identify issues that might influenceimplementation and adoption. The third paper explicates methodologicalaspects of modeling the domain. The fourth paper describes a study designed tocapture early reactions to working with the system. Seen together, the researchrepresents a design science approach, that proposes that the implementationcontext can be viewed as a complex, adaptive system, and provides examplesthat show how focusing on user and stakeholder needs and wider context ofuse is a viable approach for supporting the implementation and evaluation oftelemedicine systems in complex settings., Denna avhandling växte fram ur ett större telemedicinprojekt vid Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset, Innovationshubben för vård på distans. Där hade man utvecklat en tjänst kallad teleguidance. Teleguidance utformades för att möjliggöra kirurgisk konsultation på distans i ERCP, en högspecialiserad endoskopisk procedur. Lösningen hade utvecklats i en deltagande designmiljö och hade också framgångsrikt testats i en pilotstudie. Den skulle sättas in på ytterligare fyra sjukhus, och en klinisk studie planerades för att utvärdera resultaten. Det var dock uppenbart att det fanns skillnader i hur ERCP genomfördes på de olika sjukhusen, vilket med stor sannolikhet skulle påverka införandet. De fyra artiklarna som ingår i avhandlingen är konvergerande studier om det organisatoriska och sociala sammanhang i vilket teleguidance skulle introduceras. Syftet var att ta fram en flernivåanalys av de faktorer som påverkar arbetet med ERCP, och som kan förväntas samverka med implementeringen av teleguidance. Det första steget var att undersöka attityder och förväntningar hos slutanvändare och andra intressenter. Det andra steget var att modellera det sociotekniska arbetssystemet för att undersöka och proaktivt identifiera faktorer som kan påverka implementering och införandet av telemedicintjänsten. Det tredje steget var att fånga tidiga reaktioner på att arbeta med systemet. Sammantaget representerar forskningen ett proaktivt tillvägagångssätt för att identifiera organisatoriska konsekvenser av att introducera nya digitala tjänster i en komplex vårdmiljö. Studierna visar exempel på tillvägagångssätt för att aktivt få en djupare kunskap av användarnas och intressenternas behov samt implementeringskontexten vid teknikinförande, vilket är avgörande för att stödja de anpassningar som krävs för framgångsrik implementering i komplexa miljöer. Resultaten är avsedda att bidra till området digital hälsa genom att ge praktiska exempel på hur sociotekniska metoder kan bidra vid design, impleme, QC 2022-02-02

As blockchain development continues at an ever-increasing pace, an increasing number of individual actors and organizations throughout entire econ-omies get into contact with the technology. Furthermore, the growing collabora-tion of companies, customers, suppliers, and other actors is evolving into a mul-tilateral network between the parties engaged with the technology. Therefore, to understand blockchain-based business models and innovations, it is necessary to understand human interactions within blockchain ecosystems. Consequently, this paper offers new insights concerning the role of human actors within blockchain ecosystems. For this purpose, the structure within and around the Ethereum-blockchain is analyzed using existing literature on the Ethereum ecosystem and Sociotechnical systems. The analysis results are then placed in their context and summarized in a framework for comparable ecosystems.

Fewer qualified platforms and reduced per-sonnel within the navy are the reality for many nations, although operational requirements might have remained the same or increased over time. At the same time, research is advancing in unmanned and autonomous systems, which have also found application in military use. There-fore, navies need to develop approaches for effective tech-nological transformation. To fulfil this need, this study aims to identify and describe the relevant research from different disciplines and their respective relation to the design of future navies. The study commences with a lit-erature review related to knowledge support for under-standing how emerging technologies, such as maritime autonomous systems (MAS), find their place in a military organisation. The findings suggest that the armed forces should be categorised as a sociotechnical system, built of systems-of-systems that together enable capability, and that it is as a capability enforcer that the overall system should be developed. This highlights the importance of structural and organisational changes in making the best use of the technology, as well as in making the sociotech-nical system as efficient as possible. Therefore, the armed forces need to be learning organisations, exercising joint planning, where there is room for knowledge sharing and flexibility within the organisation despite different hierar-chical layers., QC 20230223

This article argues that the sociotechnical context in which near-surface geothermal energy is embedded draws out its characteristic of being temporarily depletable. Thereby, the minimization of unavoidable side effects, such as cold plumes, which result from the social constitution of geothermal energy, is a crucial area of consideration. Using the situation in Germany as a touchstone, we discuss how cold plumes and interferences from neighboring ground source heat pumps test the limits of the existing regulatory framework, requiring negotiations between different knowledge sets stemming from areas as diverse as planning law, geology, cultural habits, and engineering. This makes the operation of geothermal energy highly uncertain and continuous negotiations on sustainable modes of extractions a pressing issue.

As the use of AI systems continues to increase, so do concerns over their lack of fairness, legitimacy and accountability. Such harmful automated decision-making can be guarded against by ensuring AI systems are contestable by design: responsive to human intervention throughout the system lifecycle. Contestable AI by design is a small but growing field of research. However, most available knowledge requires a significant amount of translation to be applicable in practice. A proven way of conveying intermediate-level, generative design knowledge is in the form of frameworks. In this article we use qualitative-interpretative methods and visual mapping techniques to extract from the literature sociotechnical features and practices that contribute to contestable AI, and synthesize these into a design framework, Internet of Things, Design Conceptualization and Communication, Ethics & Philosophy of Technology

This dissertation offers a conceptual framework that thinks about the political and cultural logics of computational media technologies using the term ‘rendering.’ Incorporating the wide variety of ‘computings’ that we already live with today (human, analog, digital, quantum), it investigates the politico-economic, aesthetic, and sociotechnical entanglements in the discourses around computer architectures over the last 150 years or so. This project, thus, is a foray into the political world of computers: the inner world—the insides of the machine, its components, its circuits—and the outer world—the world in which computers are developed, manufactured, used, and worn out. Touching, borrowing from, and contributing to the multiple overlapping fields—media studies, science and technology studies, history (especially history of computing technologies), political economy, literary and cultural studies, computer science and engineering, and infrastructure, information, and communication studies, to name a few—this project seeks to outline the ways in which sociocultural systems get encoded into computational hardware and software. In a somewhat anatomical impulse, this project starts by breaking apart the computer and taking up some of its constituent units one by one to provide politico-cultural histories of the machinic. Together, at a scale, the stories here show how ideologies become hardware, how hardware in turn shapes ideological positions, and why computing should be redefined and contextualized within its politico-economic and sociocultural milieux.

Resilience is commonly understood as the capacity for a system to maintain a desirable state while undergoing adversity or to return to a desirable state as quickly as possible after being impacted. In this paper, we focus on resilience for complex sociotechnical systems (STS), specifically those where safety is an important aspect. Two main desiderata for safety-critical STS to be resilient are adaptive capacity and adaptation. Formal studies integrating human cognition and social aspects are needed to quantify the capacity to adapt and the effects of adaptation. We propose a conceptual framework to elaborate on the concept of resilience of safety-critical STS, based on adaptive capacity and adaptation and how this can be formalized. A set of mechanisms is identified that is necessary for STS to have the capacity to adapt. Mechanisms belonging to adaptive capacity include situation awareness, sensemaking, monitoring, decision-making, coordination, and learning. It is posited that the two mechanisms required to perform adaptation are anticipation and responding. This framework attempts to coherently integrate the key components of the multifaceted concept of STS Equationsadaptive resilience. This can then be used to pursue the formal representation of Equationsadaptive resilience, its modeling, and its operationalization in real-world safety-critical STS., Aerospace Transport & Operations

As AI systems are integrated into high stakes social domains, researchers now examine how to design and operate them in a safe and ethical manner. However, the criteria for identifying and diagnosing safety risks in complex social contexts remain unclear and contested. In this paper, we examine the vagueness in debates about the safety and ethical behavior of AI systems. We show how this vagueness cannot be resolved through mathematical formalism alone, instead requiring deliberation about the politics of development as well as the context of deployment. Drawing from a new sociotechnical lexicon, we redefine vagueness in terms of distinct design challenges at key stages in AI system development. The resulting framework of Hard Choices in Artificial Intelligence (HCAI) empowers developers by 1) identifying points of overlap between design decisions and major sociotechnical challenges; 2) motivating the creation of stakeholder feedback channels so that safety issues can be exhaustively addressed. As such, HCAI contributes to a timely debate about the status of AI development in democratic societies, arguing that deliberation should be the goal of AI Safety, not just the procedure by which it is ensured., Information and Communication Technology

Many promising telemedicine innovations fail to be accepted and used over time, and there are longstanding questions about howto best evaluate telemedicine services and other health information technologies. In response to these challenges, there is a growinginterest in how to take the sociotechnical complexity of health care into account during design, implementation, and evaluation.This paper discusses the methodological implications of this complexity and how the sociotechnical context holds the key tounderstanding the effects and outcomes of telemedicine. Examples from a work domain analysis of a surgical setting, where atelemedicine service for remote surgical consultation was to be introduced, are used to show how abstracted functional modelingcan provide a structured and rigorous means to analyze and represent the implementation context in complex health care settings., QC 20220202

Human resources have been recognised as one of the most critical inputs in many organisational settings, including in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) contexts. The PPP program has been implemented in Malaysia since the 1980s to help the government provide public infrastructure. In a PPP setting, the public and private employees should work as a team to ensure PPP projects' successful implementation. Nevertheless, to date, studies on human-resourcedevelopment-- related issues in inter-organisational settings are still limited, including in the PPP context. The general objective of this research is to examine the relationship between identified socio (facilitator leadership, trust and commitment) - technical (interdependence, communications, and business understanding) factors and PPP success (PPP project success and PPP relational success). Proponents of Socio-technical System Theory have pointed out that the theory’s suitability in improving non-linear working environment issues is still questionable. Therefore, there is a need to examine the PPP working environment issues from an organisational development perspective by applying STS theory. Past literature has pointed out that many factors contribute to an organisation's success or outcome. However, different factors will contribute differently depending on the situation. The theory also underlines the importance of optimising the human and technical input factors in generating organisational output performance and the well-being of the human resources which produce the output. This study is quantitative research adopting purposive sampling. It examines the relationship between the identified socio-technical factors and PPP project success (satisfaction level on PPP project success) and PPP relational success (satisfaction level on PPP relational success). Questionnaires have been developed by adapting past studies measurement items. This research has used different measurement facets, scale anchors, and two

In the past twenty to thirty years, organizations have extremely changed and these changes in addition to technological changes such as use of augmented reality (AR) introduce new system risks. Post normal accidents theory describes that organizations are more globalized and digitalized and are formed as networks of organizations, which would lead to post normal accidents such as network failure accident. In addition, it states that strategies and organizational structures are more financialised and networked respectively and technology and task are more digitalized and standardized. These organizational factors affect also on human performance. Organization and human are considered as the socio parts of socio-technical systems. Metamodels should provide the modeling elements required for modeling human and organizational factors in new AR-equipped socio-technical systems. Current metamodels do not consider factors that would lead to post normal accidents. In this paper, we elaborate the theory of post normal accidents and we extract the influencing factors leading to post normal accidents. We also consider global distance including geographical, temporal and cultural distances, as an influencing factor on human performance. Then, we use the extracted influencing factors for extending modeling elements in our previously proposed conceptual metamodel for modeling AR-equipped socio-technical systems. Our proposed extended metalmodel can be used by analysis techniques in order to perform risk assessment for AR-equipped socio-technical systems. © ESREL 2021. Published by Research Publishing, Singapore.

Specifying a normative multiagent system (nMAS) is challenging, because different agents often have conflicting requirements. Whereas existing approaches can resolve clear-cut conflicts, tradeoffs might occur in practice among alternative nMAS specifications with no apparent resolution. To produce an nMAS specification that is acceptable to each agent, we model the specification process as a negotiation over a set of norms. We propose an agent-based negotiation framework, where agents' requirements are represented as values (e.g., patient safety, privacy, and national security), and an agent revises the nMAS specification to promote its values by executing a set of norm revision rules that incorporate ontology-based reasoning. To demonstrate that our framework supports creating a transparent and accountable nMAS specification, we conduct an experiment with human participants who negotiate against our agent. Our findings show that our negotiation agent reaches better agreements (with small p-value and large effect size) faster than a baseline strategy. Moreover, participants perceive that our agent enables more collaborative and transparent negotiations than the baseline (with small p-value and large effect size in particular settings) toward reaching an agreement., Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public., Interactive Intelligence

Workplaces in the oil and gas (O&G) industry have evolved to become part of the modern complex sociotechnical system that characterises onshore and offshore facilities today. The intense interactions between workers, systems, equipment and processes have made companies in this sector more productive. However, significant and complex risks have also emerged. Managing them requires a methodology capable of understanding and recognising how this entire sociotechnical system works. This research uses the FRAM to model the activities performed by drillers, from the perspective of their workplace, inside the drilling unit of an offshore oil rig—a complex sociotechnical system. The interviews, on-board observations and data gathering performed as part of this study provided information that was used to build a FRAM model capable of representing the real work done by drillers inside the doghouses on offshore oil rigs. Through this model, the variability of human behaviour could be analysed in the context of the different situations that may happen, enabling researchers to understand the specific demands of the work and the correlation between WAI and WAD that naturally emerges. This FRAM-based analysis acknowledges that human factors and non-technical skills are responsible for the productive and safe execution of the work in both normal and critical operations situations, and identifies the impact of this variability—positive or negative—in the execution of daily tasks. It shows that workers’ varied responses can properly deal with complex system demands both in normal situations and in emergencies.

The sanitation target of the millennium development goals (MDGs) was not reached and progress toward the sustainable development goal on water and sanitation (SDG6) is very slow. The lack of sanitation is especially persistent in cities in the Global South, as the world is rapidly urbanizing. This problem demands long-term fundamental transformations of urban sanitation services and infrastructures. This chapter analyzes the challenges and opportunities of innovations that have the potential to contribute to solving urban sanitation problems. The authors therefore use a sociotechnical systems perspective that draws on insights from innovation studies and the sustainability transitions literature. Such a systemic perspective enables the analysis of the interplay between technologies, infrastructures and their associated actor networks, and institutions and user and provider practices. The chapter presents the analysis of the case of sanitation in Nairobi, Kenya, building on qualitative data from 104 expert interviews. Based on the analysis, the authors show that innovative efforts should focus on improving alignments between the various sanitation service regimes in the city—for example, through making utility services work in informal settlements or improving collaborations in the efforts to scale on-site sanitation innovations. The chapter illustrates how factors hindering innovation development toward reaching SDG6 often go beyond technological aspects, but rather represent system weaknesses related to actors, networks, and institutional aspects.

Fatalities on board military vessels are the result of different types of incidents, including both accidents and antagonistic attacks. The aim of this study is to identify aspects that determine the safety and operability of military vessels from a sociotechnical perspective. Safety is studied in relation to four different types of operations: the Falklands War in 1982, antagonistic attacks in situations other than war from 2000 to 2012, submarine incidents from 2000 to 2015, and severe accidents involving military vessels in Norway and Sweden from 1990 to 2015. For the incidents analyzed, the study identifies qualitative aspects that contributed to the outcome and consequences of the incident and, if possible, the risk level. The importance of organizational and management safety issues, personnel safety issues and design safety issues are analyzed. The study shows that different operational types have different risk levels but, to some extent, the same types of safety issues. In general, risk is high when the ship is not prepared and managed for war; the recoverability, i.e., the ability to limit consequences, is an important safety factor in all of the operational types studied. The probability of an incident occurring is governed by management decisions, and the recoverability is governed by the capacity for effective crew actions despite limited management. The presence of external threats leads to a need for extra levels of system understanding, for management and for personnel., QC 20200922

The unsustainable levels of resource use and emissions of our economies and their threat to future generations are core issues of our time. The circular economy (CE) conceptualises a different type of economy that is restorative and regenerative by design and aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times, distinguishing between technical and biological cycles. The novelty of the CE requires the development of new analytical tools and methods as well as ways of thinking to understand its consequences. This research summarises four years of research on the topic of systems analysis and simulation modelling in the domain of the CE. Three topics were of major interest: First, what are the resource efficiency implications of a shift toward a CE? Second, what are the operational implications of a shift to a CE? And finally, how can systemic changes towards a CE be understood and planned? Four studies were conducted addressing the three research questions. The first study applies material flow analysis to a washing machine manufacturer case and looks at how different business models affect the resource flows of critical resources. It finds that service-based offerings lead to higher overall resource efficiency. The second study focuses on the implications of CE initiatives on the maintenance activities of a heat-as-a-service provider. It shows that the shift to service-based offerings requires service providers to face worse-before-better situations where long-term benefits offset short-term disadvantages. The third study is a simulation-based case study of laundry practices in Sweden. It compares a sharing economy scenario where a population shares washing machines with a scenario where the majority of people own the washing machines they are using. The results indicate that in Sweden and Europe in general, sharing has significant resource savings potential in the domestic laundry sector. The fourth study is a conceptuali, De ohållbara nivåerna av resursutnyttjande och utsläpp av våra ekonomier och deras hot mot framtida generationer är en av dagens nyckelutmaningar. Cirkulär ekonomi (CE) är en konceptualisering av en ny typ av ekonomi som är baserad på återställande och regenerativ design, som siktar på att behålla nyttan och värdet så högt som möjligt i produkter, komponenter och material, indelad i deras teknologiska och biologiska cykler. Nymodigheten av CE erfordrar utvecklingen av nya analytiska verktyg och metoder så väl som annorlunda sätt att tänka för att förstå dess konsekvenser. Den här rapporten summerar fyra år av forskning på ämnet systemanalys och simulationsmodellering i domänen av CE. Tre ämnen var av högt intresse. Vilka är de miljömässiga konsekvenserna av ett skifte till CE? Vilka är de operationella konsekvenserna av ett skifte till CE? Hur kan den systematiska förändringen till en CE bli planerad och förstådd? Vi utförde fyra studier för att undersöka de tre frågorna. Första artikeln använder materialflödesanalys i en fallstudie på en tvättmaskinstillverkare, och undersöker hur olika affärsmodeller påverkar flödet av kritiska resurser. Den visar att erbjudande baserade på service leder till en högre övergripande resurseffektivitet. Den andra artikeln fokuserar på implikationerna av CE initiativ på underhållsaktiviteter för en värme-som-tjänst-distributör. Den visar att skiftet till en CE kräver att möta sämre-innan-bättre-situationer där långsiktiga fördelar kompenserar för kortsiktiga nackdelar. Tredje artikeln är en simulationsbaserad fallstudie på tvättvanor i Sverige. Det jämför ett delningsekonomiscenario där en population delar tvättmaskiner mot ett scenario där majoriteten av population är ägare av egna tvättmaskiner. Resultaten indikerar att det finns en signifikant besparingspotential av resurser både i Sverige och i Europa generellt. Fjärde artikeln är en konceptualisering av design fixation till högre analytiska nivåer. Den identifierar exempel på fix, Der hohe Ressourcenverbrauch und das hohe Emissionsniveau, die mit der westlichen Lebensweise einhergehen sind ein Hauptproblem unserer Zeit. Die Kreislaufwirtschaft (zu englisch „circular economy“) ist ein alternatives Wirtschaftsmodel, das darauf abzielt, den Wert von Produkten, Komponenten und Materialien über deren Lebenszeit zu erhalten. Die relative Neuheit dieses Wirtschaftsmodels erfordert es, neue analytische Methoden, Werkzeuge und Denkweisen zu entwickeln. Diese Doktorarbeit umfasst vier Jahre Forschung an den Themen Systemanalyse und Simulationsmodellierung im Bereich der Kreislaufwirtschaft. Drei Fragen standen im Zentrum: Erstens, welche Auswirkungen hat ein Wechsel zur Kreislaufwirtschaft auf die Ressourceneffizienz? Zweitens, welche Auswirkungen hat ein Wechsel von produzierenden Unternehmen zur Kreislaufwirtschaft auf deren Betriebsführung? Drittens, wie können die notwendigen systemischen Veränderungen verstanden und geplant werden. Diese Dissertation basiert auf vier Studien, die unterschiedliche Aspekte eines gesellschaftlichen Wandels zur Kreislaufwirtschaft beleuchten. Die erste Studie ist eine Materialflussanalyse, die die Ressourceneffizienz unterschiedlicher Geschäftsmodelle eines Waschmaschinenherstellers vergleicht. Dabei stellt sich heraus, dass servicebasierte Angebote zu einer erhöhten Ressourceneffizienz führen können. Die zweite Studie untersucht die Auswirkungen einer Umstellung auf Heat-as-a-Service-Angebote aus der Sicht eines Heizgeräteherstellers und dessen Betriebsführung. Die Studie zeigt, dass der Hersteller in Situation gerät, in der kurzfristige erhöhte Kosten mit langfristigen Prozessverbesserungen und geringeren Instandhaltungskosten abgewogen werden müssen. Als drittes wird eine Simulationsstudie präsentiert, in der die Wäschepraxis in Schweden im Fokus steht. Mehrere Szenarien werden verglichen, in denen die Bevölkerung dazu übergeht, Gemeinschaftswaschküchen anstatt eigener Haushaltwaschmaschinen zu verwenden. Die Simul

Design for sustainability needs to apply a societal perspective. The purpose of this paper is to combine the concept of design fixation with higher levels of analysis. Design fixation is used to describe a blind adherence to known concepts during the design process. It is used mostly at the micro level of design with the focus on the activities of an individual designer or a group of designers. In this paper, design fixation gets conceptually lifted to the levels of the organisation and the institution. We ask how the understanding of design fixation helps to achieve higher resource efficiency. Examples of organisational and institutional design fixations are presented. A System Dynamics model is used to simulate the impacts of design fixation on resource use of a sociotechnical laundry systems. Applying this lens suggests that in order to solve societal design fixations, systemic parameters like infrastructure, business models, or policies need to be considered design parameters. The simulation results show that high-level design fixations can have significant impact on resource use., Funding agencies: European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska Curie Action 2016, grant number 721909. The APC was funded by the Linköping University Library.

The usage of autonomous vehicles is starting to appear in several different domains and the domain of public safety is no exception. Wallenberg Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) has created a research arena for public safety (WARA-PS) to explore experimental features, usages, and implementation of autonomous vehicles within the domain of public safety. Collaborating in the arena are several companies, universities, and researchers. This thesis examines, in collaboration with Combitech, a company partnered in WARA-PS, how the implementation of autonomous vehicles affects the sociotechnical system of a search and rescue operation during a drifting boat with potential castaways. This is done by creating a case together with domain experts, analyzing the sociotechnical system within the case using cognitive work analysis and then complementing the analyses with the unmanned autonomous vehicles of WARA-PS. This thesis has shown how the WARA-PS vehicles can be implemented in the case of a drifting boat with potential castaways and how the implementation affects the sociotechnical system. Based on the analyses and opinions of domain experts’ future guidelines has been derived to further the work with sociotechnical aspects in WARA-PS., WARA-PS

Ethics is inherently a multiagent concern. However, research on AI ethics today is dominated by work on individual agents: (1) how an autonomous robot or car may harm or (differentially) benefit people in hypothetical situations (the so-called trolley problems) and (2) how a machine learning algorithm may produce biased decisions or recommendations. The societal framework is largely omitted. To develop new foundations for ethics in AI, we adopt a sociotechnical stance in which agents (as technical entities) help autonomous social entities or principals (people and organizations). This multiagent conception of a sociotechnical system (STS) captures how ethical concerns arise in the mutual interactions of multiple stakeholders. These foundations would enable us to realize ethical STSs that incorporate social and technical controls to respect stated ethical postures of the agents in the STSs. The envisioned foundations require new thinking, along two broad themes, on how to realize (1) an STS that reflects its stakeholders' values and (2) individual agents that function effectively in such an STS., Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public., Interactive Intelligence

Ethics is inherently a multiagent concern. However, research on AI ethics today is dominated by work on individual agents: (1) how an autonomous robot or car may harm or (differentially) benefit people in hypothetical situations (the so-called trolley problems) and (2) how a machine learning algorithm may produce biased decisions or recommendations. The societal framework is largely omitted. To develop new foundations for ethics in AI, we adopt a sociotechnical stance in which agents (as technical entities) help autonomous social entities or principals (people and organizations). This multiagent conception of a sociotechnical system (STS) captures how ethical concerns arise in the mutual interactions of multiple stakeholders. These foundations would enable us to realize ethical STSs that incorporate social and technical controls to respect stated ethical postures of the agents in the STSs. The envisioned foundations require new thinking, along two broad themes, on how to realize (1) an STS that reflects its stakeholders’ values and (2) individual agents that function effectively in such an STS., Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public., Interactive Intelligence

The Dutch civil engineering sector is facing a large-scale rehabilitation assignment of their civilengineering structures, that consists of complex projects that lead to cost overruns and time delays. As a consequencethereof, the sector as a whole must realise a productivity growth to match the required capacity and complexity.Criteria such as innovation, knowledge dissemination and digitisation have a positive effect on productivity growth.However, barriers such as current rules & regulation, individual interests and short-term competition result incollective action problems. Furthermore, the sector is characterised as a polycentric system that consists of multipleautonomous yet interdependent public and private actors with diverging interest. These aspects the challenges of therehabilitation assignment. Therefore, there is a need for governance and coordination that is able to facilitatecollective action. This article presents a novel conceptual framework of governance and coordination is that is ableto address the challenges of the rehabilitation assignment. More specifically, the framework combines programmemanagement, process management, polycentric systems, hybrid organisational structures and participatory systemsto facilitate collective action., Complex Systems Engineering and Management (CoSEM)

Inadequate water infrastructural development and high costs of water are few of the many challenges that affect water access in Kibera. Consequently, many alternatives to piped water grew out of necessity to meet the needs of residents. The aim of this thesis is to examine the conditions that have led to poor water provision in Kibera and how transitions to improved water access can be achieved by looking at technologies such as M-maji that seek to improve water access. This thesis seeks to answer, one, how can Kibera achieve a transition towards improved water access? And two, how do users of M-maji perceive this technology for their water needs? The findings of the thesis were analysed using theoretical constructs from transition theory and political ecology. A qualitative case study was carried out in which 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted. Findings from the data indicate that governance failure contributed to the challenges of water access in Kibera, socio-political dynamics that prevented extension of services to residents, and disincentives for households to connect to infrastructure such as high connection fees. Additionally, integration of household technologies like M-maji can contribute to improved water access and ultimately, that different technologies can coexist to achieve transitions to improved water access.

In the contemporary context of public health, information and communication technologies, known as eHealth, have become a first-hand tool to carry out interventions for the population. Despite the boom, its effectiveness is often unknown. In this sense, literature on methods and approaches used in biomedical technologies to assess the digital technological impact has begun to be imported. However, eHealth incorporates qualities of its digital nature that represent new challenges in the social and technical relationships it establishes with the environment. This raises the question of what would be the particular characteristics of a comprehensive assessment of these interventions. To that end, scientific database publications were reviewed between 2010 and 2017 on health information technology assessment to analyze the characteristics to consider when evaluating eHealth interventions. From 520 articles identified, three models were selected that presented a broad perspective for eHealth assessment beyond impact. Although different in their epistemic stances, they included different domains of interventions: technological, social, economic, political and sanitary, with a broader perspective than the traditional biomedical assessment. However, the models still instrumentalize the relationship between technology and society/context and leave gaps in how to operationalize them on the ground. This work seeks to become a document of reference and reflection for designers and/or evaluators of information technologies in health, with a final recommendation: not everything that shines is gold, and sometimes gold doesn't even shine., En el escenario contemporáneo de la salud pública, las tecnologías de información y comunicación, denominadas eSalud, se han convertido en herramientas privilegiadas para acompañar intervenciones poblacionales. Pese al auge, su efectividad es frecuentemente desconocida. En ese sentido, se ha empezado a importar literatura sobre métodos y enfoques utilizados en tecnologías biomédicas para evaluar el impacto tecnológico digital. Pero la eSalud incorpora cualidades de su naturaleza digital que representan nuevos retos en las relaciones sociales y técnicas que establece con el entorno. Esto plantea entonces, la pregunta por cuáles serían las características particulares de una evaluación comprensiva de estas intervenciones. Con ese fin, se revisaron publicaciones de bases de datos científicas entre 2010 y 2017 sobre evaluación de tecnologías de información en salud para analizar las características a considerar cuando se evalúan intervenciones de eSalud. De 520 artículos identificados, se seleccionaron tres modelos que presentaron una perspectiva amplia para la evaluación de eSalud más allá del impacto. Aunque diferentes en sus apuestas epistémicas, estos incluyeron distintos dominios de las intervenciones: tecnológico, social, económico, político y sanitario, con una perspectiva más amplia que la de la tradicional evaluación biomédica. De todos modos, los modelos aún instrumentalizan la relación de la tecnología con la sociedad/contexto y dejan vacíos sobre cómo operacionalizarlos en terreno. Este trabajo busca constituirse en un documento de referencia y reflexión para diseñadores y/o evaluadores de tecnologías de información en salud, con una recomendación final: no todo lo que brilla es oro y, a veces, el oro ni siquiera brilla.

Sociotechnical systems (STSs) rely on the collaboration between humans and autonomous decision-making units to fulfill their objectives. Highly intertwined social and technical contextual factors influence the collaboration between these human and engineered elements, and consequently the performance characteristics of the STS. In the next two decades, the role allocated to STSs in our society will drastically increase. Thus, the effective design of STSs requires an improved understanding of the human-autonomy interdependency. This dissertation brings together management science along with systems thinking and uses a mixed-methods approach to investigate the interdependencies between people and the autonomous systems they collaborate within complex socio-technical enterprises. The dissertation is organized in three mutually exclusive essays, each investigating a distinct facet of STSs: safe management, collaboration, and efficiency measurement. The first essay investigates the amount of work allocated to safety-critical decision makers and quantifies Rasmussen's workload boundary that represents the limit of attainable workload. The major contribution of this study is to quantify the qualitative theoretical construct of the workload boundary through a Pareto-Koopmans frontier. This frontier allows one to capture the aggregate impact of the social and technical factors that originate from operational conditions on workload. The second essay studies how teams of humans and their autonomous partners share work, given their subjective preferences and contextual operational conditions. This study presents a novel integration of machine learning algorithms in an efficiency measurement framework to understand the influence of contextual factors. The results demonstrate that autonomous units successfully handle relatively simple operational conditions, while complex operational conditions require both workers and their autonomous counterparts to collaborate towards common o

Net activism shows how easily available tools allow the organization of social movements to be scaled up and extended globally. These media ecologies enable new forms of power. This one-day workshop gathers researchers focusing on the collaborative efforts within social movements, looking into the socio-technical systems; the organization of activism; the relations between traditional and social media; and the complex network of systems, information, people, values, theories, histories, ideologies and aesthetics underlying various types of activism. The workshop consists of brainstorming sessions where we materialize the intangible and develop our theories and ideas further through a collaborative design process.

New technologies, such as augmented reality (AR) are used to enhance human capabilities and extend human functioning; nevertheless they may cause distraction and incorrect human functioning. Systems including socio entities (such as human) and technical entities (such as augmented reality) are called socio-technical systems. In order to do risk assessment in such systems, considering new dependability threats caused by augmented reality is essential, for example failure of an extended human function is a new type of dependability threat introduced to the system because of new technologies. In particular, it is required to identify these new dependability threats and extend modeling and analyzing techniques to be able to uncover their potential impacts. This research aims at providing a framework for risk assessment in AR-equipped socio-technical systems by identifying AR-extended human failures and AR-caused faults leading to human failures. Our work also extends modeling elements in an existing metamodel for modeling socio-technical systems, to enable AR-relevant dependability threats modeling. This extended metamodel is expected to be used for extending analysis techniques to analyze AR-equipped socio-technical systems.