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Objective To identify whether a diagnosis of depression combined with rurality, compared with either depression or living in metropolitan areas alone, is associated with experiencing more stressful life events in pregnancy. Design This study uses data from 402 pregnant women (206 metropolitan and 196 rural), enrolled in the Western Australian arm of the Mercy Pregnancy and Emotional Wellbeing Study. Mercy Pregnancy and Emotional Wellbeing Study is a prospective, longitudinal cohort with women recruited during early pregnancy (<20 weeks) across 3 groups: those with diagnosed depression, those taking antidepressant medication and control. Participants Women were recruited from 3 metropolitan and 3 rural hospitals in Western Australia from 2017 to 2018 and 2018 to 2020, respectively. This study uses antenatal data collected at recruitment and during third trimester (weeks 32-34). Main outcome measures The Stressful Life Events Scale was used to measure the number of self-reported stressful events. The degree of perceived stress due to the stressful event was also reported. Results Compared to pregnant metropolitan women diagnosed with depression, pregnant rural women with depression were more likely to report experiencing at least 1 stressful life event. Despite this, pregnant women with depression in both regions reported similar numbers of stressful life events. Conclusions This study highlights women in rural Western Australia diagnosed with depression might be more vulnerable to experiencing stressful life events than rural women without depression and their metropolitan counterparts. Due to known adverse effects of antenatal depression and stress on maternal well-being and child outcomes, there is a clear need for targeted, preventative interventions for Australian rural women during this period.

Never before has the recognition of the need for solutions to the challenges of sustainability been greater. With a rising population of increasing wealth, we have recognised that humankind is “out of planetary compliance”. Or in other words, we are borrowing from next generations, each and every day, with the direct negative effects of raising atmospheric temperatures (global warming), poisoning of our land and waterways, and threatening the biodiversity of the planet – to name but a few. The response to these challenges is finally reaching critical mass. From Climate Summits, through United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, to Circular Economy campaigns, global action is happening. International associations, geographical regions, and individual countries are making bold moves to enact action against climate change. Measurements are being made on numerous sustainability goals. And the younger generation is successfully increasing its pressure on the incumbent world and industry leaders. But how can engineering systems interpret these agendas and make a contribution to sustainability transition? What is the potential of taking a socio-technical holistic view on large and complex engineering systems, with a view to improving its sustainability performance? This chapter provides a brief overview of key sustainability developments in the past, which have laid the foundation for how engineering systems can contribute to a sustainable future through holistic socio-technical design. It also provides some paths forward for engineering systems, but some of the paving stones are still missing, so this chapter is also intended as a call to action.

Engineering Systems Design is an emerging perspective with a growing community. The preceding chapters in the Handbook of Engineering Systems Design presented the engineering systems perspective, models for describing and methods for designing interventions in engineering systems, as well as reflections on the use of those methods and upcoming practice, educational and policy challenges. In this chapter, we are taking a look at the future of Engineering Systems Design. We start by highlighting productivity, sustainability and resilience as three societal objectives, and proceed to discuss critical paradoxes we must address through engineering systems interventions: providing a high standard of living for everyone, without paying the environmental price; a fast minimisation and mitigation of climate change without taking risks; and the challenge of global transformations respecting local needs. We continue to discuss what we consider three critical engineering systems design capabilities we must develop to resolve these paradoxes: the ability to manage systems requirements at societal scale; the development of scale-covariant engineering systems; and mastering connectability. We conclude the chapter with a call to action for researchers, practitioners and policy makers to advance theory, design methods and tools, and stakeholder outreach development to strengthen our engineering systems design capabilities., 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., Ethics & Philosophy of Technology

Uncertainty is the third major perspective in understanding and designing engineering systems, along with complexity and human behaviour. Risk, a corollary of uncertainty, is understood as the effect of uncertainty on objectives. When designing engineering systems, you cannot not manage risk - even ignoring risk equates to a decision to accept it. Engineering systems are characterised by long life cycles, changing operational environments, and evolving stakeholder values, leading to a wide range of uncertainties in their design and operation. Productively engaging with this uncertainty is critical for successfully operating and especially (re-)designing engineering systems. This chapter provides an overview of managerial practices to address the three levels of increasing uncertainty in engineering systems design: from (1) managing risk, to (2) managing uncertainty, to (3) managing ignorance. We differentiate for each level of uncertainty between two levels of value diversity: (1) primarily commensurate values (i.e. agreement on core values by critical stakeholders) and (2) primarily incommensurate values (i.e. no agreement on core values). The managerial practices we discuss are “classic” risk management, public engagement, scenario planning, robust decision-making, resilience, and applying the precautionary principle. In addition, we briefly illuminate the actuality of management practices dealing with the different levels of uncertainty beyond explicit, formal processes, the understanding of managing uncertainty as both modelling and decision support practices and personal and organisational biases in the context of addressing uncertainty., 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., Policy Analysis

Unplanned design iterations are considered one of the reasons for the high failure rate of new product development (NPD) projects. Generally, organisations employ ‘proactive risk management’ (PRM) and ‘reactive fast learning’ (RFL) to manage unplanned design iterations. This paper aims to explore how organisations employ PRM and RFL approaches to manage unplanned design iterations in the NPD process. To that end, a cross-sectional interview study was conducted in eight organisations. The interview transcripts were analysed as a primary data source using thematic qualitative text analysis technique. For PRM approach, results demonstrate that the design teams were more active in risk monitoring in the design phase as compared to risk identification in the concept development phase. Generally, design teams reduced the likelihood of unplanned design iteration risks by employing learning methods in addition to risk mitigation strategies. For RFL approach, results reveal that organisations lacked a structured approach to select suitable learning methods for fast resolution of unplanned design iterations and to convert new knowledge into organisational learning. We conclude that PRM is more established as compared to RFL in managing unplanned design iterations. We develop recommendations of how organisations can use RFL approaches more efficiently alongside PRM approaches.

Engineering-heavy new product development (NPD) projects face unplanned design iterations, which can cause failure in terms of missed targets for cost, schedule, quality, and customer satisfaction. These unplanned design iterations can be understood as the occurrence of a specific category of engineering project risks. As a result, companies employ structured actions to mitigate these risks in projects. However, even with such strategies in place, projects can still struggle to achieve their targets. This study aims to explore how companies employ risk mitigation actions to manage risks in engineering-based NPD projects. To investigate this topic, a survey of employees in the aerospace and defense industries was conducted. We analyzed the responses using statistical methods. The results indicate that risk mitigation actions are used according to thematic clusters, in line with our findings from the literature. Furthermore, the selected mitigation measures show collective explanatory power for handling engineering project risks, suggesting that while some projects that employ mitigation actions may still fail, their use of such measures does still reduce the overall impact of risks. Interestingly, the results of the statistical analysis show no significant difference in the employment of risk mitigation actions in engineering-based NPD projects, whether they employ waterfall or agile NPD methods, or a mixture of both. These results suggest that companies should consider all classes of risk mitigation actions to manage engineering project risks. On this basis, the wider contextualization of individual mitigating actions should be taken into account when planning risk mitigation for engineering-based NPD projects.

The objectives and scope of a construction project is defined in the early design stage, the fuzzy front-end. This stage is crucial for project risk management and success, but traditional risk management tend to focus on operational risk in later design stages. This action research study leverages co-design methodology and the project management actuality perspective to tailor a risk management process for the fuzzy front-end of construction projects in a large client organization. The co-design process help enchance stakeholder value perception of the designed solution.