Topics A-Z
Our Multifaceted View on Responsible Innovation
Our main research themes are design for values, responsible risk management and responsible innovation. Under these broad headings, we address a broad range of values, issues, technologies and application areas. We also use a lot of different concepts, approaches, theories and methods. This page gives an impression of our academic interests and expertise, without a claim of completeness.
This page is still under construction, in the course of 2024 we will gradually add content to all these topics.
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Agent-based modelling
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AI, ethics of...
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AI, safety of...
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Argumentation theory
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Art & technology
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Autonomous vehicles, safety & ethics of...
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Bias & heuristics in safety decisions
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Biotechnology & synthethic biology, responsible innovation in ....
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Bow-tie risk management approach
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Climate economics
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Climate, environment & sustainability
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Cognition, 4E (Embodied, Embedded, Extended, Enactive)
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Collective virtue theory
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Conceptual engineering
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Confucian philosophy of technology
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Democracy, theory of...
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Design for values / value sensitive design
How can we integrate values into the design of technologies, institutions and sociotechnical systems?
This is one of the three overarching research themes of the Department of Values, Technology & Innovation.
We chair the Delft Design for Values Institute, a collaboration between 5 TU Delft faculties on this theme:
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Design for justice
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Digital epistemology
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Digital society
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Digital world, safety & security in the ...
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Digital world, values in a ....
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Disability, neurodiversity & technology
Critically examining abelist assumptions to develop inclusive and responsible innovations
Technology plays a complicated role in the lives of many disabled people. On the one hand, technologies can help mitigate some of the challenges that disabled people face in their daily lives. Wheelchairs, braille computer displays, augmentative and alternative communication technologies, and many other technological artefacts can enable vital access to physical and social spaces.
On the other hand, many of these innovations fail to support the people for which they are purportedly intended; Technologies that are designed (and marketed) for disabled people are often developed without serious input from disabled communities. As a result, they may reflect ableist assumptions about what well-functioning bodies and minds presumably ought to look like.
For instance, voices from the critical disability community have expressed concerns that exoskeletons and cochlear implants implicitly devalue lives lived in wheelchairs and deaf culture. Another example is that communication technologies may reflect neurotypical communication norms and exclude the communication styles and preferences of autistic and other neurodivergent users.
It is thus important to investigate and reflect on ableist assumptions in contexts of technology development and implementation and to develop inclusive alternatives. Several research projects in our department are focused on furthering these aims:
- The COMET project looks at best practices for engineering ethics education. It has examined how to incorporate disability studies into Responsible Innovation practices. It has also developed a pedagogy that accommodates the skills and preferences of neurodivergent students, while also reflecting on ableism in technology design.
- Caroline Bollen has written about empathy, autism, and (augmentative and alternative) communication technology. She shows how scientific research on empathy fails to do justice to the empathic experiences of autistic people and how communication technology can be designed in ways that value (neuro)diversity.
Animated video by Caroline Bollen about her research on empathy
- VTI researchers contribute to the project ‘According to What Order is this a Disorder?’, part of the TU Delft Institute for Health Systems Science. It critically examines normative assumptions underlying categories of mental illness and disorder.
- In her NWO-Veni project, Janna van Grunsven is combining insights from the field of embodied cognition and critical disability studies to develop a more inclusive conception of what it means to flourish as an embodied, expressive, interaction-worthy person situated in a world shaped by technology.
- Sabine Roeser & Janna van Grunsven argue that design for emotions and enactive embodied cognitive science can contribute to neurodiversity-embracing communication technology.
- Janna van Grunsven has also reflected on how designers can circumvent ableism and promote accessibility through their practices.
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Disruptive technology, ethics of socially....
Developing 21th century ontological & moral concepts for a 21th century world
We are now at the beginning of a new era of technological innovation; New generations of the technologies that have emerged since the second world war are converging and undergoing widespread integration. This makes whole new fields possible, including artificial intelligence, robotics, synthetic biology, nanomedicine, next-generation genomics, neurotechnology and geo-engineering. These are socially disruptive technologies (SDTs) that have the potential to radically alter everyday life, cultural practices and social and economic institutions.
Societal disruption may well be necessary and desirable for responding to pressing global problems such as climate change and depletion of natural resources. But the technologies also raise tough moral questions and are in need of ethical evaluation. A complication in such evaluations is that these technologies may also affect the basic concepts and values that we normally appeal to in our ethical thinking, such as:
- the concepts that underlie our moral self-understanding, such as (moral) agency, autonomy, human interdependence, and responsibility;
- the concepts that form the basis of our political, social and legal institutions, such as democracy, justice, and equality;
- the basic ontological categories that we use to order our world, such as the distinctions between natural and artificial, humans and machines, public and private, and agents and physical systems.
In the ESDiT research program, we take up the challenge that socially disruptive technologies pose to our core concepts, in collaboration with colleagues from other Dutch universities.
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Diversity & inclusion, innovation for...
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Dynamic methods for risk analysis & management
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Economic governance
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Emotional Deliberation Approach
Towards democratic, fair & fruitful debates about risky technologies
Debates about risky technologies often result in conflicts and stalemates between experts and laypeople. Examples of technologies that give rise to fruitless, heated debates about risk are Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), shale gas, nanotechnology, genetic modification and nuclear energy. Such technologies can trigger a range of different emotions, including fear and indignation.
How should deal with such emotions in political decision making about risky technologies? Engineers and policy makers often see emotions as contrary to rational decision making. They are either ignored or taken as ‘necessary evils’ that have to be respected in a democratic society.
Grounded in philosophical theories about the nature of emotions, the Emotional Deliberation Approach developed at the VTI department takes a different view; It considers emotions to be possible indicators of underlying ethical concerns. Anger may for example be the result of concerns about justice. The Emotional Deliberation Approach provides recommendations for productively engaging with emotions as an integral part of participatory public debates about risky technologies.
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Emotions & values
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Empirical Methods in Philosophy
Maintaining the feedback loop between the real world and theory
EPT section clusterEmpirical philosophy represents an ambition to make conceptual, rationalistic research more “lived,” corresponding with the messy complexity of sociotechnical lives. Through a variety of quantitative and qualitative ways of interpreting reality, empirical philosophy gives the theoretical constructs a reality check, maintaining space for conceptual flexibility and innovation.
Integration of empirical methods into philosophical and broader theoretical inquiries is increasingly vital in the context of complex sociotechnical systems and evolving societal values. In sociotechnical systems, where technology and society closely interact, empirical philosophy allows for the examination of how technological advancements shape and are shaped by e.g., human values, institutions, and ecological environments. This empirical grounding is crucial for anticipating and addressing the dynamic nature of technologies conceived of as complex sociotechnical systems.
For instance, investigating the ethical implications of AI and automation requires not only existing normative theories and governance strategies but also empirical insights into the societal impacts and public perceptions of these systems. This grounds abstract concepts in real-world data and observations and may lead us to revise our background assumptions and theoretical constructs.
In this way, empirical philosophy as an interdisciplinary research is relevant for all three central research themes at VTI, namely Design for Values, Management of Responsible Innovation, and Responsible Risk Management.
At VTI, empirical philosophy is practiced in various forms, including for falsification, verification, or testing of (philosophical) theories, illustrating or demonstrating concepts with empirical data, and identifying gaps through systematic literature reviews. Normatively, empirical insights are used to formulate arguments or critiques. Furthermore, empirical studies can translate and concretize (philosophical) theories, serve as input for analysis, aid in theory or concept building, enhance understanding, and facilitate social learning about real-world phenomena.
Through a blend of interdisciplinary practices, empirical philosophy ensures that philosophical and broader theoretical discourse remains relevant and responsive to the complexities of our rapidly changing world, effectively bridging the gap between theory and practice.
Examples of VTI research making use of empirical philosophy
TPM / VTI researchers who want to join or keep in touch with the activities in the Empirical philosophy research cluster: feel free to send an email to Olya Kudina.
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Energy transition
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Epistemology and philosophy of science
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Frugal innovation
Doing more with less to create affordable, inclusive & sustainable solutions
Frugal innovations take circumstances of extreme resource constraint as a point of departure and offer simple, smart and affordable solutions, especially to underprivileged communities and sections of society. To be successful for both suppliers and demanders, frugal innovations need to fit local circumstances and cultures.
Frugal innovators can be individuals or local communities engaged in grassroot innovations to solve their own immediate problems, NGOs and social enterprises developing frugal innovations like apps for refugees, or commercial firms developing frugal innovations to penetrate so-called ‘Base of the Pyramid’ markets.
Successful frugal technologies and innovations are increasingly co-produced in so-called polycentric networks of innovation that link several stakeholders to each other such as entrepreneurs, designers, financiers, manufacturers and distributors from various parts of the globe.
Together with our colleagues at Leiden University and the Erasmus University Rotterdam, we investigate whether and under what circumstances frugal innovations can contribute to sustainable and inclusive development. The challenge is how to do that without sacrificing user value. An example is a project on inclusive business models for frugal innovations in Africa that we did a few years back.
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Future studies & foresight
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Global value chains
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Health & care, responsible ...
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Health care technology, philosophy/ethics of...
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Human factors / psychology / human-centered design & safety
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Human-technology relationships
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Inclusive research & innovation in STEM
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Influence, ethics of ... / design of good ...
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Knowledge process management
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Management of responsible innovation
How can we operationalise, manage & incentivise responsible innovation within innovation systems?
This is one of the three main research themes of the Department of Values, Technology & Innovation.
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Medical AI, ethics/philosophy of...
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Meta-ethics
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Mission-oriented innovation
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Neurotechnology, ethics of....
Brains, data, minds, and the self
Neurotechnologies include devices that record brain activity and use the resulting data to operate computer hardware and software. These brain computer interfaces (BCIs) can be used in medical applications like BCI-controlled prosthetic limbs, controlled without mechanical interface using just brain signals. BCIs can also replace lost speech, by recording brain signals associated with ‘imagined speech’ and translating them into sounds that would have been uttered by a user.
Researchers might claim to be able to use BCIs to detect whether people are lying or telling the truth about something. BCIs can be bought that allow users to monitor and try to manipulate their own brain states through ‘neurofeedback.’ BCIs can also be used to allow control over personal computers, toys and games. Often, these kinds of technologies are called mind reading, or thought reading devices.
Do we want devices that can read our minds? Is it true that such devices could exist? How would such devices affect medicine, psychiatry, law, and existing ideas of ourselves? BCI applications produce lots of data about users brains, so it is important to consider how this data is created, collected, stored, owned, and used. Maybe we need new laws or rights to deal with these neurotechnological developments. What’s clear is that we have many open questions, and lots of ethical uncertainty.
At the VTI Department we supervise Bachelor and Master’s level research projects on ethics and neurotechnology. We also produce original research contributing to international academic and policy discussions on every dimension of the complex sociotechnical systems surrounding value aware, responsible innovations in neurotechnology development.
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Non-Western Philosophy
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Nuclear technology, ethics of...
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Probabilistic methods in safety research
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Public values
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Quantum technology, responsible innovation in ...
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Reflective equilibrium as an ethical & methodological approach
Bridging the gap between individual perceptions and theory
When confronted with an ethical dilemma or a question about what to do in a specific situation, there are different ways to reach a decision:
- You could begin with rather general ethical theories, such as utilitarianism or virtue ethics, and derive an answer/solution from them.
- Conversely, you could start with your intuitions on what to do in this case and develop ideas on what is morally right more generally based on such concrete judgments.
- Or you could employ both approaches, oscillating between these different layers of abstraction, ultimately seeking coherence among them.
In philosophy, these three different approaches to justify (moral) conclusions are referred to as top-down, bottom-up, and coherentist. One such coherentist approach to justification is reflective equilibrium.
Reflective equilibrium is best known for addressing one of the major challenges in applied ethics: how to integrate
- social scientific insights into people’s perceptions of what is morally right, fair, or just in certain situations with
- conceptual and theoretical ethical insights.
Responsible innovation provides a good example of this challenge, as insights from the ethics of technology are important, while we also want to consider the views that stakeholders have on a new technology. These may not always align from the start. Reflective equilibrium helps avoid the pitfalls of relying solely on people’s perceptions, which may overlook ethical considerations of which they are unaware, as well as abstract theorizing that may have little bearing on the real world.
We have used reflective equilibrium with colleagues from the Eindhoven University of Technology to develop a fair approach to distributing responsibilities in research teams. We used the method to explore how interdisciplinary collaboration in the context of technological risks could fruitfully take place. We organized a workshop that focused on the question of how to fairly distribute the responsibilities for addressing technological risks within a research team. In the workshop, we discussed how ethical theories align with different principles for distributing responsibilities, which ultimately resulted in a distribution of responsibilities that all project team members recognized as fair.
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Resilience, theories & assessment methods
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Responsible research & innovation (RRI)
Innovation that embeds societal / public / ethical values within sociotechnical systems
This is the main theme of our department. All topics on this page are in some way or another, either directly or indirectly, related to or relevant for RRI.
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Responsible risk management
How are we to assess, manage & evaluate the risks of technologies & sociotechnical systems in a responsible way?
Responsible risk management is one of the three main research themes of the Department of Values, Technology & Innovation.
In the TU Delft Safety & Security Institute we collaborate on this topic with researchers and stakeholders from various engineering disciplines and application domains.
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Safe (and sustainable) by design
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Secure & safe use of technology
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Socio-technical systems
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Standardisation of products & systems
Understanding & shaping the invisible glue holding together (international) economic cooperation
International standards for products and systems are, one could say, the invisible glue that make worldwide economic cooperation in value chains possible. They make products and parts compatible, clarify mutual expectations that partners may have of each other, guarantee a minimum level of quality and safety, and in the best cases even ensure that products meet ethical and societal values.
In some cases, standards come about in a collaborative process between all stakeholders, in which national and international standards institutes may play a key role. However, more often than not standards emerge as a result of a complex interplay between market mechanisms, policies, and strategies of individual firms. And sometimes they are the outcome of a fierce battle between companies trying to gain dominance in the market by dictating the standard.
Our research on standardisation focuses on a better understanding of the process of developing standards, with the goal of enabling complex innovations and solving societal and business challenges. Which factors determine if and how standards come about? What can companies and governments do to positively influence this process? Those are two central questions in our research on this topic.
This video from our project "Platform wars for socially responsible smart grids: the influence of stakeholder networks and platform flexibility" (2013-2015) gives an example of the importance of standards in responsible innovation. Of course there have been new developments since this video was made. Read more on standards for smart meters in the Netherlands in this more recent article (2021).
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STS and hermeneutics
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Technology assessment
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Technology as social experiment
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Value change
How to account in design for changes in values over time?
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The 5 types of value change that were identified by our Value Change project
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Value conflicts
How to deal with value conflicts in design?
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Ibo van de Poel about different approaches to deal with conflicting values
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Value experiences
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Value hierarchy method
How to systematically & transparently translate values in design requirements
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Ibo van de Poel explaining the value hierarchy method
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Virtues in engineering
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VTI methodologies
VTI department clusterLearning about the wide range of methods used in studying Values, Technology & Innovation
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Water technology & policy, ethics of ...
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Doorn, N. (2019). Water Ethics: An Introduction. Rowman & Littlefield.
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