Erik Thorstensen

Social Life Cycle Assessment as a resource for Responsible Research and Innovation

ABSTRACTResponsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is a currently important proposal for doing science and innovation with and for society. Sustainability has for the last 30 years had a similar function in providing limits and direction for societal activities, including science and innovation. In this discussion paper, we ask what RRI can learn from sustainability and how RRI and sustainability can strengthen each other, focusing especially on social sustainability. We suggest that the social life cycle approach of the United Nations Environmental Programme and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry may address the product aspect of RRI, provide resources for governance in the face of the problem of anticipation, facilitate a useful value-chain approach and offer several other benefits in an RRI perspective. Conversely, we show that RRI can complement sustainability models by more specifically addressing the responsibilities of the different actors involved in the research, innovation and ...

Integrated assessment of emerging science and technologies as creating learning processes among assessment communities

Emerging science and technologies are often characterised by complexity, uncertainty and controversy. Regulation and governance of such scientific and technological developments needs to build on knowledge and evidence that reflect this complicated situation. This insight is sometimes formulated as a call for integrated assessment of emerging science and technologies, and such a call is analysed in this article. The article addresses two overall questions. The first is: to what extent are emerging science and technologies currently assessed in an integrated way. The second is: if there appears to be a need for further integration, what should such integration consist in? In the article we briefly outline the pedigree of the term ‘integrated assessment’ and present a number of interpretations of the concept that are useful for informing current analyses and discussions of integration in assessment. Based on four case studies of assessment of emerging science and technologies, studies of assessment traditions, literature analysis and dialogues with assessment professionals, currently under-developed integration dimensions are identified. It is suggested how these dimensions can be addressed in a practical approach to assessment where representatives of different assessment communities and stakeholders are involved. We call this approach the Trans Domain Technology Evaluation Process (TranSTEP).

A Report from the Field: Doing RRI from Scratch in an Assisted Living Technology Research and Development Project

The transdisciplinary Assisted Living project conducts research within (ICT), health science, social science and ethics. The overall aim of the project is to advance responsible research and innovation (RRI) in the field of welfare technology. By adapting an RRI framework, the project aims to: (a) map how stakeholders and experts perceive the state-of-the-art of responsible welfare technologies, focusing on assisted living technologies (ALT), in Norway and internationally; (b) develop ALT solutions for users with mild cognitive impairment and dementia (MCI/D), through an RRI approach; (c) judge by an integrated HTA approach whether technologies introduced through an RRI process score better than currently implemented technologies; and d) create a wider dialogue on responsible welfare technologies for the future, reflecting on alternatives and options. In the project RRI is operationalized as involving four dimensions: (i) A specific focus on addressing significant societal needs and challenges, (ii) A research and development process that actively engages and responds to a range of stakeholders, (iii) A concerted effort to anticipate potential problems, identify alternatives, and reflect on underlying values, and (iv) A willingness from relevant actors to act and adapt according to 1–3. These dimensions are built into the project’s design in different ways. The project, funded by the Research Council of Norway, started December 2015 and we have by now had substantial experience with working with these dimensions in practice. This paper will describe the experiences with including needs assessment, engagement, anticipation, reflection and responsiveness in the project, after 1.5 years operation. The paper will highlight several challenges that have appeared in the project when doing RRI in practice, related to transdisciplinarity, communication, project planning and control, and quality. We believe that the challenges experienced in our project are typical of RRI projects, so it is important to create open discussions about the pros and cons of RRI projects in the community of RRI practitioners.

Responsible development of self-learning assisted living technology for older adults with mild cognitive impairment or dementia

In this paper we present work in progress in the Assisted Living Project – responsible innovations for dignified lives at home for people with mild cognitive impairment or dementia. The project has a distinctly interdisciplinary approach and engages experts in nursing and occupational therapy, in ethics and responsible research and innovation, and in technology, in particular automation and machine learning. Our approach is to involve the end-users, their family and their care providers and develop technology responsibly together with them. The technological approach employs self-learning systems to develop solutions that provide individualised support in accordance with the user’s values, choices, and preferences. The paper presents our approach, current findings and future plans.

Privacy and Future Consent in Smart Homes as Assisted Living Technologies

In the field of assisted living technologies, one central strand is to investigate how smart homes might fulfill ambitions for older adults to live longer at home. With the advent of the General Data Protection Regulative (GDPR), there are clear regulations demanding consent to automated decision-making regarding health. This contribution to applied ethics in the field of algorithmic decision-making opens up some of the possible dilemmas in the intersection between the smart home ambition and the GDPR with specific attention to the possible trade-offs between privacy and well-being through a future case, to the learning goals in a future smart home with health detection systems, and presents different approaches to advance consent.

New Czech & Certified Methodology „Tools of Resilience“

Abstract The article deals with possibilities of better governance regarding natural and anthropogenic risks and building of resilience of medium towns and cities against disasters. Such systematic approach could be applied for example using new Czech certified methodology “Tools Of Resilience”, which has been developed recently within the short project number no. VF20152016047 under the grant of Czech Ministry of the Interior in period 2015-2016 and afterwards certified in 2017 by Czech Ministry of the Environment. Basic starting points, used methods, steps of new methodology and its annexes, will be breafly described in the topic.

The Adequacy of the Frameworks for Ethical Assessment of HCE Applications

In the previous section, we have seen that there are several ethical frameworks that can be used to assess HCE applications and in Chap. 3 we reviewed the general ethical issues raised by HCE applications. We are now in a position to discuss which of the six above mentioned frameworks seem to fit best for assessing HCE applications.

Ethical Concerns in HCE: The Examples of Cognitive Enhancing Drugs and Noninvasive Brain Stimulation

In the mapping of ethical issues regarding human cognitive enhancement, we used a two-tiered approach in which we first carried out a systematic search, followed by the addition of references found in the literature identified in this search. We will here first present the two applications (or rather, areas of applications) that we focused on in our literature search. Then we will go through the main ethical issues that we identified in the search.

Ethical Governance and Ethical Tools

Ethically sensitive decision making is needed both with regard to general policies on human enhancement and with regard to specific enhancement applications. Science, technology and innovation policies may, on the one hand, be developed to support or steer HE technology trajectories in certain directions. This requires societal deliberation regarding the kind of innovation we, as a society, want to encourage. As we argue in Chap. 1, there is, on the other hand, also a need for ethical assessment of specific applications. This kind of ethical assessment will often have a regulatory or decision-making focus. This is the decision making level targeted in this book, where no framework yet has been proposed in the field of HE.

Frameworks Relevant for Assessing HCE Applications

As there are no specific frameworks proposed for addressing ethical issues at the decision-making level in HCE, we have been forced to search for relevant frameworks in neighbouring fields. It is then immediately relevant to look to biomedicine and biotechnology, as many applications that can be used for HCE purposes are from these fields: pharmaceuticals, surgery based applications and biosensors. Moreover, the field of bioethics provides a series of frameworks with a variety of merits. HCE applications may also be ICT based, indicating that the field of ICT ethics may provide relevant frameworks. In the following we will describe some frameworks from these fields.