The path towards digitalisation in road infrastructure

This special issue offers an overview on digitalisation in road infrastructure. Digitalisation has a vertical impact across the several layers of the road system. This will bring, in the medium to long term, profound challenges and disruptions to the existing status quo in terms of construction, management, and particularly, operation of road systems. From technical design standards up to Mobility as a Service and digital platforms that allow the appearance of new services and mobility solutions, a new paradigm is emerging, able to extract added value from road investments. 

The road infrastructure was traditionally the central element in the planning and management process of road transport. The focus is changing, and the service and users are now at the very center of the management process. Policy makers, regulators, infrastructure managers and road operators can extract significant benefits from the digitalisation, but to reap those full benefits, it will be necessary to have a clear view on the path ahead. 

This special issue of the Network Industries Quarterly (NIQ) presents a set of five papers, developed by Researchers of Instituto Superior Técnico – University of Lisbon (Portugal), that provide a holistic perspective over the challenges, impacts, and risks of digitalisation in the road sector. 

Neves and Velez developed a paper on the expected impacts of autonomous vehicles on road infrastructures of old urban centers. 

Baptista and Duarte look into the trends of vehicle electrification and its challenges for infrastructure. 

Sousa and Meireles analyse digitalisation of road infrastructure from a risk management perspective, particularly the possibility of implementing of a holistic quantitative risk management approach, allowed by the growing digitalisation. 

Trindade and Almeida offer an analysis of digitalisation on the value realisation from infrastructure assets in asset-intensive organisations 

Finally, Moura looks into digital platforms, particularly Mobility as a Service approaches.

New network structures: decentralization, prosumers and the role of online platforms

This issue of the Network Industries Quarterly looks into the major challenges infrastructure regulation is currently facing as a result of technology, indirect network effects, newly emerging network structures, and new actors. The rapidly evolving Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have significantly challenged the traditionally stable landscape of infrastructure services provision. The new data layer over the traditional infrastructure and service layers is transforming network industries: online platforms create new indirect network effects, they allow new service providers to enter the market , and they challenge the central role of traditional infrastructure managers/service providers as entities ensuring the coordination of the sectors. 

The de- and re-regulation of the different network industries is an on- going process at both the national and global levels. As this process unfolds, ever new phenomena emerge, necessitating a constant reassessment of the content and objectives of regulation. 

Following the 7th Conference on Regulation of Infrastructures which took place on June 21 and 22, 2018 with a particular focus on the regulatory challenges facing network industries in the transport, telecoms, water and energy sectors, four papers were selected for this publication due to their topical relevance. 

Frieden examines how Internet ventures operate as intermediaries serving both upstream sources of content and applications, as well as downstream consumers, and considers how governments can respond to the onset of price and quality of service discrimination within the Internet ecosystem. 

Knieps looks at ICT innovations as the key drivers for a paradigm shift from traditional intramodal transportation markets to intermodal shared mobility markets. He identifies the changing necessities of regulations regarding market entry, public subsidies, and technical regulations, and presents the potentials of pilot projects, as well as the impact of shared mobility on congestion and pollution. 

Rossotto et al. analyse the existing literature on digital platforms and distinguish four aspects, which policy makers should keep in mind, working on appropriate policy frameworks for digital platforms in emerging markets. These four aspects are: definition of multisided- platforms; emerging business models; technology and behavioral enablers; platform competitive dynamics. 

Finally, Vanrykel, Ernst and Bourgeois look at the platform Share&Charge, and present its functioning and potential, before assessing the tax treatment of operations involved in the use of the platform.

Regulation for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Transportation, Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Under the terms of Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and Physical Internet as well as several others, many automatization and digitalization trends are on the move for the transportation, logistics and supply chain sector. Many technology aspects are driving these developments, in line with economic aspects. But increasingly also questions of human perception, motivation and safety are entering the discussion, emerging as a crucial topical area for overall economic impact and success. 

Regulation for technology developments in artificial intelligence and robotics are commonly seen as one of the important yet structurally neglected fields regarding the human perspective on increasing automatization. This was highlighted in 2017 by the European Parliament report and a public consultation, indicating that a vast majority of citizens in Europe is regarding those developments as positive innovation fields but where further safeguards and regulations are needed, see the EP Resolution on Civil Law Rules on Robotics, 2015/2103(INL). 

This issue is connected to an innovation workshop that took place on February 26 2018 at the Florence School of Regulation and directed at discussing the state of the art within the field of transportation, logistics and supply chain management. Furthermore, an evaluation regarding possible actions like regulation, agency- or industry-based approaches for establishing safeguards towards effective but riskmitigating settings for this sector is aimed for. 

Initial contributions collected here are directed at providing an interdisciplinary overview regarding the perspectives of industry and logistics actors, researchers in the economic, computer sciences, law and sociology domains as well as other interested parties from the field of political actors and associations. This shall enable the start of an open discussion what sorts of regulation are necessary in order to secure human trust and motivation in AI and robotics developments without placing too much of a burden to the economic development in the transportation, logistics and supply chain sector.

Governing Energy Transitions: strategic challenges of local utility companies in the Swiss energy transition

Many countries are currently firmly committing to a transition towards a more sustainable energy system, each facing their own unique challenges. The Swiss energy transition is particularly challenging due to a combination of commitments: (1) a gradual phase-out of nuclear energy, currently about a third of the country’s electricity production, is expected by 2034, (2) construction of new renewable energy sources such as solar PV, wind and micro-hydro, (3) electrification of heating and transportation, (4) energy saving, and (5) stringent CO2 emission targets. 

Utility companies play an important role in the realization of the Swiss energy transition, but are also facing numerous strategic challenges as a consequence of a rapidly changing playing field. The commitments necessary to transition towards a more sustainable energy system are not necessarily aligned with the current operations of local utility companies. For example, the lack of incentives for energy efficiency programs, market opening, smart grids and renewable energy has utilities looking for new business models.