About the project
Objective
This project aims to understand better how people assess safety in a particular area of Stockholm – Järva, more specifically, how people’s safety perceptions relate to the quality of the physical and social environment of the area. We investigate the nature of safety on two fronts: an intra-area focus where we examine micro-level safety perceptions by people living and working in Järva and a city-wide focus where we explore ways to capture how people living elsewhere in Stockholm perceive Järva. The research will combine multiple sensors and data types, including phone apps, map-based surveys, and machine-learning models.
Background
Safety is a core component of people’s quality of life, affecting physical and mental health and restricting mobility and accessibility to public places. As such, safety is also a fundamental quality of the urban environment – what happens in places depends on how safe they are (or are perceived to be). Research has long pointed to the fact that indicators of poor maintenance or signs of physical deterioration are more important determinants of poor safety perceptions than actual instances of crime. The buildings’ façades, design, and the sense of ownership they promote are bound to affect crime and safety. Hence, some questions arise: which settings promote safety and for whom? What do these settings look like from a safety perspective?
Järva constitutes an interesting case study for several reasons: the area is undergoing great growth in the coming years – with more than 15,000 housing units being developed, new transportation links, workplaces and schools. However, a significantly higher share of Järva’s population feels unsafe outdoors at night and is more likely to avoid certain places where they live than the Stockholm average. In a previous study where Stockholm citizens were asked to assess Google Street View images regarding safety, the findings showed that the physical environment in Järva was ranked the lowest across Stockholm. Therefore, this project seeks to produce several diagnostics of the safety conditions in Järva and contribute to a better understanding of the spatiotemporal variations of the population’s safety perceptions.
Crossdisciplinary collaboration
Sensoring Safety Perceptions is a collaboration between research teams at KTH and MIT Senseable City Lab (part of the Stockholm Senseable Lab), as well as Stockholm City, Mapita (Maptionnaire), Kista Science City, and CityCon, and other local stakeholders based in the study area.
About the project
Objective
The vision of the proposed project is to establish a framework for dynamically optimized traffic control with a view to reduce the negative impact associated with the transport system in dense urban areas, including congestion, pollutants and noise emissions. For this purpose, the research will consist of assembling a sensor network in Stockholm collecting and processing traffic and emission data. The data will feed a set of advanced modelling tools in order to develop multilayer visualisation and simulation models.
Background
With an estimated 55% of the world’s population residing in urban environments, with projections reaching 68% by 2050, exposure to high noise levels and other environmental factors, such as air pollution, is a growing concern. In this context, the concept of smart cities has emerged to respond to the challenge of quality of living and sustainable development of these urban environments. In particular, the digitalization of society provides an opportunity to assess the exposure to these environmental stressors better to identify root causes for which targeted mitigation strategies may be specifically implemented. This may be even more so when approaching near real-time capability, opening the way for dynamic solutions.
The GEOMETRIC project seeks to contribute to this need by implementing and demonstrating recent state-of-the-art research aiming at real-time representation of traffic and associated environmental stressors in dense urban environments.
Crossdisciplinary collaboration
GEOMETRIC is a collaboration between the City of Stockholm, Kista Science City, and three research teams at KTH with expertise in Sound and Vibration, Connected transport systems, and Geoinformatics.
About the project
Objective
The EFFECT project aims to develop a digital twin of electrified construction site resources, processes, and their dependencies to evaluate the potential cost (efficiency) and benefit (emission reductions) of best-practice electrification of a construction site. Partners KTH, ABConnect, and Gordian, along with the City of Stockholm and 3rd parties PEAB and Northvolt, will use the digital twin to evaluate a construction site and, in a planned continuation project, optimize the steps of electrified construction operations using AI methods similar to those used in chess machines. The digital twin and its application will be developed and tested within the Kvarter Persika living lab, an urban renewal project of 1200 apartments in Södermalm, Stockholm.
Background
By 2050, the number of people living in cities will increase by 60% to 6.5 billion. City construction today is responsible for 23% of the global carbon emissions. Electrification is the de-facto technology for decarbonising our society, including city construction. However, due to the variability, non-linearity, and relatively long duration of new processes linked to electrification, we need more knowledge about the potential benefits and costs of electrified constructions and smart methods for planning and optimizing electrified construction operations.
Crossdisciplinary collaboration
In the EFFECT project, academia, research-based startups, the city and large industrial partners from the construction and energy industries will combine academic disciplines of control theory, simulation, optimization, AI/ML, and network communications to make future city construction more sustainable.
About the project
Objective
Our objective is to understand the digital innovation gap in the Swedish Water and Sewerage sector in order to increase the speed of digital transformation of the sector.
Specifically, our goals are to:
- determine and assess structural, institutional or capacity-related barriers at the sector level;
- identify enabling factors for adopting ICT and Digitalisation in municipal infrastructure asset management specifically applied to water and sewerage.
Background
Information-driven decision-making for asset management and maintenance of water infrastructure holds great potential for efficiency gains. Yet, the uptake of digital innovations appears to be slow compared to other sectors. As large-scale water infrastructures are exposed to transformation pressure from ageing assets, demography, societal digitalisation, security risks and resource scarcity, identifying the innovation barriers – but also enabling factors – will be crucial. Our findings will also be relevant for other infrastructure-oriented organisations yet to make the digital leap.
Our approach is interdisciplinary and based on the social sciences and humanities, with an orientation towards the field of science and technology studies (STS). Method-wise, we use a case study approach, focusing on contemporary and recent historical cases of innovation in ICT and digital technologies in the sector. With this approach, we can analyse long-term sector experience of innovation and change.
Photo credit: Horst Gutmann, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/#
Crossdisciplinary collaboration
Our team of researchers covers engineering, industrial dynamics, STS and history (PI, Co-PI and a post-doc researcher). We collaborate with a range of industrial and societal actors in this project, notably with DHI Sverige AB, Kungsbacka kommun, and Kommunalförbundet Norrvatten.
About the project
Objective
This project consists of three work packages (WP). Together, they will support a discussion of how Digital Futures should work in the area of Smart Society and support project proposals and possibly other measures to develop Smart Society within Digital Futures strategically. The second and third WP feeds into the first. This supports Digital Futures’ vision –“to shape a sustainable society through digital transformation”.
The first WP develops an Agenda for Smart Society for Digital Futures, in line with what is described in the Digital Futures’ strategic plan.
In the second WP, we explore the collection and distribution of information related to urban energy modelling and how this can be developed to be used and useful for cities. The potential of a single, transparent platform for many stakeholders who aim to automate and accelerate the energy transition is investigated. The research questions focus on the decision-making utility of such a platform for society. In summary: who needs information, when, and how should they receive it?
The third WP collaborates with the KTH Climate Action Centre and works directly with some ongoing projects financed by Digital Futures. The role is to assess the potential effects of greenhouse gas emissions from some existing projects. This way, it becomes a test of introducing a societal assessment of Digital Futures’ projects.
The intention is that there will be connections between WP2 and WP3 and that they can mutually support each other since the questions on information use and need in WP2 are likely also crucial for WP3.
Background
To a great extent, the project is directed towards the Working group Smart Society and how to develop the field within Digital Futures. The project relates directly to several parts of Digital Futures’ strategic plan, specifically:
- In the strategic plan, one task within Smart Society is to start a seed project to write a strategic agenda for Smart Society, i.e. a perfect match to WP1.
- The strategic plan also includes a coordinated project with the KTH Climate Action Centre on climate-related aspects of some ongoing projects funded by Digital Futures. This goes very well with WP3.
- There is also a call in the strategic plan for an overview of education on digitalisation for sustainability. This will also be covered in WP1.
- WP2 is not directly covered in the strategic plan, but WP2 will both feed into WP1 and interact with WP3 and will, therefore, indirectly support the strategic plan. There are also several potential relations to all three scientific research themes through questions that come up when considering urban energy modelling as far as what is investigated in WP2.
Crossdisciplinary collaboration
The researchers represent several departments at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
About the project
Objective
This project develops two key areas of smart societies related to the role of digital technologies in academic research and practices and society at large. These two areas concern ethics, norms, and values around digitalization in society and digitalization research that supports deep transition, including how research conferences can be part of such transitions. These aspects form the two work packages in the project: (1) Public culture, public space and digitalization in society, and (2) Organization and sustainability of the ICT4S 2024 conference. In this work, the project combines knowledge from architecture, philosophy, media technology, and environmental strategies and future studies.
- Public culture, public space and digitalisation in society
For digitalization to be “good” in the broader, societal sense (i.e. where good is shorthand for increased well-being, quality of life, justice, fairness, democracy, and sustainability), the development and implementation of the technology need to be informed by ethical analysis and sensitive to stakeholder values. In short, it must be developed to be compatible with an open, democratic society. Digitalization processes, therefore, need to engage with norms, values, habits, perceptions, and practices in society. Engaging with public culture is a way both to find acceptance and to increase uptake. We will begin by conducting an in-depth investigation of how digitalization is both forming its own public space and affecting existing public spaces as sites of negotiation of public culture. Approaching these issues through the lens of “public culture” enables the researchers to acknowledge that while these perceptions are entangled, inter-subjective and negotiated in character, they can and should inform and complement the more abstract analysis of societal ethics and values. - Organization and sustainability of the ICT4S 2024 conference
Currently, there are few arenas for interdisciplinary research meetings on digitalization for sustainability (D4S or Information and Communications Technology for sustainability, ICT4S). Even if there is a growing interest among digitalization researchers, research tends to focus on certain solutions or specific areas, whereas a broader take on how digitalization can support society in a sustainable direction is rare. The ICT4S conferences are an attempt to create such an arena. This part of the project aims to support the ICT4S 2024 conference in Stockholm and to make the conference relevant for a larger part of Digital Futures and a larger digitalization for a sustainable society. Moreover, the aim is to explore how research conferences, in general, can be more sustainable from mainly an environmental perspective.
Crossdisciplinary collaboration
The project is a collaboration between the School of Architecture, Philosophy and History, Strategic Sustainability Studies and Media Technology and Interaction Design (MID) at KTH.
About the project
Objective
SOS (Smart Och Säker) will enable users to securely store data in confidential cloud enclaves as well as automate the interaction between Internet of Things (IoT) devices via provably secure IoT apps. To achieve these goals, SOS will leverage the support for confidential computing in commodity server platforms, thereby providing end-users with a protected execution environment on third-party clouds. Building on these technologies, SOS will also help ensure that data is not unintentionally or maliciously leaked to unauthorized third parties. Finally, to demonstrate feasibility in realistic societal contexts, SOS will focus on two prime domains: telecare and distance education.
Background
Use of cloud-based IoT apps ensures on-demand computing and storage provisioning. However, this comes at the price of entrusting potentially sensitive data to a range of third-parties that constitute the cloud back-end: app developers, services running the IoT apps in the cloud, as well as the underlying cloud providers. The cloud computing paradigm entails further security and privacy concerns as data is often handled by a range of third-party sub processors. Besides operational aspects, the IoT platform operators that process data on cloud premises can be compromised, go bankrupt or be purchased by a competitor, along with all the collected data. Finally, the power of IoT apps can be abused by attackers.
Crossdisciplinary collaboration
The researchers in the team represent the School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, KTH and the Cybersecurity Unit, RISE.