Graham Spinardi and Donald MacKenzie have been awarded a three year ESRC grant for a project entitled ‘Revolution in the Sky? Commercial Airliner Technology and the Greening of Air Travel’.

This research will address the need for major environmental improvements in passenger aircraft technology. More fuel-efficient technologies include turboprop engines, flying wing airframes, and the use of lighter structural materials such as carbon fibre. However, these have either been introduced very slowly (carbon fibre), only used for certain short-haul routes (turboprop engines), or have not been used at all (flying wings).

It appears that these technologies have not been widely adopted because they do not fit easily within an approach based on incremental improvement of the classic airliner dominant design - a tube-shaped fuselage with swept wings, made of aluminium and powered by turbofan engines under the wings. This project will draw on interviews and archival research to understand the development of the dominant design and the neglect of more environmentally-friendly alternatives. It will address the issue of why certain technologies get 'locked-in' to incremental improvement whilst alternative approaches are neglected. This analysis will investigate the processes that favour incremental technological change over radical innovation, and provide insight into what policy options might overcome this resistance and thus speed up the transition to less polluting airliner technologies.

Researchers: Dr Graham Spinardi; Prof Donald MacKenzie

Contact: Dr Graham Spinardi

Keywords: (None)

Innogen II is the second 5-year phase of the ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics. It is part of the ESRC Genomics Network , three Centres across the UK studying the evolution of genomics and life sciences and their far-reaching social and economic implications.

Innogen is based at the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with the Open University, and is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The researchers working at the Innogen Centre include social scientists, economists, and lawyers. The Centre also engages with a wide range of stakeholders, nationally and internationally, including scientists, industry and private interest groups, policy makers and regulators, and citizens and public interest groups. Innogen coordinates a number of research projects.

Researchers: Lara Crossland; Dr Alessandro Rosiello; Dr Gill Haddow; Dr James Mittra; Dr James Smith; Dr Jane Calvert; Dr Sarah Parry; Dr Xiaobai Shen; Mr Shawn Harmon; Mrs Ann Bruce; Prof David Wield; Prof Donald MacKenzie; Prof Joyce Tait; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Prof Dave Wield

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

Fire safety is a product of complex interactions between the physical built environment and the social practices, perceptions and performance of people and organisations (occupiers, fire services, regulators and specialists etc.).  While there have been significant technical advances in fire safety engineering, further progress will be limited unless we can overcome various cultural and institutional barriers and ensure these improvements are more widely adopted.

The University of Edinburgh, The Ove Arup Foundation and the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) are therefore jointly supporting an interdisciplinary programme of social-science research geared towards improving fire safety and the quality of the built environment by better interaction and integration of social scientific and engineering research.

Prevailing fire safety cultures may privilege tackling fires over tackling fire-risks, reinforce the design of constructions for response rather than safety, and empower fire fighting over fire prevention. Fire safety engineering has progressed considerably over the past 50 years, evolving into a multifaceted field that now includes the detailed study of materials, fire behaviour, and structural dynamics that, when assessed enhance decision-making before and after fires. As a discipline that has an established tradition of engagement with the technicalities of fire safety, fire safety engineering provides one of the most recognisable tools for designing the spaces for the future. However, for fire safety to reach its full public potential it requires to establish close collaborative links with other expert fields, including law and regulation, architecture, and the social sciences.

This initiative, entitled Integrating Technical and Social Aspects of Fire Safety Engineering Expertise (ITSAFE), seeks to identify novel ways of enhancing the achievements of fire safety engineering in creating an safe, equitable, sustainable and efficient future for Britain’s built environment. It will explore how current institutional and regulatory barriers may be overcome, for example, by changing legislation, enforcement and professional culture and practice in ways that could promote fire safety as an integral component of a more attractive built environment, also addressing for example sustainability and security goals. Drawing upon a wealth of social scientific research into the identification and governance of technological risk it will generate important insights that can inform and improve policy and practice.

Researchers: Liam Ross; Dr Luke Bisby; Prof Donald MacKenzie; Prof Jose Torero; Prof Remo Pedreschi; Prof Robin Williams; Prof Steve Yearley

Contact: Prof Robin Williams

Keywords: (None)

This project is funded by the European Commission 7th Framework Future Internet Research Environment programme.  The objectives of the MyFIRE project is Multidisciplinary networking of research communities addressing both technological and socio-economic and environmental aspects of the Future Internet and on Coordination of research experience and user-driven open innovation activities establishing common concepts, roadmaps, methodologies and tools, including the sharing of best practices across pilots and sectors.

MyFIRE project develops the efficient mechanisms of test beds process to make it more effective and used. MyFIRE identifies the user communities and their needs for improving research value of the huge investments in FIRE testbeds. MyFIRE develops a unique and new approach addressing how to optimize the design, setting up and use of the experimental test facilities by increasing awareness on economic data and technical test-beds related best practices.

The MyFIRE project will apply a tried methodology which its partners have had considerable success with in Support Action projects before. The approach is to create a support environment, which enables key stakeholders to focus on the central question, develop consensus and collectively develop and agree on best practice for testing facilities across the scientific community in the development of future open experimental services.

MyFIRE project will create an open test facility environment by providing the technical awareness creation for the development of best practices for experimental facilities in Europe in collaboration with international partners reflecting the balance between the requirement for strong collaboration and the stakeholders expectation for achieving the good experimental activities to develop the sustainable testing methodologies contributing to European standards development. The framework will be developing through the creation of open dialogue between the ICT networking research communities and experts from key areas of sociology, policy makers, economic models and standards.

Project partners include Inno Consulting, ETSI, Fraunhofer, and major Internet research facilities in China, India, Brazil and Russia

Researchers: Dr James Stewart; Dr Philip Inglesant

Contact: Dr Philip Inglesant

Keywords: (None)

NSeaSEP is funded under the EU's INTERREG IVb North Sea programme. It brings together partners from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Scotland to examine new organisational forms and governance for local sustainable energy initiatives and to pursue a range of local projects aimed at local coordination of renewable energy and energy efficiency measures.

The project will develop and promote: • baseline studies and energy analyses of each participating region • model local/regional energy scenarios, strategies and roadmaps • innovative forms of local/regional organisation, cooperation and private-public partnership • new business models for local/regional energy industries and markets, and new procedures for supply-chain management • sustainable energy evaluation methods, criteria, quality indicators and benchmarks • a range of practical tools and processes for energy planning, including GIS techniques, photogrammetric plotting, and analysis of different insulation techniques • web-based tools for cost benefit analysis • a wiki platform and discussion forums to share case studies and best practice

Researchers: Dr Dave Hawkey; Dr Stewart Russell

Contact: Prof Robin Williams

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

The role of knowledge in the construction and regulation of health and education policy in Europe: convergences and specificities among nations and sectors

This study aims to identify and understand the informational, cognitive and intellectual basis of mental health policy making in Scotland, exploring the ways of thinking which inform government.

The work is funded by the European Commission and carried out by the University of Edinburgh.

Project team: Steve Sturdy, Richard Freeman, Jennifer Smith.

Start date of project: 01/10/2006. Duration: 5 years.

We are interested in three aspects of the relationship between knowledge and policy:

• What do policy makers know and how do they know it?

• How do they use what they know from different sources in making decisions?

• How do they use different kinds of information to govern mental health?

Our research method consists principally of (i) documentary analysis and (ii) elite interviews with policy makers and other key actors. Project outcomes include a research report, a series of policy briefings as well as academic publications, a documentary archive and a series of public seminars with policy makers and others.

Our work is part of the bigger, integrated European project KNOWandPOL, which will last five years, covering health and education policy in eight countries and at local, national and international levels. In Scotland, our partners are Jenny Ozga and Martin Lawn of the Centre for Educational Sociology, University of Edinburgh. The project is directed by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Solidarity and Social Innovation at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.

Researchers: Dr Steve Sturdy

Contact: Dr Jen Smith

Keywords: Health Care, Policy

The project will research two closely related issues. The first is how the properties of the particular complex financial instruments on which it will focus (which are known as “multi-name credit derivatives”) were and are understood.

Even the most experienced market participant cannot value such an instrument simply by reading its prospectus. We will examine questions such as how mathematical modelling has developed and how it has been and is used, e.g. by banks, hedge funds, and the agencies that give multi-name derivatives credit ratings. The second issue to be researched is how these complex financial instruments were and are governed: for example, to what extent has this market developed outwith the control of banking supervisors and other regulators, and to what extent has it been a response to such regulation?

The main source will be around eighty semi-structured interviews with traders, managers, modellers, regulators, accountants/auditors, rating agency staff. The research will be a contribution to the emerging field of social studies of finance, in which instead of applying economics to financial markets (the dominant approach), other areas of the social sciences are drawn upon: in this case science and technology studies and politics (especially comparative and international political economy).

Researchers: Dr Iain Hardie; Prof Donald MacKenzie

Contact: Donald MacKenzie

Keywords: (None)