Literature and industry standards do not mention inclusive guidelines to generate safety recommendations. Following a literature review, we suggest nine design criteria as well as the classification of safety recommendations according to their scope (i.e. organisational context, stakeholders addressed and degree of change) and their focus, the latter corresponding to the type of risk barrier introduced. The design and classification criteria were applied to 625 recommendations published by four aviation investigation agencies. The analysis results suggested sufficient implementation of most of the design criteria. Concerning their scope, the findings showed an emphasis on processes and structures (i.e. lower organisational contexts), adaptations that correspond to medium degree of changes, and local stakeholders. Regarding the focus of the recommendations, non-technical barriers that rely mostly on employees’ interpretation were introduced by the vast majority of safety recommendations. Also, statistically significant differences were detected across investigation authorities and time periods. This study demonstrated how the application of the suggested design and classification frameworks could reveal valuable information about the quality, scope and focus of recommendations. Especially the design criteria could function as a starting point towards the introduction of a common standard to be used at local, national and international levels.
Het onderzoek dat ten grondslag ligt aan dit artikel onderzoekt hoe de overheid markten reguleert voor (financiële) producten en diensten teneinde falen van de markt te voorkomen. Het behandelt specifiek EU Richtlijn 2014/57/EU betreffende strafrechtelijke sancties voor marktmisbruik en de implementatie daarvan in Nederland en opvolgend gebruik door het Openbaar Ministerie en Autoriteit Financiële Markten en hun Convenant ter voorkoming van ongeoorloofde samenloop van bestuurlijke en strafrechtelijke sancties. Het beantwoord de vraag of deze richtlijn de ontwikkeling van effectief reguleren van de financiële markt bevordert of remt. De slotsom ten aanzien van de implementatie van Richtlijn 2014/57/EU is – kort gezegd – dat “slechts” het aantal jaren gevangenisstraf voor handel met voorkennis en marktmisbruik van twee naar vier aangepast dient te worden. Het artikel concludeert tenslotte dat de huidige praktijk van het Convenant tussen OM en Autoriteit Financiële Markten kan blijven bestaan. De Autoriteit Financiële Markten kan haar inspanningen om haar toezicht verder in de geest van responsive regulation te verbeteren ongestoord door het OM voortzetten.
To facilitate energy transition, in several countries regulators have devised ‘regulatory sandboxes’ to create a participatory experimentation environment for exploring revision of energy law. These sandboxes allow for a two-way regulatory dialogue between an experimenter and an approachable regulator to innovate regulation and enable new socio-technical arrangements. However, these experiments do not take place in a vacuum but need to be formulated and implemented in a multi-actor, polycentric decision-making system through collaboration with the regulator but also energy sector incumbents such as the distribution system operator. We are, therefore, exploring new roles and power division changes in the energy sector as a result of such a regulatory sandbox. We research the Dutch Energy Experimentation Decree (EED) that invites homeowners’ associations and energy cooperatives to propose projects prohibited by extant regulation. In order to localize, democratize and decentralize energy provision, local experimenters can, for instance, organise peer-to-peer supply and determine their own tariffs for energy transport. Theoretically, we rely on Ostrom’s concept of polycentricity to study the dynamics between actors involved in and engaging with the participatory experiments. Empirically, we examine 4 approved EED experiments through interviews and document analysis. Our conclusions focus on the potential and limitations of bottom-up, participatory innovation in a polycentric system. The most important lessons are that a more holistic approach to experimentation, inter-actor alignment, providing more incentives, and expert and financial support would benefit bottom-up participatory innovation.
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Within the food industry there is a need to be able to rapidly react to changing regulatory requirements and consumer preferences by adjusting recipes, processes, and products. A good knowledge of the properties of food ingredients is crucial in this process. Currently this knowledge is available in scattered heterogeneous resources such as scientific peer-reviewed articles, databases, recipes, food blogs as well as in the experience of food-experts. This prevents, in practice, the efficient integration and use of this knowledge, leading to inefficiency and missed opportunities. In this project we will build a structured database of properties of food ingredients, focusing in particular on the taste and texture properties. By large-scale collection and text mining on a large number of textual resources, a comprehensive data set on ingredient properties will be created, along with knowledge on the relationships between these ingredients. This database will then be used for to find new potential applications for healthy and taste enhancing ingredient combinations by network-based discovery methods and artificial intelligence algorithms will be used. A concrete focus will be on application questions formulated by the industrial partners. The resulting hypothesis will be validated in a real life setting at the premises of the industrial partners. The deliverables of this project will be: - A reusable open-access ingredient database that is accessible via a user-friendly web portal - A set of state-of-the-art mining algorithms that can address a wide variety of industry driven use cases - Novel product formulations that can be further developed for the consumer and business2business market
Project focusing on developing a public affairs advice for the corporate business case aiming at development of LNG niche market. The advice is based on research in five areas: (1) an overview of existent regulatory framework with regard to the use of LNG in a small scale market in the EU and selected countries, (2) identification of broadly defined communication issues, (3) suggestions on business development opportunities (strategic partnerships, LNG for vessels, LNG in Baltic Sea area, (4) mapping of stakeholders, (5) suggestions on improvement of business and regulatory environment.
The textiles and apparel industry faces increasing regulatory pressure to reduce its negative environmental and social impact. A widely discussed strategy is to extend the active lifecycle of garments through durable, better quality clothing. Durability, however, is an ambiguous concept and a more complex understanding of durability is emerging that goes beyond material strength to notions of emotional, social and functional durability that live in consumers’ mindsets. Our understanding of durability and how it impacts product design, reuse, repair and recycling is limited and businesses find it difficult to incorporate durability into more sustainable and circular business models, particularly where there is also an element of degrowth or slow growth. Additionally, digital technologies, particularly for traceability and product information, are needed and require new organizational capabilities and change. Our project proposes to explore the concept of durability in the apparel and textiles industry, focusing on how various industry actors (e.g. fashion brands, designers, suppliers, consumers) define durability and how they incorporate it into commercially viable circular business models. Our proposal is timely in that local, national and EU research agendas are stimulating sustainable and circular transformation. Nationally, we address questions in the Nationale Wetenschaps Agenda (NWA-ORC), e.g. the call on the theme Ab-initio circular materials design that emphasizes an interdisciplinarity approach for circular redesign and includes aspects of socio-economic relevance, raw material innovations and digital tooling. On the EU level, policies, directives and regulations, so called New Industrial Strategies, are aimed at helping industry towards green and digital transformation. Our proposal is pertinent to the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles and the Transition Pathway for the Textiles Ecosystem. Calls in the near future offer opportunities for the consortium to access funding for continued research and industry collaboration.
