BT

68 records found

Understanding engineering ethics in countries

Towards an analytical framework

In recent decades, distinct national approaches to engineering ethics have evolved, each tailored to its unique contextual factors. These contextual disparities make it unfeasible to transfer one country's engineering ethics approach directly into another. This calls for a compel ...
This chapter discusses the societal and ethical challenges of climate engineering or large-scale intentional intervention in the climate system. Climate engineering is highly controversial, and raises many questions about the values of human societies and the desirability of tech ...
Technologies shape who we are, how we organize our societies and how we relate to nature. For example, social media challenges democracy; artificial intelligence raises the question of what is unique to humans; and the possibility to create artificial wombs may affect notions of ...
While states have agreed to substantial reduction of emissions in the Paris Agreement, later reiterated and expanded in the Glasgow Climate Pact, the success of these agreements strongly depends on the cooperation of large Multinational Corporations (MNCs). Short of legal obligat ...

Revisiting the energy justice framework

Doing justice to normative uncertainties

Energy justice is often approached through the four tenets of procedural, distributive, restorative and recognition justice. Though these tenets are important placeholders for addressing what type of justice issues are involved, they require further normative substantiations. The ...
The ongoing energy transition toward more sustainable energy systems implies a change in the values for which such systems are designed. The energy transition however is not just about sustainability but also about values like energy security and affordability, and we witness the ...

Safe-by-design in engineering

An overview and comparative analysis of engineering disciplines

In this paper, we provide an overview of how Safe-by-Design is conceived and applied in practice in a large number of engineering disciplines. We discuss the differences, commonalities, and possibilities for mutual learning found in those practices and identify several ways of pu ...
Models for supporting climate adaptation and mitigation planning, mostly in the form of Integrated Assessment Models, are poorly equipped for aiding questions related to fairness of adaptation and mitigation strategies, because they often disregard distributional outcomes. When e ...

A Healthy Metaphor?

The North Sea Consultation and the Power of Words

The North Sea Consultation was set up to resolve conflicting claims for space in the North Sea. In 2020, this consultation process resulted in the North Sea Agreement, which was supported by the Dutch Parliament and cabinet as a long-term policy; however, the fishing sector felt ...

When controversies cascade

Analysing the dynamics of public engagement and conflict in the Netherlands and Switzerland through “controversy spillover”

Energy controversies have been widely studied. Such studies are, however, generally based on either single case studies, providing rich and in-depth understanding of (local) dynamics of planning and implementation processes, or they focus on understanding responses to a specific ...
Governing risks is not only a technical matter, but also a matter of ethical and societal considerations. In this article, we argue that in addition to scientific and technical uncertainties, we need to also address normative uncertainties of risk decisions. We define normative u ...
Many academic approaches that claim to consider the broad set of social and ethical issues relevant to energy systems sit side-by-side without conversation. This paper considers three such literatures: Value Sensitive Design, Responsible Research and Innovation and the Energy Jus ...

Responsible innovation of nuclear energy technologies

Social experiments, intergenerational justice and emotions

In this chapter, we argue for broadening the approach of responsible innovation in two respects. First, we contend that responsible innovation should be seen as an ongoing process that continues after the initial development of a new technology; it comprises a technology’s use, i ...

Toward Sustainable and Inclusive Housing

Underpinning Housing Policy as Design for Values

A perusal of the literature on housing debates reveals that the term ‘value’ is mostly applied to express the financial value of a house and is dealt with in economic literature. However, an alternative meaning of the word ‘value’ in the housing literature can be found in researc ...
In this chapter, we discuss the evolution of the field of ‘ethics of nuclear energy’, regarding its past, present and future. We will first review the history of this field in the previous four decades, focusing on new and emerging challenges of nuclear energy production and wast ...

Geoengineering the climate and ethical challenges

What we can learn from moral emotions and art

Climate change is an urgent problem, requiring ways and approaches to address it. Possible solutions are mitigation, adaptation and deployment of geoengineering. In this article we argue that geoengineering gives rise to ethical challenges of its own. Reflecting on these ethical ...