MPA Group and Individual Project

Challenges such as the pandemic and climate change have highlighted the necessity and value of science advice mechanisms as well as strong international touchpoints for information exchange. It has also shown that these are at play at every level of government – between countries but also between cities and regions. Yet there is currently no comprehensive mapping of the science policy & diplomacy ecosystems in each country, nor a clear framework for what elements to look for. Building upon INGSA’s 2014 global census of science advice structures, there is therefore a need to refine a classification system which would facilitate a fast and effective sharing of information as well as help identify elements of potential value to various jurisdictions.

The work: Partnering with INGSA, the project will help develop draft criteria for inclusion into the Atlas, based on policy literature and interviews/survey of INGSA’s key collaborators in international organisations and within the three INGSA regional chapters (Asia, Latin America and Africa). Criteria will then be tested against known science advisory mechanisms in selected jurisdictions to ensure that they are able to capture 1) the appropriate type of national, sub-national and transnational mechanisms and 2) appropriate features of each mechanism. If time allows, the project will use the developed criteria to launch a pilot survey in one of the INGSA region. 

As part of the EDCTP funded PANDORA-ID NET, Chatham House brings together academics from different disciplines to support the new African CDC in responding with research to epidemics of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. While the importance of anthropology is well-established, other disciplines in the social sciences may have important knowledge and methods to contribute to outbreak response. This project will examine how research in the social sciences could be used to facilitate and enhance outbreak response. The Team will review how the different disciplines in the social sciences have contributed to policies for COVID-19 responses, together with what local, national and regional expertise and capacities have been harnessed to identify gaps in provision. The Project will help form the foundation for a coordinated and integrated strategy in the social sciences for outbreak responses across Africa.

From access to health, education, food security and economic opportunities - climate change puts children’s most basic rights at risk. This project, which will be conducted in partnership with one of the world’s largest and oldest international children’s charities, Save the Children, seeks to understand the societal impacts of climate change from children’s perspectives. It builds on a project on ‘policy nexuses’ carried out by one MPA group with the same partner in the 2020-2021 cohort. This year’s project seeks to build an evidence base of child-centric climate adaptation measures that can be championed and implemented in different parts of the world through public policy and actors such as Save the Children. Through literature reviews, primary data collection and analysis, options and scenarios-building, this project will contribute to current global and national discussions on the interactions between climate change-related risks (e.g. disease pandemics) and structural inequalities that affect marginalised and vulnerable members of society, especially children, but also women, disabled and displaced people and indigenous communities. Candidates interested in sustainable development goals, the roles of stakeholder narratives, research, policy and evidence in tackling societal challenges, will find this project useful for the MPA learning journey and beyond.

In 2020, the Greater London Authority (GLA) commissioned Publica to create the most ambitious night time guidance produced by any city in the world. Published in early 2021, it sets out the many benefits for councils, communities and businesses of creating diverse and inclusive night time plans together, with step-by-step guides and inspiring case studies from across the globe on how this can be achieved.

The night time offers unique opportunities to enrich and diversify the experience of a borough. By developing a night time strategy, local authorities can address such diverse goals as combating loneliness, improving feelings of safety at night, celebrating a wide range of cultures, increasing the wellbeing of night workers, and nurturing the next generation of creative workers, among many more.

Holistic planning for London’s communities between 6pm and 6am is critical to the economic, social and cultural vitality of the city. However, in working with boroughs, Publica has discovered that there is no established framework or set of indicators that allow local authorities to a) understand how well they are performing at night and b) make evidence based decisions about where to prioritise investment.

For this group project, Publica is looking for a group of imaginative and creative students to support us in developing a holistic set of indicators to for local authorities. This will involve researching existing urban indicator frameworks (such as healthy streets) to understand ‘what works’ for transforming urban policy, as well as building on Publica’s expert knowledge of night time placemaking to create a meaningful framework that can be used by local authorities in the coming years.

Greenhouse Gas Removals (GGR) are outlined in the UK Governments ‘Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener’ as playing an essential role in the UKs journey towards net zero, compensating for residual emissions that cannot be mitigated. The strategy outlines a commitment to deliver £100 million innovation funding for Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage and other Greenhouse Gas Removal methods. The key GGR methods outlined by the strategy include Nature based approaches (Tree planting, Soil carbon sequestration) and Engineering based approaches ( Biochar, Bioenergy with carbon capture & storage, Direct air capture, Enhanced weathering & Ocean alkalinisation).

However, there is an acknowledgement that multiple issues and barriers exist in both current and future implementation of these GGR methods. For example, in an independent review of GGR methods, the Royal Academy of Engineering highlighted the following issues and barriers; land use pressures, resource requirements, interaction with biodiversity net gain, and social impacts.

This project should critically analyse the social, political, economic and environmental issues and barriers to implementation of these methods.

Where relevant, the research should also propose solutions for overcoming these barriers, particularly focusing on any innovative practice or lessons that can be learnt from a global perspective, to be applied in the UK.

Highways England are a public company that manage the major roads and motorways in England for the UK government’s Department for Transport. As such it is a key player in sustaining what some might regard as a key threat to future sustainability in climate and environment. They recently created a new post of Director of Sustainability who is tasked with helping HE think about its future and whether it will require a fundamental change to the operating model of the Company. Different levels of change are possible depending how active a role HE plays in contributing to wider climate and environmental challenges. What are the opportunities and challenges a more sustainable future brings, and how fundamental does change need to be? This project will report to the new Director of Sustainability, helping them understand and develop a vision for a future sustainable National Highways.

The threat landscape of modern railway systems is widening despite that the stakeholders of modern rail systems (MRS) are enjoying many benefits from technological advances like the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), Internet, and Internet of Things (IoT) amongst others. Often, the benefits are along the improvement of performance efficiency for safety-critical railway systems. However, introducing open networks and COTS components into a previously proprietary safety system also introduce new security threats. Today, modern railway systems are facing increasing cases of cyber-attacks as system components can be directly compromised once a malicious agent gains access to the system through exploiting either the technical or social elements of the infrastructure. For example, the British rail network came under attack from hackers four times in 2015.

Thus, cybersecurity has become a critical issue of concern in modern railway systems, and solutions that explore a more socio-technical approach to security are needed for effective protection to be achieved. Holistically, modern railway system comprises of Signalling systems, Train and Communication Systems, and Automatic Train Supervision on the technical side, and human operators’ knowledge, behaviour and responses, processes, organisational structures, and policies on the social side. While technologies need to be hardened to improve security, gaps in security skills and competency for appropriate responses, processes, organisational structures, and policies also need to be plugged to achieve a more holistic security for modern railway system. From initial conception, through to design and implementation, a robust system & enterprise architecture that consider both technical and social attributes is a core contributor to enhanced security for railway systems. Rail industry stakeholders need to understand the key factors and attributes that can help to attain more holistic security, in order to better respond to, and address potential operational security concerns.

The group project aims to identify the security priorities and develop a robust socio-technical system & enterprise architectural security framework for operational security of modern railway system.

What are the potential ethical risks in adopting data-driven technologies to achieve Net Zero targets? What levers can governments pull to address these potential risks?

Over the next few years governments all over the world will need to design new arrangements to handle the many data issues raised by strategies for achieving net zero. These include handling of smart meter data from residential homes or buildings; transport data; and data within high emission industries. These raise a host of issues around both how to maximise the public value of linking data so as to better understand carbon reduction patterns, and around ensuring privacy, since this data could be misused in many ways. The CDEI is the UK government’s main institution for thinking through the dilemmas of balancing innovation and ethics, particularly around AI. The project will involve mapping the key issues; examining lessons from cities and governments around the world grappling with similar dilemmas; and making proposals on policy options. It will require engagement with think tanks and researchers; businesses; NGOs and the public sector; understanding regulatory and legal contexts; and generating creative solutions.

Key publications 

Hui Yan Au, Isabella Frangi Bassani, Caine Chan, Siddhant Chatterjee, Chunjie Liang and Payal Padhy. "Data Ethics and Governance: Towards UK Net Zero" UCL 2022. [PDF]

In recent years, several regulatory proposals have been advanced to tackle the risks associated with the increased use of algorithmic decision-making, machine learning, and artificial intelligence tools in both the private and public sector (see, for instance, the EU AI Regulation proposal). In the UK, several initiatives from the Office for AI and the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation are in the pipeline to respond to critical concerns pertaining to AI developments and deployments. At the same time, standards-development work in this space has also advanced, in standards-making bodies such as BSI, IEEE, and ISO/IEC. In collaboration with BSI --- the UK National Standards Body --- this MPA project will investigate the emerging landscape for AI standards, both technical and normative. The aim of the project is to map out existing and emerging AI standards, and the extent to which they reflect current concerns and future risks associated with the use of AI tools, as well as ways in which future standards can support and supplement regulatory proposals for governing AI systems in a responsible, transparent, and accountable manner. By engaging directly with standardisation work conducted in national and international standards organisations, and consulting with a broad range of stakeholders via interviews, surveys and/ or workshops, the project team will draw evidence to provide future AI standardisation directions for BSI, so that the UK can continue to take international leadership in standards development in this area.

MPA candidates willing to take part in this project should have genuine interest and knowledge of AI issue from a technical, procedural, and/or policy perspective, as well as willingness to delve deep into existing standards and regulatory frameworks.

Project outputs

Ana Alania, Ahmad Firdaus, Agustina Callegari, Amaya Hana, Sierra Shell, and Yuri Ohkura. “Looking Ahead: The Role of Standards in the Future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance.” University College London, 2022 [PDF].

The UK’s net-zero emissions challenge requires integration and deployment of viable known technologies at scale and pace; a challenge that the engineering community can play a vital role in and is uniquely placed and enthusiastic to support. It is engineers from every discipline that will design, build, retrofit, operate and make safe the infrastructure and technologies for a decarbonised UK to be fully achieved. Decision-making around net-zero policymaking will also need to be grounded in deep engineering expertise, drawing on the experience of engineers in designing and delivering infrastructure, but also on engineering creativity, problem-solving and systems thinking to address complex areas of policymaking. However, the lack of engineering expertise among civil servants in central government and in local authorities, particularly in relation to net zero, is widely recognised.

Partnering with the Royal Academy of Engineering – UK's national academy of engineering – the project group will look at the landscape of engineering advice around net zero, internal capability in central and local government, and where gaps in advice exist. It will examine the benefits and limitations of the various mechanisms available to government to access the necessary engineering expertise, such as recruiting engineers in senior roles or bringing staff in on secondments to address gaps, or other mechanisms such as policy fellowships and other forms of engineering policy advice. It will also examine where engineering expertise complements existing capabilities in government.

Climate change is a global issue, yet the impacts and burdens are neither shared equally nor fairly within different groups in society. Within the built environment, exclusive climate planning and design within the built environment may perpetuate social fragmentation and environmental degradation whilst exacerbating issues of justice, equity, and equality. 

In recent years, the urgency for a low-carbon and climate-resilient transition has gained traction, with increasing calls for net-zero decarbonisation route maps, building adaptation for climate change, and the setting of Science-Based Targets within the sector. Such a transition is not without complexities – positing technological, political, generational, and financial questions amongst others. Incorporating principles of climate justice within public policy remains difficult yet necessary; especially where the intersectionality of climate justice in the built environment is all too frequently omitted from the discourse.

Partnering with Arup – an engineering consulting firm Arup headquartered in London – the group members will investigate how principles of climate justice can be asserted within public policy for sustainable infrastructure. How can we ensure that public policy is delivered that seeks to address the unintended consequences and co-benefits of climate change strategies within the built environment? How can we ensure that policy focuses on inclusion with a focus on those marginalised groups such as low-income groups, the elderly, and the BAME community? How should public policy differ to ensure climate justice is temporally and spatially applicable at the city, regional and national level?

UK Universities and HEIs have recently been forced to develop and manage a blended-learning teaching approach in response to the pandemic. In most cases, this is being delivered from the private homes of teaching staff which expands the digital footprint of these institutions significantly. In August 2020, the sector was warned by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) that it faced rising numbers of cyber-attacks. Indeed, many universities and further education colleges have already had to deal with the impacts of attacks in 2020 – many of them ransomware based. In September 2020, there were eight attacks reported by universities that disrupted the start of term. The financial, IP theft and reputational damage could be highly damaging, not only on individual educational institutions but also on important research and development work such as that currently underway at several UK institutions to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. This has led to concerns that increasing cyber-attacks are threatening to fundamentally disrupt the UK’s reputation for world-leading research institutions

Universities face unique challenges in developing a culture that supports people to practice good cyber security – in part because of the large turnover of people every year. It is vital for governing bodies and boards at universities and HEIs to have a good understanding of the impacts these attacks can have on their research and educational mission and to take responsibility for ensuring that effective measures are in place to protect the institution, their staff and students, as well as the highly valuable research and development work that many are carrying out. However, solutions to cybersecurity are not always technical. If security does not work for people, it does not work. This project will focus on the human and organisational factors that shape the cyber resilience of the HE sector.

Partnering with the Access Group – a business software provider serving the learning and education sector – the group members will investigate how aware senior leadership in UK HE is of organisational cybersecurity risk and resilience, particularly the human and organisational factors. The MPA candidates will develop recommendations based on primary and secondary data collected (through qualitative and quantitative methods).

Encryption: pros and cons

Encryption keeps communications confidential between the sender and receiver so that no third-party can access the communications, including the company providing the service. Encryption also protects information stored on computers, mobile phones, and other digital devices, ensuring that if the device is lost or stolen the information on the device is protected. Encryption allows individuals to freely express themselves, exchange personal and other sensitive information, and protect their data. On the flip side, malicious actors are able to abuse the confidentiality, privacy and security encryption affords to plot and coordinate terrorist attacks, engage in organised crime and preserve their anonymity. Thus, some governments are increasingly exerting pressure upon tech companies to create ‘backdoors’ to their encrypted devices and services to provide these agencies with ‘exceptional access’. Undermining encryption in this way, however, can have extremely dire consequences, as any backdoors placed in a system for use by law enforcement could be also exploited by criminals, putting all users in that system at greater risk of multiple security and privacy harms. The anti-encryption movement is gaining momentum, as can be seen in the recent U.S. Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act bill, which essentially forces tech companies to build backdoors to allow access to encrypted data in certain contexts. 

In partnership with the Internet Society – a non-profit organisation formed by two of the ‘Fathers of the Internet’ – this project group will identify and weigh the risks and benefits of weakening encryption technologies, taking into account different interests at stake such as privacy, cybersecurity, public safety, national security, economic competitiveness, freedom of expression and the need to maintain an open Internet. Based on these findings, the MPA candidates are expected to develop a framework for decision-making that can guide lawmakers, policymakers, the technical community and other stakeholders in their discussions and debates over encryption and law enforcement.  

Publications

Final report: Encryption: Pros and Cons - Adeola Akinla, Ayesha Gulley, Kirthika Selvakumar, Zoe Tilsiter [PDF]

Geopolitics in emerging digital technologies is about understanding the extent to which political and economic interest is embedded in the fora, processes and communities of practice that set the norms and standards through which global technology governance is enacted. The norms and standards that underpin emerging digital technologies from Artificial Intelligence (AI) and 5G to the Internet of Things (IoT), although initially regarded as the domain of the technical community, are increasingly the site where competing state and non-state interests, incentives, ideas and powerful actors collide or converge. 

On the one hand, setting the norms and rules of emerging digital technologies and their implementation is regarded by states as linked to national security, national interest and state power. On the other hand, the rising influence of non-state actors such as big tech (like Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon etc.) and influential consortia like the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) should not be underestimated. Consequently, understanding how different actors are engaging with norms and standards negotiations – which actors are taking newly assertive roles, and which actors are forming powerful alliances in key global forums – is critical to understanding how technology and geopolitics intersect.

Drawing on a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods, the MPA candidates will work with the Standards team at the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to map this increasingly geopolitically influential ecosystem of powerful actors, incentives and implications. The map will provide a macro (global) overview of the direction of emerging digital technologies and future societies for policymakers, academics and publics.

Each group member will conduct primary research on a specific technology domain (e.g., AI, 5G, IoT etc.) and pool this as a group to identify and map the intersections-v-disconnections and the competitiveness-v-cooperation that drive the politics and economics at the global level. Primary research will require consultation with the client, interviews of key actors and exhaustive desk research along with an understanding of (or keen desire to understand) geopolitics, international relations and technology policy.

Apart from exposing societal inadequacies and leaving millions insecure and vulnerable economically and in terms of health, education, food and energy access, the pervasive and 'all at once' nature of the current Covid-19 pandemic, has reminded us of what history has taught us repeatedly – that policy arenas do not act in isolation. Urgent, agile and in many cases innovative societal and governmental reactions have seen communities and countries deploying and/or developing different cross-sectoral measures to deal with the impact of the pandemic. From decisions on the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE), rapid development and supply of diagnostic kits, ventilators and drug therapies, to insights feeding into social distancing guidance and rapid response measures to keep children in schools and communities fed, policy actors have deployed social and political skills while initiating changes that break with the status quo.

In this project, the MPA candidates will work with our partner organisations to explore and critically examine examples of how actors from different sectors have drawn from and adjusted sectoral policies in designing and implementing responses to the pandemic. The project will analyse the interactions among actors, policy instruments and other factors in and across health, energy and food security sectors in selected countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and America, to generate robust evidence, relevant for policy and practice, on managing policy interfaces during a global pandemic. The findings of this project will also be broadly relevant for decision-making and action on persistent social challenges.

Increasingly, local authorities are looking for decentralised energy networks to reduce emissions associated with the energy needs of local populations. However, supply and demand are not easily matched, with them sitting in different authority areas (e.g. using waste heat in one borough to provide low carbon heat to a population in another). This is particularly common where there is a waste energy source but a lack of density of population to supply to. Arup has worked on a number of district heating networks, e.g. TFL whereby the source heat is obtained in one London Borough but sourced housing in another.

Partnering with Arup – an engineering consulting firm headquartered in London – the MPA candidates will analyse the opportunities and constraints (practically, financially, with respect to policy and how it aligns to priorities and needs, etc.) to implement such schemes, and explore how local authorities – taking the UK as the example – can work together to delivery decentralised low carbon energy infrastructure including distribution or generation, where it may cross over authority boundaries. In addition, how can such projects be economically, financially and socially viable, enabling both authorities and their communities’ needs to be met?

Publications

Final report: Enabling and improving cross-authority collaboration on infrastructure to better meet local energy needs - Marc Farre Moutinho, Alexandros
Gregoriades, Jose Villacres Lozada, James Atkinson, Zi Huang, Xiyu Tang [PDF]

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all UN member states in 2015 set out 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This 2030 Agenda includes a "Technology Facilitation Mechanism" (TFM) that aims to support the practical implementation of the SDGs by 2030. In this “decade of action” towards realising the ambitious 2030 effort sits another core mechanism: the UN Interagency Task Team on Science, Technology and Innovation for the SDGs (IATT). 

The UN-IATT has several workstreams. One of these focuses on designing and delivering training courses and workshops for SDGs for policymakers and key STI managers from developing countries. It is this IATT workstream that this MPA group project will contribute to. (For context: another UN-IATT workstream focuses on delivering assistance and guidance to countries undertaking roadmaps development as part of the Global Pilot Programme on Development of STI for SDGs roadmaps. This was the focus of a STEaPP MPA group project last year.) 

The MPA candidates will contribute to the development of effective tools for national STI capacity development. Within the IATT workstream on STI capacity building, UNESCO specifically contributes to the preparation of the technical materials and training materials and online tools. This is not a trivial task. Countries require far more than just technical or scientific knowledge delivered in summary notes or access to databases. They require strategic, managerial and policy-making skills that will allow them to elaborate and implement specific STI strategies for development, inclusive public policies and effective means of governing. There is no dominant view on the most suitable or effective means of developing such capacity. This group project will contribute to UNESCO/IATT’s understanding of the specific requirements for developing innovative learning and development models to enhance STI capacity.

Publications

Final report: Mapping STI policy capacity building initiatives and exploring its transformative value for the SDGs - Farzana Chowdhury, John Mark Herrera, Yiru Liu, Xinyang Shi and Ashlin Simpson [PDF]

Women’s mobility and liberty is deeply affected by the design of public space they travel through in both developed and developing countries. Indeed, it is here that the majority of sexual harassment occurs but often goes unreported and unaddressed. Furthermore, engineers designing this infrastructure are not able to adequately include a gender perspective in their designs. The goal of ‘Tell Me How You See It’ is to develop a workbook and checklist to support those designing mobilities infrastructure to include a gender perspective. On top of this, it will provide a suite of opportunities for dialogue between people and disciplines with diverse expertise and experiences related to urban mobility that will co-create gender-sensitive infrastructure solutions that can be scaled and replicated in different locations.

The project will create an international network of master’s students – 3 in each location of UCL London, University of Cape Town and the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi; for each location, local observations will feed into the analysis – coming from various disciplines that are responsible for the different elements of mobilities and public space. Each group will analyse typical transport situations within their respective cities and women’s use of them. They will exchange views on improvements and existing challenges, as a local group but also between the different locations. A bespoke auditing tool, built on the Safetipin platform, will be created to support the project’s auditing needs. The analysis will be presented to the wider expert group through two key workshops and will be distilled into a practical tool for cities and engineers (a workbook and checklist) that will be validated in a second virtual workshop.

With COVID-19 accelerating the shift to working from home, coupled in recent years with increasing use of permitted development, it turns out that people are often working in inappropriate home working spaces. Lessons can be learnt from the development of spaces such as Maggie’s Centres, to design home living spaces that are better for our mental wellbeing. Maggie’s centres are purpose-built spaces to provide practical and emotional support for people with cancer and their families. The aim of the charity, through their spaces, is to provide therapeutic relief, both mental and physical, in order to aid in a patients’ rounded care. Arup has worked closely with architects on the Maggie’s Centre at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London to create a space that achieves this. With the use of natural lighting, home-style finishes and design that encourages social opportunities as well as quiet reflection, it is obvious that one of the main aims of these spaces is to improve the mental wellbeing of its patients. This is done by trying to remove them and their prognosis from an environment that is purely clinical and sterile.

Numerous studies have shown that there is a direct link between the quality of one’s environment and its effects on their mental and physical health. With an unmitigated increase of permitted development, the quality and condition of home living spaces (especially in large-populous cities) has deteriorated due to high demand and a finite supply. These new developments may not be geared towards providing the best possible space for the mental health of their residents due to cost constraints and profit-minded priorities. 

Partnering with Arup – an engineering consulting firm Arup headquartered in London – the MPA candidates will determine what are the opportunities for policy and technology to influence the design of future (living/working/travelling) spaces for mental wellbeing. The aim of this project is to explore how health and wellbeing, and more broadly social value, can be created/enhanced, with a focus on policy. In addition, it would be interesting to explore avenues to measure and benchmark these aspects as a tool to drive positive change.

UNESCO developed the Global Observatory for Science, Technology and Innovation (GO-SPIN) project in order to strengthen the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) systems of its Member States. Through its on-line platform providing information on countries’ STI policies (https://gospin.unesco.org) and its methodological and training tools, GO-SPIN reinforces human capacities and supports policy-makers in STI policy development, monitoring and implementation. The project consists in conducting desktop studies, inventories, collection and analysis of STI policy and policy instruments related data and information in different countries, with focus on developing countries.

The work requires consultations and collaboration with different sectors including science-based ministries, governmental bodies, universities and research institutions, civil society representatives, with involvement in the design and implementation of STI policies.

Within the framework of the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) and its Inter Agency Task Team (IATT), UNESCO is participating and co-leading with the World Bank, UN DESA, UNCTAD, and the EU Joint Research Centre, an initiative to develop STI for SDGs Roadmaps. Further to regional and international experts groups meetings, the workstream has developed a Guidebook for the preparation of the roadmaps and launched in July 2019 the Global Pilot Programme on Development of STI for SDGs roadmaps, with the implementation in five pilot countries (Ghana, Ethiopia, India, Kenya and Serbia). UNESCO is coordinating the pilot activities in Ghana, providing support to the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation. The project requires developing an understanding of the best practices of the IATT framework and country piloting as well as of the Ghana science policy landscape in order to best assist UNESCO and the Ghanaian government in their development, implementation and review of the roadmap process.

Spouseware, stalkerware or spyware describes a particular family of malicious software, intended to coerce, control, and monitor targeted users. Such software applications are frequently not explicitly advertised to surveil partners or other potentially affected persons; rather, they are commonly promoted to facilitate parental or employee control. The programmes are often secretly installed on devices such as phones, deployed without a victim’s knowledge and consent, and offer disguised surveillance features such as location tracking, web filters, and key loggers. There is a growing body of research on the topic. However, guidance for victims/survivors as well as support services remains scarce. The proposed group project, therefore, sets out analyse the global trend of intimate partner violence (IPV) surveillance tools as well as any applied technical, practitioner, and policy responses. The study is run in collaboration with Chayn, a volunteer network which addresses gender-based violence through the creation of intersectional survivor-led online resources. Students interested in joining this project should be aware that they will be exposed to references to gender-based violence/harassment across the project and that they are expected to be available for research activities throughout the summer. Strong quantitative and qualitative research skills are essential, and prior programming skills desired.

Approach

The research team (Maddalena Esposito, Thomas Bermudez, Jay Neuner) under the supervision of Dr Leonie Maria Tanczer will be carrying out semi-structured interviews and an online survey with self-identified researchers and experts. Respondents are expected to work (or have worked) on and around the topic of technology-facilitated domestic/sexual violence and abuse, cybersecurity, and policing. We invite a wide range of potential knowledgeable parties to participate in our study, including academic researchers, representatives from voluntary and statutory support organisations, industry stakeholders, as well as journalists. All gathered findings will be written up in a report for Chayn, with the research team also hoping to engage in presenting the results at academic/public conferences, workshops, and events. 

Publications

Tomás Bermudez, Maddalena Esposito, and Jay Neuner, Mapping the State of Knowledge on the Use of Stalkerware in Intimate Partner Violence, 2020

Although cyber threats are reported as one of the top concerns for both CEOs and investors, a recent survey by the NYSE Governance Services found that only 11% of corporate directors believed their boards possess a high level of understanding of cyber security risk. The challenges that boards face in this area have recently been recognised by the UK National Cyber Security Centre as a key risk and there is now a recognition that boards have not received the level of support necessary to meet the demands that cyber insecurity place on business. Axelos / Resilia, a joint venture company created in 2013 by the UK Cabinet Office and Capita, has a track record of providing high level training support to organisations seeking to improve their understanding of and behaviours relating to a number of common ‘human factor’ cyber risks. They now wish to develop specific ideas and concepts for what effective and engaging ‘training’ to boards and executive management teams could look like. The dynamic nature of the cybersecurity ecosystem means that the provision of support to boards must be constantly reviewed and updated. Consequently, Axelos / Resilia has partnered with the NCSC and a team of researchers based at UCL to look critically at their training provision and work to update them.

This project will provide students with an exceptional opportunity to work on policy within a private organisation (partnering with the Cyber Readiness for Boards project) in one of the most demanding and fast-moving elements of board decision making.

Healthcare, medicinal therapies and medical devices represent an area that has received considerable regulatory oversight and stability in the past couple of decades, especially in established markets in Europe, North American and South-East Asia. Consumer protection centred on the safety and efficacy of medical therapies and devices have been crucial to successful regulatory frameworks and standardisation initiatives in healthcare, albeit perceived as inflexible by some market actors. However, new digital technologies/processes are currently disrupting these established and quasi-harmonised regulatory frameworks. The rise of connected fitness devices (e.g. Fitbit), connected medical devices (e.g. pacemakers) and devices using complex software systems based on Machine Learning/ Artificial Intelligence pose new challenges. In this group project, you will be working closely with the British Standards Institution (BSI) – the national standards body in the UK – to better understand, identify and offer recommendations about the current regulatory and standardisation gaps/ uncertainties resulting from the increased use of connected and intelligent medical devices.

In this project, the MPA group will conduct primary research to test some of the regulatory and standardisation gaps already identified by BSI – available here – and to identify new gaps and misalignments where standards-making bodies and regulators can intervene to ensure that new medical devices maintain a high degree of security, safety, transparency and accountability to those who deploy and use them. This is a highly important, life-saving area that requires novel thinking about the complex socio-technical opportunities and challenges that digital technologies in healthcare raise and where standards could offer stability and predictability in a changing market, when regulators/ policy-makers are struggling to catch up.

Key project outputs

• BSI Education podcast - Supporting student research: interview with Jenni O’Brien and Natalia Maj

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The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and numerous global players such as the World Health Organisation, some pharmaceutical companies, product development partnerships and civil society organisations have worked with and through local partners in different parts of the world, in particular low-income countries, to strengthen health delivery systems.  Health systems consist of all organisations, people and actions whose primary interest is to promote, restore or maintain health, and are characterised by six building blocks, namely; service delivery, (ii) health workforce, (iii) health. information systems, (iv) access to essential medicines, (v) financing, and (vi) leadership/governance (WHO, 2007).

This project will look at the work of the DFID and its partners in three selected low-income countries with a view to understanding health system agility, preparedness and adjustments at decision-making and delivery levels, drawing lessons for both low- and high-income country health systems. 

Globally, our current trajectory is moving us rapidly towards more than 2°C of warming, which for the UK will bring hotter, drier summers and milder, wetter winters with an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The first half of 2019 has seen unprecedented global recognition that we are facing a 'Climate Emergency', with mass climate protests, school strikes, warnings from the Bank of England, and strong advice from the UK Committee on Climate Change urging the Government to commit to a new net zero carbon target 2050. Many Local Authorities in the UK are making the initial step of declaring a 'Climate Emergency'. However, there is no established or recognised pathway to delivering the actions required (e.g. deep energy efficiency retrofit of buildings, delivering low-carbon heat supply, supporting low-carbon transport modal shift) to achieve the overarching objective. There is limited understanding of the strategic process required and the appropriate delivery models to enable Local Authorities to deliver on their climate pledges.    Investigation into previous experiences of significant structural change in government operation (e.g. adoption of digital technology over last 20 years) could help to identify key lessons that could be applied to the Climate Emergency process. 

More specifically, the research may explore one or more of the following areas regarding how authorities: 

• Achieve the necessary structural/organisational changes and what these may be  
• Access additional/alternative funding streams  
• Accelerate procurement processes  
• Accelerate recruitment in specific skills areas (e.g. building energy retrofit)  
• Achieve behavioural change of both government employees and residents (e.g. transport modal shift).

The consumption of goods and services drives greenhouse gas emissions, directly and indirectly, through the emissions associated with the extraction and refining of raw materials, manufacturing and production of products and energy used in storage, distribution and disposal. This is of particular relevance to cities, which (unless they have a significant manufacturing economy, for example) are typically centres of consumption and whose consumption-based emissions profiles are often therefore much larger than when emissions are considered on a production basis. Consumption is closely linked to wealth (GDP); however, it is more difficult to quantify links between consumption and wellbeing or happiness effectively. Addressing the climate crisis will need to include action to reduce consumption-based emissions and, in some cases, this may be argued to require overall reductions in the volume of goods and services consumed.

This is a difficult topic for policy-makers to address, in part because of concerns around the impact on GDP. However, the impact on happiness/wellbeing of citizens is not often considered, and could provide evidence of benefit to support certain reductions in consumption of particular products or services. People are increasingly questioning the basis of assessing success based on GDP and other limited indicators. 

• Would happiness or wellbeing be a better indicator to use or include? 
• What correlation is there between spending on goods/services and wellbeing or happiness? 
• Does it vary by sector or product category? 
• Is there a minimum threshold above which, additional consumption of goods and services on an individual level does not necessarily result in increases in happiness or wellbeing? 
• What indicators could be used in a city context to infer happiness or wellbeing benefits associated with reduced consumption?  

There are certain behaviors prevalent in the UAE society, one of which is overconsumption and low savings. The impact of low savings goes beyond the individual level to include the impact on the overall economy on the medium and long run.

We are looking to learn more about this pattern and potential solutions. The work could include:

• Data and indicators about the issue/problem (globally, regionally, within UAE, based on other demographic or geographic factors) for a period of not less than ten years.
• Causes (including social, economic openness and globalization ... etc) supported by as well as relevant data and indicators for a period of not less than ten years.
• The system dynamic of the issue (cause and effect). The stock and flow as well as equation will be an added value.
• Negative effects, harms and threats of the issue/problem including relevant data and indicators on the for a period of not less than ten years
• The cost of damage or harms to the society and/or the financial cost to the government and the economy
• Suggested Policies (programs/initiatives/legislations) to address the issue/problem and prevent or reduce its impact
• Effects of addressing the issue based on the suggested interventions including the unintended effects and how to mitigate them
• Cost of addressing the issue/problem and implementing the suggested solutions /government interventions and government savings in financial terms for the first year and next five years.

The aggregate global market for diesel generators between 2018 and 2022 is estimated to be $115 billion. In 2015, developing countries bought about 600,000 units, with a total installed capacity of 29 gigawatts. Around half of these generators were smaller than 0.3 megawatts. The market is forecast to continue to grow at a moderate rate, driven by the unreliability of power supplies, limited grid networks, low capital cost of diesel generators, and well-established markets and support services. But the continued and growing use of diesel generators is incompatible with the 1.5°C global warming goal of the Paris Agreement. To achieve climate change objectives, the energy services provided by small diesel generators need to transition to renewable energy sources.

What is the technical and economic feasibility of substituting decentralised renewable systems for small diesel generators (1 MW or smaller)? What are small diesel generators used for by residential, commercial, industrial and public service consumers? What are the capacities and costs for different uses? Which decentralised renewable energy systems can provide equivalent services for these various uses of diesel generators? What are their costs? What non-cost factors need to be considered when substituting decentralised renewable energy systems for diesel generators?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulates data protection and privacy for all individuals within the EU and the European Economic Area. It guarantees important rights for data subjects, including the right to request access to and rectification or erasure of personal data. One of the most understudied articles of the GDPR is Article 20, which guarantees data subjects the right to receive their personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, in order to, for example, transmit this data to another data controller. In the emerging IoT environment, the right to data portability offers great opportunities. Data subjects could move to choose to move their data between different IoT vendors, incentivizing a more heterogeneous IoT ecosystem. However, it remains unclear how Article 20 is actually currently applied and not only technically but practically implemented.

The group project, therefore, sets out to: a) study how IoT and other tech vendors currently deal with data portability requests; b) analyse what technical and policy measures are required to make Article 20 a useful and actionable right (e.g., data format standardization); and c) develop a standardised ‘data portability template’ that data subjects can use to request their personal data for transmission.

SMEs play a fundamental role in the development of IoT products and services. They are a key stakeholder group in the IoT ecosystem, advancing innovation at multiple levels: atop their existing product line by adding connectivity (e.g. smart home appliances), within their business operations by adding data collection, automation and actuation (e.g. health services), and/or by innovating directly in the IoT (e.g. hardware, software, cloud services). Despite this important role, SMEs are generally underrepresented in policy-making and standards-development processes. The British Standards Institution (BSI) – the UK national standards body – has recognised this gap by actively engaging with SMEs operating in the IoT space to ensure that their business priorities are reflected in national and international standards. The BSI IoT/1 Technical Committee has worked closely with SMEs, consumer and manufacturing associations to produce a White Paper entitled Navigating and Informing the IoT Standards Landscape: A Guide for SMEs and Start-Ups(BSI and PETRAS, Jan 2019).

The group project contributes to this ongoing work by: a) validating and further identifying SMEs priorities for IoT standardisation via a large-scale survey and one-to-one interviews; b) mapping operational and organisational challenges that SMEs are facing when navigating, adopting and implementing IoT standards; c) developing a framework that will help SMEs engage more systematically in these IoT standards-making processes.

The World Cities Culture Report is the most comprehensive data of global cities and culture; it is published every three years and the 3rd edition published in November 2018 will comprise 33 cities including Buenos Aires, Cape Town, London, Moscow, New York, Paris, Seoul, Shenzen, Sydney and Tokyo. The Report is the main pillar of the World Cities Culture Forum, an influential network of senior leaders from 38 global cities that promotes urban leadership in cultural policy (like a 'C40 for culture'). The network is chaired by London's Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries and managed by the Greater London Authority and BOP Consulting. The relationship between data and cities is an area of growing interest often promising to solve a range of urban problems. It includes terms such as Smart City, an alluring prospect for many city leaders and 'thick data', where data is used for greater citizen participation. In culture, there are emerging developments in data driven tools, including the European Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor that aims to promote mutual exchange and learning between cities and boost culture-led development and the world’s first ever Cultural Infrastructure Plan being developed in London.

As cities develop new methods to collect data and open data to their citizens, this project will explore the next steps for the World Culture Cities Report. It will address questions such as: How can the Report best inform urban policy problems with data-driven solutions? How can cities best collect, share and communicate data about city cultural assets and citizens cultural behaviours? What new methodologies are emerging for collection and use of data? Where is the innovation? How can measurements on infrastructure and cultural participation be used for further comparable purposes across such a diverse group of cities? How does the Report track and influence global trends? How and where can the Report best be communicated to the wider public?

Background

The Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) is a research agency that exists as a collaboration between the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Johannesburg and the Gauteng provincial government, South Africa. They produce research and analysis around many regional social, environmental and economic challenges. The GCRO is unusual in the context of urban observatories in its engagement with multiple governance levels, taking place across a heterogeneous city-region rather than a single, constrained urban core.

The GCRO has an ongoing programme of work on 'Green assets and infrastructure' in the city-region. Over the last few years the GCRO have conducted mapping and documenting exercises, resulting in the "State of Green Infrastructure" report. They have also run a series of stakeholder engagements known as 'CityLabs' to start to understand experiences and leverage expertise present in the development and management of green infrastructure projects. GCRO are now in the process of digesting the outcomes of this work in appropriate ways to benefit to a range of decision-making communities, in a variety of decision-making contexts, across a diverse city-region.

Objectives

• Review current modes of communication in terms of how successful / unsuccessful they have been in engaging decision-makers around the topic of green infrastructure.
• Look at what can research do to support the uptake of a green infrastructure approach into urban planning, and/or project development and implementation 
• Use a relevant green infrastructure case study to explore how co-production can assist with bridging inter/intragovernmental challenges in these types of cases.
• Co-produce guidance and action plan in response to points above in collaboration with stakeholder groups

Background

With more than half of the world's population living in cities, and 70 million new urban dwellers every year (the equivalent of 7 new "Londons" per year), urban innovation is now critical to the future of sustainable development and the agendas shaping the future of our planet. The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, now in its 10th year, connects more than 80 of the world's greatest cities, representing over 600 million people and one quarter of the global economy. 

Created and led by cities, C40 is focused on tackling climate change and driving urban action that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks, while increasing the health, wellbeing and economic opportunities of urban citizens. C40 has been partnering with ARUP and UCL STEaPP's City Leadership Laboratory since 2015, producing a series of three landmark reports that paved the way to the participation of cities in the new Paris climate agenda and Paris Agreement.

Research by C40, ARUP and the Lab has demonstrated that cities that collaborate are far more effective than individualist, top-down, cities -not only in the number of actions they take but also in the capacity to scale up pilot projects to transformative city-wide actions. 

• Watch a video to find out more about the Lab and this project

Objectives

• The project will explore the drivers, mechanisms, and challenges of scaling up experiments and how C40 can best leverage these dynamics.
• The team will collaborate with C40's London secretariat and the Lab team at STEaPP, producing a C40 report (as with the previous three), with analysis and a series of informative case studies, written and video blogs, a briefing for C40 staff and transferrable lessons for C40 cities.
• The project will involve direct access to a pool of selected C40 cities (e.g. C40's steering committee chaired by Paris, and including Mexico City, London, Seoul, Milan, Rio and Jakarta), as well as to C40 staff in the London secretariat, and will require both analysis of C40 data as well as interviews with practitioners (including experts from the broader pool of Lab partners like the OECD, World Bank and Uk Government) and possible workshopping activities with C40 experts and cities. 

Background

STEaPP is collaborating on a research project with the IIED is to identify what interventions are needed to help poor people in rural areas access decentralized energy services that strengthen their capacity to earn a living. 

Decentralized energy encompasses mini-grids and standalone energy devices, such as solar water pumps or efficient ovens. Many people agree that energy services need to go beyond the household, providing power for irrigation, energy for food processing and building local businesses, particularly in rural areas. This project focuses on energy services targeted at people working in small-scale agriculture, fishing, forestry and local services (retail, hospitality, trades). 

IIED is aware of interest in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Nepal, India and Bangladesh in this area of work.

Objectives

The group project will focus on a number of challenges such as: 

• identifying the specific evidence and practice gaps of different stakeholder groups; 
• designing the key research questions and prototyping methods
• working out who will participate and partner with IIED, and the incentives/barriers to this
• clarifying the results and pathways to take-up.

Background

The Strategic Partnership for Higher Education Innovation and Reform (SPHEIR) programme, a collaboration between the Department for International Development (DFID) and British Council, provides development assistance to higher education institutions in developing nations, with a focus in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. This assistance can take many forms, with a focus on quality, accessibility, relevance, affordability, scale, sustainability and technology (SPHEIR, n.d.b). Technopolis Group, a consulting firm located in the U.K., has been hired by the British Government to assist in the evaluation of SPHEIR and to assess the impact and scalability of the SPHEIR programme. The authors of this report work under the direction of Technopolis Group.

This report has been written to assist in the identification of emerging innovative pedagogies in the SPHEIR regions, in addition to Latin America. Pedagogical innovations were identified within the foci listed above through the application of a variety of frameworks. These frameworks, developed by universities and international organisations, were applied to existing literature and further complemented by conversations with experts in the education field. With these combined elements, a plethora of pedagogies which may be considered to be ‘innovative’ were identified in the selected countries; the Appendix contains detailed descriptions of each pedagogy identified.

Objectives

The group project will focus on three broad objectives:

• Definition of Innovative Pedagogies
• Examples of Innovative Pedagogies
• Feasibility and Replicability

Key outputs  

• SPHEIR Evaluation Final Report