News

The Project BioWaWi is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Phase 2 of the project has started in November 2021. DIALOGIK is responsible for stakeholder communication and citizen science.

DIALOGIK starts the new year with a new appointment in the management. We are very pleased to announce that our long-time and experienced colleague Dr. Rainer Kuhn will join DIALOGIK as Scientific Director and authorized signatory as of 01.01.2022 and will soon become part of the management of DIALOGIK as co-partner. Dr. Marion Dreyer will hand over the management as of 31.12.2021 and will step down as shareholder in order to pursue new fields of activity. She will continue to work for DIALOGIK as project manager.

The Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) organised a roundtable on the project "Reconciling Science, Innovation and Precaution through the Engagement of Stakeholders" (RECIPES) at its annual conference "Risk Science and the Policy Interface" on 8 December 2021. Dr Marion Dreyer, together with colleagues from the RECIPES project, presented interim results and further planning for the EU-funded research project on precaution and innovation.

What are the underlying reasons for favoring or rejecting nuclear energy? How can we explain this variety of perceptions? What is the specific role of perceived risks and benefits? How much weight do these factors have in shaping public opinions? Answers to these questions will be provided by the paper “Risky or Beneficial? Exploring Perceptions of Nuclear Energy over Time in a Cross-Country Perspective” that compares citizen attitudes to nuclear power in seven European countries and the United States. The paper is part of the recently published volume “Engaging the Atom.

“Precaution and Innovation: Stakeholder Perspectives on the Future Application of the Precautionary Principle” is the title of the new RECIPES policy brief, edited by DIALOGIK. The stakeholder perspectives that the policy brief presents were collected in a year-long stakeholder engagement process, organized by RECIPES partner The Danish Board of Technology Foundation.

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approaches share the idea that societal actors, including citizens, need to work together during the research and innovation process in order to better align both the process and its outcomes with society's values, needs and expectations. The paper addresses the question of what motivates or prevents citizens from participating in research dialogue processes. The paper shows that:

What role does ideological trust in institutions such as the state play in the emergence of civil society "vigilance" and the dynamics of the (de)politicization of nuclear debates? This paper explores this question by comparing four countries with different trust profiles: Finland as a “high trust society”, France and Spain as “societies of mistrust”, and Germany as an intermediate case. The result shows that strong ideological trust in the state hindered the development of mistrustful counter-expertise in Finland but created a basis for its emergence in France and Germany.

Using two case studies as examples, the handout describes ways, methods and results of cooperative innovation processes (co-creation) with target groups for which specific forms of participation are necessary from a practical and content-related perspective. These are, on the one hand, low-income families and, on the other hand, blind people and people with limited vision. The report highlights the potential for innovation through inclusive co-creation, which opens up new market opportunities for companies through products and solutions designed to meet special needs of these people.

The development and dissemination of new digital hardware and applications has been taking place at enormous speed for decades. However, what about resource efficiency and sustainability of innovations in the field of information technology and computing centers? This question is at the heart of the ENRICH research project, which investigates the impact of digitization on energy and resource consumption in German State of Baden-Württemberg.

The LIV_IN project invites interested people from all sectors to the following webinar in May:

How can blind and visually impaired people co-create innovations?

Webinar on May, 25th 2021, 4pm CEST

Two case studies will be used to discuss how co-creation between experts and citizens works and why it is worth considering inclusive innovations with blind and visually impaired people. In addition, the “7 practical points” for facilitating a workshop with this specific target group will be presented.

How can companies and citizens work together to develop innovations? How can they capture and consider each other' s needs and requirements for new technologies? The Co-Creation Toolkit uses the experience gained in 19 industry-citizen workshops in the LIV_IN project and provides general recommendations for involving users in a commercial Research & Development-Project. It is addressed to all those who are interested in involving laypersons in order to jointly design products and services in a more customer-friendly way and in the sense of RRI.

On April 30, 2021, the kick-off of the BMWi-funded project SyKonaS - Systemic Conflict Analysis using Scenario Techniques took place. DIALOGIK is a project partner in SyKonaS, which is coordinated by ZIRIUS (University of Stuttgart). The project addresses the existing research gap of a systemic and prospective view of societal conflicts of the energy transition.

The LIV_IN project invites interested people from all sectors to the following webinar in April:

How can low-income families co-create innovations?

Webinar on 28 April 2021, 3pm CEST

Two case studies will show how co-creation between experts and citizens works and why it is worth considering inclusive innovations with low-income families.

Other exciting topics of the webinar:

Hydrogen is expected to play a key role in the further development and completion of the German energy transition. But what are citizens' attitudes towards this technology? In a meta-study conducted as part of the H2-Wyhlen project, DIALOGIK comparatively evaluated representative surveys on the perception of hydrogen in Germany. The results show a high degree of openness towards hydrogen, which citizens consider to be an environmentally and climate-friendly energy with a low risk potential (working paper available in German only).

The Design Report published in the journal GAIA reflects on the challenges of a large-scale project without a designated problem and project constitution phase for inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration. The team of authors, which includes Dr. Marion Dreyer and Dr.

The recently published journal article “Participatory Assessment of Multi Risks in Urban Regions – The Case of Critical Infrastructures in Metropolitan Lima” describes a participatory approach to dealing with multi-risks using the example of the Lima metropolitan region, Peru. Co-authors Christian D. León and Gisela Wachinger from DIALOGIK look in particular at the question of what the barriers are in stakeholder communication.

The results of the 2021 GAIA Masters Student Paper Award have now been announced. Every year, the international journal GAIA – Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society invites Masters students to participate in the GAIA Masters Student Paper Award. Masters students are encouraged to submit their results from research-based courses or Masters theses in the field of transdisciplinary environmental and sustainability science.

On 18 February 2021, DIALOGIK moderated the second meeting of the virtual dialogue process of the RIESGOS project with 50 participants from Peru. At the event stakeholders from the risk management area worked together on solutions to overcome barriers in risk communication.

A group of scientists from the EU-funded project HIDALGO collaboratively organised a workshop to discuss pressing issues like the spread of diseases (COVID-19), climate change, air pollution, forced migration, or false and misleading information on twitter and other channels. The speakers showed that HPC, HPDA and Artificial Intelligence could form a pathway to accurately model, simulate, and also to provide forecasts (e.g. for movement patterns of refugees and logistics of aid).

The "Regulatory Sanbox H2-Wyhlen" has started its work with today's kick-off. From now on, information about the regulatory sandbox can be found on the project homepage (German only): www.h2-wyhlen.de