Clemens Mader, Lorenz Hilty, Niklas Gudowsky, Mashid Sotoudeh, Transparenz normativer Orientierungen im TA Prozess, In: Gesellschaftliche Transformationen: Gegenstand oder Aufgabe der Technikfolgenabschätzung? 8. internationale Konferenz des Netzwerks Technikfolgenabschätzung (NTA), Fraunhofer ISI, Karlsruhe, 2018-11-06. (Conference or Workshop Paper)
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Jan Bieser, Digitalisierung bietet Chancen für den Klimaschutz, In: Swiss IT Magazine, 201811, p. 36 - 38, 1 November 2018. (Newspaper Article)
Durch die Senkung des Treibhausgas-Fussabdrucks und die systematische Erschliessung von Einsparpotentialen in anderen Sektoren könnte der ICT-Sektor bereits ab 2025 mehr Emissionen vermeiden als er selbst verursacht. |
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Gajendira R Sivajothi, Temporal Topic Evolution of Researchers Using Semi-Supervised Learning, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2018. (Master's Thesis)
This thesis documents the development of a new technique for bibliometric analysis of scientific publication corpora. The technique tracks changes in topic interest among authors over time in a structured and automated fashion. The technique was developed in three phases. The first phase was data extraction (including titles, abstracts, year of publication, author names and “ground truth” topic labels for each publication). The data were retrieved by calling an open source publication repository, arXiv. In the second phase, three alternative topic modelling approaches were used to generate mixture component assignments (latent topics) for each document, based on the conditional distributions of terms per topic: latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), latent semantic indexing (LSI) and the hierarchical Dirichlet process (HDP). In the third phase, two alternative approaches were used to automatically label the latent topics, using the terms that had been generated by the models in phase two. The first approach used neural embedding of vector representations of words (word2vec) whereas the second approach used a ranking-based statistical analysis (RB) of candidate labels for each latent topic, given its associated terms. Upon fine-tuning their parameters, the six combinations of topic modelling approaches (from phase two) and automatic topic labelling approaches (from phase three) were compared in terms of their performance. The results favoured a combination of latent semantic indexing (LSI) as the topic modelling approach and ranking-based statistical analysis (RB) as the automatic topic labelling approach. This combination produced topic labels that were closest in term similarity to the “ground truth” topics that had originally been retrieved for the publications in the corpus. |
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Yuliyan Maksimov, Lorenz Hilty, A machine learning approach to extract contributions relevant to sustainable development from a university’s open repository and archive, In: EnviroInfo 2018, Shaker, Aachen, 2018-09-05. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
The project reported here addresses the question whether it is possible – with simple means – to mine a repository of academic publications for those items that are potentially relevant to the topic of sustainable development. In particular, we wanted to test how well this works for a repository that covers a broad range of disciplines from seven faculties (Science, Arts, Theology, Law, Economics, Human Medicine, Veterinary Medicine). |
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Vincent A. Rüegge, Data Mining of Time-Use Data: Using Decision Trees to Understand the Impacts of Socio-Demographic Factors and Activity Patterns on the Time Spent on Work Travel and Commute, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2018. (Bachelor's Thesis)
On November 2016, the Paris Agreement entered into force with the goal to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. Digitalisation impacts GHG emission in two ways: A direct effect describing production, usage and disposal of information and communication technology (ICT) hardware, and an indirect effect describing the influence of ICT on patterns of production and consumption. Thus, ICT does change individual lifestyles through modification of time allocation (time-use). Consequently, such changes to lifestyles represent a major determinant of environmental impacts, e.g. the utilisation of existing infrastructure. In this work we investigate on how socio-demographic factors and activity patterns of individuals influence the usage of existing infrastructure, the latter expressed as the time spent on work travel and commute (WTC). We analyse data of the multinational time-use study (MTUS) applying decision tree algorithms implemented in the programming language R. The MTUS connects socio-demographic factors and activity patterns in a single, standardised dataset. Each participant recorded socio-demographic factors and the number of minutes spent on 69 distinct activities throughout a single day. From a methodological perspective results show that (a) using a binary target variable for WTC leads to the most accurate, i.e. best predicting models, (b) a combination of both socio-demographic and activity variables best predicts who spends time on WTC, and (c) reduced data containing either socio-demographic factors or activity patterns accurately predict who spends time on WTC. With regards to content data reveal that (d) the time spent on leisure and recreation activities best predicts who spends time on WTC from an activity perspective, (e) the family status as well as the type of household impact WTC time of women, and (f) there is no WTC on the weekend. |
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Roman Bucher, Anwendungen von künstlicher Intelligenz in der Bildung – Chancen und Risiken, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2018. (Bachelor's Thesis)
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has increased in recent years. In this paper, the possible implementation of AI systems in various areas of education is examined through three case studies: Duolingo, GoStudent and AltSchool. The case studies are assessed based on their relevance for Switzerland and their added value for the respective areas. Additionally, future scenarios describing possible outcomes for the next five years are presented in this paper. The future scenarios are characterised by various influencing factors such as the acceptance of AI systems, the attitude towards non-traditional methods of learning or legal aspects. Based on these findings a general recommendation is made, which, together with the rest of the paper, should make the topic intelligible for decision makers such as pedagogues and politicians. |
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Carla Coccia, The Impact of ICT on Health in Developing Countries: An Empirical Evaluation of Sub-Saharan Africa from 2006-2015, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2018. (Bachelor's Thesis)
This thesis evaluates the effect of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) diffusion on health. It examines aggregated, quantitative data for the period 2006 to 2015 in Sub-Saharan Africa. Four dependent health variables are determined, based on the Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) of the United Nations - "health and well-being for all" - namely under-five mortality, maternal mortality, HIV prevalence and life expectancy. They are regressed on cellphone subscriptions and Internet usage, employing a fixed effects model. The results show a significant, inverse relationship between ICT diffusion and under-five mortality, maternal mortality and HIV prevalence respectively. No significant association of ICT diffusion with life expectancy could be observed. The thesis finds potential in ICTs to help achieving the targets of the SDG 3.
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Jan Bieser, Lorenz Hilty, Assessing Indirect Environmental Effects of Information and Communication Technology (ICT): A Systematic Literature Review, Sustainability, Vol. 10, 2018. (Journal Article)
Indirect environmental effects of information and communication technology (ICT) are those effects of ICT that change patterns of production or consumption in domains other than ICT, or more precisely, the environmental consequences of these changes. Digitalization as the societal process of ICT-driven change has created increasing interest in the indirect environmental effects of this technology. Assessments of indirect effects face various methodological challenges, such as the definition of the system boundary, the definition of a baseline as a reference or the occurrence of rebound effects. Existing studies use various approaches or methods to assess a spectrum of ICT use cases in several application domains. In view of the large number of assessments that have been conducted, the choices made when applying assessment methods, and the variety of ICT use cases in different application domains investigated, we present a systematic literature review of existing assessments of indirect environmental effects of ICT. The review provides a state-of-the-art overview of the methods used in the research field and is intended to support researchers in designing sound assessments which yield significant results. We identified 54 studies in seven main application domains using 15 different assessment approaches. The most common application domains are virtual mobility (e.g., telecommuting), virtual goods (e.g., digital media), and smart transport (e.g., route optimization). Life-cycle assessment, partial footprint, and the “ICT enablement method” are the most common approaches. The major part of the assessments focuses on patterns of production (e.g., production of paper-based books vs. e-books), a smaller part on patterns of consumption (e.g., changes in media consumption). Based on these results, we identify as a research gap the investigation of ICT impacts on consumer behavior, which could, for example, focus on social practices, and account for the dynamic implications of change. Elaborating such an approach could provide valuable insights into ICT’s impact on society and the resulting environmental consequences. |
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Esther Thiébaud, Lorenz Hilty, Mathias Schluep, Heinz W Böni, Martin Faulstich, Where Do Our Resources Go? Indium, Neodymium, and Gold Flows Connected to the Use of Electronic Equipment in Switzerland, Sustainability, Vol. 10 (8), 2018. (Journal Article)
The increased use of digital information and communications technologies (ICT) is giving rise to fast-growing waste streams that contain important material resources. In contrast to bulk materials and precious metals, the recovery of most critical metals has not yet been commercially established, and they are thus lost within the recycling process. In this article, we used dynamic material flow analysis to explore the stocks and flows of indium, neodymium, and gold incorporated in end-user devices in Switzerland. Our analysis covered the use, collection, recycling, and disposal phases. This enabled us to track the three metals from their entry into Switzerland as components of new devices until their recovery, disposal in landfills, or dissipation to the environment. Using statistical entropy analysis (SEA), we further analyzed the dilution or concentration of the metals during their route through the current system. The data uncertainty was addressed employing a probabilistic approach. The largest quantities of all three metals are found in the devices currently in use. The second-largest stocks are slags disposed in landfills for indium, slags used for construction for neodymium, and the output of metal recovery processes for gold. The SEA illustrates how the current collection and recycling system successfully concentrates all three metals. While 70% of gold leaving the use phase is recovered, indium and neodymium are dissipated to slags after smelting and incineration processes due to the lack of economic incentives and lacking recovery processes on a commercial scale. |
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Stefan Holm, Oliver Thees, Renato Lemm, Roland Olschewski, Lorenz Hilty, An agent-based model of wood markets: Scenario analysis, Forest Policy and Economics, Vol. 95, 2018. (Journal Article)
We present an agent-based model of wood markets. The model covers softwood and hardwood markets for sawlogs, energy wood, and industrial wood. Our study region is a mountainous area in Switzerland that is close to the border, and therefore partially depends on the wood markets of the adjacent countries. The wood markets in this study region are characterized by many small-scale wood suppliers, and a mix of private and publicowned forests. The model was developed to investigate the availability of wood in the study region under different market conditions. We defined several scenarios that are relevant to policy makers and analyzed them with a focus on the two most important assortments of wood in the study region, namely, sawlogs softwood and energy wood softwood. The development of the prices and amounts sold in the scenarios are compared to a business-as-usual scenario. The scenarios were designed to investigate i) the influence of intermediaries, ii) the influence of the profit-orientation of forest owners, iii) the influence of the exchange rate, and iv) the consequences of set-asides in the study region. The presented model has a large potential to support the planning of policy measures as it allows capturing emergent phenomena, and thereby facilitates identifying potential consequences of policy measures planned prior to their implementation. This was demonstrated by discussing the scenario findings with respect to Switzerland's forestry policy objective of increasing the harvested amount of wood to the sustainable potential. We showed that a higher profit-orientation of forest owners would be beneficial for this objective, but also revealed potential conflicts of different economic goals. |
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Céline Spillmann, Technologische, ethische und rechtliche Analyse der Nutzung von Wearable-Technologien durch Krankenversicherer, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2018. (Master's Thesis)
Wearable technologies are increasingly used by health insurers to analyse the risks of their policyholders. Based on the recorded fitness and health data, insurance companies grant premium reductions or completely exclude certain persons with high health risks from insurance cover. This thesis analyses the use of wearable technologies by health insurers and the resulting questions from a technological, ethical, and legal perspective. On the basis of a technology assessment, the chances and risks are examined, potential future scenarios are developed, and recommendations for action are outlined. It can be concluded that ensuring data security and maintaining the solidarity principle within the insurance community are two vital factors for a promising use of wearable technologies by health insurers. The thesis shall contribute to an innovative and responsible future use of wearable technologies by health insurers for the well-being of society. |
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Maria Pouri, Lorenz Hilty, The Sharing Economy and Sustainable Patterns of Consumption and Production, In: ISDRS 2018 – International Sustainable Development Research Society Conference. 2018. (Conference Presentation)
Patterns of consumption and production are changing under the influence of digitalization. Some applications of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are even disrupting economic structures and business models that were believed to be unchangeable. The effects of the digital transformation may be positive or negative from the perspective of sustainable development. An obvious example is provided by ICT-based forms of the sharing economy, where sharing has positive effects in terms of resource utilization and cooperation of people, but new concerns are raised regarding the sustainability. The importance of sustainable patterns of production and consumption is explicitly stressed as ensuring it is one of the goals of the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Its importance can be also implicitly perceived, as sustainable production and consumption are interconnected with other goals – namely energy, economic growth, sustainable communities, and climate change. Although technological improvements in the ICT-enabled sharing economy allow for making less energy and resource use by enabling the sharing mode for consumption, which can also contribute to a circular economy, it is argued that sustainability-related challenges are not resolved thoroughly or at least not as expected. Some sustainability issues may remain yet with the sharing economy and some may emerge either as new challenges or already-known challenges that would shift from one area to the other. In our presentation, by relying on the existing economic literature on the way/extent that production and consumption patterns have been disrupted by the digitally-enabled sharing economy, we will discuss how/whether the sharing economy and the services connected to it can contribute, or have already contributed, to environmental sustainability by enabling a shift towards sustainable consumption and production. We conduct a qualitative study and adopt two main frameworks from the existing literature to conceptualize and orient our study. The first one is a theoretical framework for service sector that provides a useful tool for contextualizing the sharing economy in service systems. The second is a conceptual framework for the effects of ICT on environmental sustainability that we use for studying the environmental impacts of the sharing economy as a featured application of ICT in the economy area. The findings of our study suggest that sharing resources does not necessarily lead to less resource consumption. We find that some of the newly emerged consumption and production patterns would practically bring us closer to sustainability and some may drive us away from it by presenting new sustainability concerns and challenges, and that, in some cases, a combination of both scenarios is expected. |
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Roland W Scholz, Eric J Bartelsman, Sarah Diefenbach, Lude Franke, Arnim Grunwald, Dirk Helbing, Richard Hill, Lorenz Hilty, Mattias Höjer, Stefan Klauser, Christian Montag, Peter Parycek, Jan Philipp Prote, Ortwin Renn, André Reichel, Günther Schuh, Gerald Steiner, Gabriela Viale Pereira, Unintended side effects of the digital transition: European scientists’ messages from a proposition-based expert round table, Sustainability, Vol. 10 (6), 2018. (Journal Article)
We present the main messages of a European Expert Round Table (ERT) on the unintended side effects (unseens ) of the digital transition. Seventeen experts provided 42 propositions from ten different perspectives as input for the ERT. A full-day ERT deliberated communalities and relationships among these unseens and provided suggestions on (i) what the major unseens are; (ii) how rebound effects of digital transitioning may become the subject of overarching research; and (iii) what unseens should become subjects of transdisciplinary theory and practice processes for developing socially robust orientations. With respect to the latter, the experts suggested that the “ownership, economic value, use and access of data” and, related to this, algorithmic decision-making call for transdisciplinary processes that may provide guidelines for key stakeholder groups on how the responsible use of digital data can be developed. A cluster-based content analysis of the propositions, the discussion and inputs of the ERT, and a theoretical analysis of major changes to levels of human systems and the human–environment relationship resulted in the following greater picture: The digital transition calls for redefining economy, labor, democracy, and humanity. Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based machines may take over major domains of human labor, reorganize supply chains, induce platform economics, and reshape the participation of economic actors in the value chain. (Digital) Knowledge and data supplement capital, labor, and natural resources as major economic variables. Digital data and technologies lead to a post-fuel industry (post-) capitalism. Traditional democratic processes can be (intentionally or unintentionally) altered by digital technologies. The unseens in this field call for special attention, research and management. Related to the conditions of ontogenetic and phylogenetic development (humanity), the ubiquitous, global, increasingly AI-shaped interlinkage of almost every human personal, social, and economic activity and the exposure to indirect, digital, artificial, fragmented, electronically mediated data affect behavioral, cognitive, psycho-neuro-endocrinological processes on the level of the individual and thus social relations (of groups and families) and culture, and thereby, the essential quality and character of the human being (i.e., humanity). The findings suggest a need for a new field of research, i.e., focusing on sustainable digital societies and environments, in which the identification, analysis, and management of vulnerabilities and unseens emerging in the sociotechnical digital transition play an important role. |
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Jan Bieser, Lorenz Hilty, Indirect Effects of the Digital Transformation on Environmental Sustainability: Methodological Challenges in Assessing the Greenhouse Gas Abatement Potential of ICT, In: ICT4S 2018. 5th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Sustainability, EasyChair, Toronto, Canada, 2018-05-15. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
The digital transformation has direct and indirect effects on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Direct effects are caused by the production, use and disposal of information and communication technology (ICT) hardware. Indirect effects include the changes to patterns of production and consumption in other domains. Studies quantifying both effects often conclude that net effects (indirect minus direct effects) can lead to a significant GHG emission reduction. We revisited a study by Accenture on ICT’s GHG abatement potential in Switzerland by reassessing the main assumptions. Our results confirm that ICT has the potential to reduce GHG emissions in Switzerland, especially in the building, transport and energy domains. However, our results also suggest that the potential is smaller than anticipated and that exploiting this potential requires targeted action. Reasons for differences among these results (and the results of similar other studies) are: degrees of freedom in the assessment methodology, selection of ICT use cases, allocation of impacts to ICT, definition of the baseline, estimation of the environmental impact, prediction of the future adoption of use cases, estimation of rebound effects, interaction among use cases, and extrapolation from use case to society-wide impacts. We suggest addressing these methodological challenges to improve comparability of results. |
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Clemens Mader, Lorenz Hilty, Maria Pouri, Transdisciplinary approaches to technology assessment for evaluating opportunities and risks of the sharing economy enabled by digitalization, In: STS Conference Graz 2018. 2018. (Conference Presentation)
Sharing or exchanging things of common interest has been around ever since mankind exists. What has changed over time is the scale of impact that has exponentially increased with the stepwise implementation and use of digital technologies, i.e. digitalization. |
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Alexandra Cetto, Mathias Klier, Alexander Richter, Jan Felix Zolitschka, “Thanks for sharing”—Identifying users’ roles based on knowledge contribution in Enterprise Social Networks, Computer Networks, Vol. 135, 2018. (Journal Article)
While ever more companies use Enterprise Social Networks for knowledge management, there is still a lack of understanding of users’ knowledge exchanging behavior. In this context, it is important to be able to identify and characterize users who contribute and communicate their knowledge in the network and help others to get their work done. In this paper, we propose a new methodological approach consisting of three steps, namely “message classification”, “identification of users’ roles”as well as “characterization of users’ roles”. We apply the approach to a dataset from a multinational consulting company, which allows us to identify three user roles based on their knowledge contribution in messages: givers, takers, and matchers. Going beyond this categorization, our data shows that whereas the majority of messages aims to share knowledge, matchers, that means people that give and take, are a central element of the network. In conclusion, the development and application of a new methodological approach allows us to contribute to a more refined understanding of users’ knowledge exchanging behavior in Enterprise Social Networks which can ultimately help companies to take measures to improve their knowledge management. |
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Mishra Sunita Soumyadarsana, A Survey of Agent Based Modelling Toolkits Assessing the Ease-of-use, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2018. (Master's Thesis)
Selecting the appropriate toolkit to design an Agent Based Model (ABM) is reliant on either the modeller’s experience with such toolkits or previous surveys. Most of the previous surveys have focused on technical competence of the toolkits with only limited consideration for the ease-of-use aspect. However, ease-of-use could be the driving factor for individuals with an ad-hoc requirement to use ABM. To this end, this thesis presents an in-depth comparison of ease-of-use of three
prominent ABM toolkits (Repast, NetLogo and AnyLogic) using standardised test cases and participant survey. Various dimensions of ease-of-use attribute have been discussed and compared through the model development lifecycle. Aspects of the toolkits reflecting ease-of-use have been rated using the experiments and the survey. The relative positioning of the toolkits based on the tabulation of the results has been presented as a conclusion. |
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Kasper Christensen, Joachim Scholderer, Stine Alm Hersleth, Tormod Naes, Knut Kvaal, Torulf Mollestad, Nina Veflen, Einar Risvik, How good are ideas identified by an automatic idea detection system?, Creativity and Innovation Management, Vol. 27 (1), 2018. (Journal Article)
Online communities can be an attractive source of ideas for product and process innovations. However, innovative user‐contributed ideas may be few. From a perspective of harnessing “big data” for inbound open innovation, the detection of good ideas in online communities is a problem of detecting rare events. Recent advances in text analytics and machine learning have made it possible to screen vast amounts of online information and automatically detect user‐contributed ideas. However, it is still uncertain whether the ideas identified by such systems will also be regarded as sufficiently novel, feasible and valuable by firms who might decide to develop them further. A validation study is reported in which 200 posts from an online home brewing community were extracted by an automatic idea detection system. Two professionals from a brewing company evaluated the posts in terms of idea content, idea novelty, idea feasibility and idea value. The results suggest that the automatic idea detection system is sufficiently valid to be deployed for the harvesting and initial screening of ideas, and that the profile of the identified ideas (in terms of novelty, feasibility and value) follows the same pattern identified in studies of user ideation in general. |
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Yulia Muratova, Jakob Arnoldi, Xin Chen, Joachim Scholderer, Political rotations and cross-province firm acquisitions in China, Asian Business & Management, Vol. 17 (1), 2018. (Journal Article)
The underdeveloped institutional framework and trade barriers between China’s provinces make cross-province acquisitions challenging. We explore how Chinese firms can mitigate this problem. Drawing on social network theory we propose that cross-province rotation of political leaders—a key element of the promotion system of political cadres in China—is a mechanism enabling growth through cross-province acquisitions. We conceptualize rotated leaders as brokers between two geographically dispersed networks. We contribute to the literature on the characteristics of Chinese social networks, the effect of political connections on firm strategy, and the impact of political rotations on firm growth in China’s provinces. |
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Philip Hofmann, Cyberrisiken der Universität Zürich, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2018. (Bachelor's Thesis)
This paper takes a look at some current cyberthreats and catches a glimpse of the technical countermeasures implemented by the University of Zuerich (UZH). The theft of financial and intellectual resources has been identified as a primary potential motive for future attacks against the UZH. Based on these motives, three fictive cyberattack scenarios have been assessed, including a APDoS-, a Ransomware- and an APT-Attack. All were considered as posing a risk to the University. The author of this work recommends the establishment of an individual DoS-Protection-Strategy with SWITCH, the limitation of access right of students to access the inform database, and to limit the visibility of its Technews concerning IT-Security. |
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