TPM - Alumnus Chintan Shah and the future of street lighting controls

faculty of technology, policy and management

P3 Alumnus Chintan Shah and street lighting - Green policies for the construction industry - P4 PhD research in the news - P6 New books at TPM - P7 Professor profile - P8 Curius - World catamaran sailing champion’s Olympic dream

iX/3 24 10 2011

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Inaugural lecture by Frances Brazier:

“Other paradigms are needed in order to design technical, social and ecosystems” Society is undergoing enormous changes, with more interaction in and between all kinds of networks than ever before. for that reason, other paradigms are needed in order to design technical, social and ecological systems. an important aspect of this is that people are given the opportunity to be responsible partici­ pants in large­scale, complex and dynamic systems. this is the conclusion of professor of systems engineering prof. frances Brazier in her inaugural lecture entitled, ‘Shaping participation: a new design paradigm’, which she delivered on 14 october at tpm.

“The government, citizens, doctors, hospitals, energy suppliers - everyone is a part of socio-technological and ecological systems.

However, these modern distributed systems are becoming increasingly interwoven: they depend upon each other and influence each other in complex, dynamic and sometimes unpredictable ways. The key question, then, is this: how do you structure these systems in such a way that technology has a support function and people can participate and are able to take responsibility for themselves? How can we create systems that people can and do trust?”

In her inaugural lecture, Brazier illustrates her point with reference to several examples involving large-scale infrastructural systems, such as traffic and energy. “Many of us have a navigation system in our cars, and mostly it works well enough. Early one morning last winter, I suddenly found myself on a polder road that had iced over, which had children skating on it. It made me wonder why I had unthinkingly relied on my navigation system.

In addition, I would have preferred to be able to interact with the device and other road-users, then this would never have happened.”

Or take the energy network: how do we structure it so that citizens can be truly responsible for their energy consumption?

“To achieve this, in our opinion people need to really engage with the issue of energy, and be involved in their own energy consumption through smart meters, for example. On the one hand, these systems could negotiate with them with regard to their desired level of consumption and other preconditions, and on the other enter into dynamic negotiations with different suppliers about purchasing and delivery. The latest form of selfmanagement and regulation has been the focus of our research for several years now. The notion of participation brings us the insight that if users really are a part of the network then they are able to take responsibility for their own behaviour. If a user behaves unpredictably (such as coming home with ten guests unexpectedly), this will have implications for the energy system and will have to be given some thought.”

Self-organising system Technological developments are moving so quickly that we have no time to lose in defining new paradigms. “A wonderful example of a participating socio-technological system is the Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands.

On behalf of the Jewish Historical Museum, and in collaboration with the International Institute of Social History, Mediamatic Lab has devised a community site where Jewish people can tell their story and provide information about their families, about generations past and present, about their memories of how life used to be. The stories are categorised geographically, via family links and according to subject matter. This has opened up a history of the Jewish community in Amsterdam that was so deeply affected by the Second World War. Descendants are able to become members of what is a relatively closed community and actively add information. They have to be able to feel secure, and they have to be able to trust the site editors and the system. The public part of the website serves to enhance general knowledge. The design criteria concerning norms, values and other preconditions were clearly defined in

advance. The result is more than just a website: a new community has been created in which other activities are included as well.

This is a self-organising system.”

Privacy and the option of remaining anonymous are important.

“The term ‘pseudo-anonymity’ (Prins) has for many years been a guiding principle in our legal state. For example, the government can obtain an almost unlimited amount of information about someone, but they have to go to great lengths to do so: observing camera images, checking credit card transactions, etc. Operations of this kind currently cost a lot of time and effort, but new technological developments will change this.

When rioting occurs, as was recently the case in London and the Feijenoord Maasgebouw, the police can acquire all the information about the troublemakers within seconds.

The technology is already available: cameras are everywhere.

But how are you going to regulate access this information?

That depends on values and standards.”

Social networks make participation possible. That also applies to the rule of law. Citizens can and are willing to accept their responsibilities. Participation in systems that are well-designed enhances transparency and trust. To the question of what the new design of socio-technological and ecological systems should look like, Brazier replies that participation is the key.

“This means ‘design for trust’ (social acceptance, transparency, safety), ‘design for autonomy’ (authority, self-management and self-regulation), and ‘design for human-system interaction’ (involvement and collaboration). Existing models, theories and architecture provide a basis for the design. Distributed simulations offer a means by which the behaviour of complex and large-scale systems can be observed.”

If you would like to know more, go to www.participatorysystems.org continued on page 2

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Alumnus Chintan Shah and the future of street lighting after studying mechanical engineering at nirma university in gujarat, india, from 1998 to 2002, chintan Shah spent two years working at the Suzuki engine factory in Bangalore. there, he spotted the huge gap between technology and management. “i saw tech people making things that the management did not want, and managers deciding things that were of little use in practice.” this helped Shah to decide on his next degree: management of technology at the tpm faculty in delft.

When flying over the Netherlands, the Indian student noticed how many lights are on in the evenings and at night while nobody is around. “I wanted to do something about that enormous waste.” And he did. In March 2010, Chintan won the Delft Energy Initiative Campus Energy Challenge with his idea for intelligent street lighting, which enables local authorities to save as much as eighty percent on energy and maintenance costs of street lights. The lamps dim to around twenty per cent of their regular strength when no traffic is about. As cars, bicycles or pedestrians approach, all the lights in their vicinity brighten again. Apart from lower costs, the system results in considerable reductions in CO2 emissions and light pollution.

Pilot scheme A mini-version of the intelligent street lighting system, involving seven lamps, is currently being tested on the TU Delft campus. With his TU Delft spin-out company, Tvilight, Shah is working on introducing the system to the market.

“I expect that by 2013 intelligent street lighting will be operating somewhere in a residential area or an industrial estate in the Netherlands, using between one hundred and three hundred lamps.” It seems that that will just be the beginning. At present, around 310 million euros a year are spent on street lighting in the Netherlands, accounting tor more than

fifty per cent of the costs incurred by local authorities.

The most important ingredients of the ‘street lighting of the future’ are LED lighting, environmental sensors, and wireless communications. The system Shah has come up with is different from existing systems technologically speaking.

All the technology involved has been patented. The electronic unit that has been developed for the application can be installed in any existing street light. If the lamp is on the verge of failing, the system issues a warning that it needs replacing, thus contributing towards road safety.

Honour The invention is attracting huge interest. “I don’t know where it will all end,” says Chintan Shah with amazement and pride.

He is happy to share the honour with TU Delft. When looking around for a post-graduate degree while working at Suzuki, he also considered universities in Sweden, Denmark and Germany. “I chose Delft for three reasons: its reputation, the English-language environment, and a professor from TU Delft who regularly visited Suzuki. He was one of my great sources of inspiration.” Shah also praises the introduction he was given along with his fellow students when he first arrived, and he is still grateful for the references written by TPM professors Karel Mulder and Robert Verburg, which helped him obtain a grant from the

Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education. “That enabled me to give up my part-time job as a software tester and concentrate fully on my studies.”

After completing his MoT programme last year, Chintan Shah started working three days a week at Bluewater Energy Systems in Hoofddorp, where he focuses on sustainable energy. He devotes the remainder of his time to Tvilight and can often be seen at TPM. He carries out PhD research on a flexible basis for Roland Oort and Victor Scholten (department of Innovation Systems, Technology, Strategy and Entrepreneurship research group).

Useful links Intelligent street lighting http://tudelft.nl/nl/actueel/laatste-nieuws/artikel/detail/ intelligente-straatverlichting-tu-delft-kan-tot-80-energiebesparen Delft Energy Initiative Nuffic Tvilight

http://tudelft.nl/onderzoek/energy www.nuffic.nl www.tvilight.com

J EROE N V A N D E R H E IJ DE N; NE W T U DE L FT VENI RESEARC HER

Jeroen van der Heijden: Green policies for the construction industry In the last two decades, major changes have taken place in the way societal risks are managed (with regard to health and the environment, for example). More and more often government regulations are being replaced by a system of self-imposed rules, known as ‘voluntary regulatory regimes’ (VRR). But why should companies stick to them?

Voluntary regulatory regimes: criticism and expectations “Sceptics argue that companies devise voluntary regulatory regimes of this kind in order to prevent governments making even stricter regulations. Others believe that businesses only do this if they stand to make money out of it. This economic and rational approach contrasts with the socially-involved approach, which assumes that companies act in response to an inner urge to make a positive contribution to the management of risks to society.

the construction industry is one of the most pollutant sectors. nonetheless, construction companies freely put up sustainable and ‘green’ buildings without the government obliging them to do so. the Veni research project by Jeroen van der heijden, 34, looks into why and how these companies do this.

Van der heijden, section policy, organisation law and gaming, received this october the official notice that he was granted by nWo.

In my research, I am concentrating on initiatives in the construction industry, and in particular on those that focus on sustainable building. Even though the industry is strictly regulated by the government, there is a range of initiatives worldwide aimed at making buildings more sustainable than governments require. A good example is that of ‘sustainable construction labels’. You could compare them to the labels that you find on new cars and washing machines nowadays.

The sustainable building labels show what the ecological performance of a building is like.

Controversial hypotheses I am conducting my research in four European countries.

This gives me an insight into how such factors as existing

government regulations and social attitudes towards environmental problems contribute towards the development and implementation of voluntary regulatory regimes.

Although these differences will play a part, my expectation is that motives like profitability and consumer demand will be the main reasons why companies devise initiatives of this kind. In addition, I expect that the most successful voluntary regulatory regimes will turn out to be a reflection of traditional government policy - strict rules, rigid enforcement and severe penalties in the event of any breaches. These hypotheses are at odds with the keen expectations that public and private parties have of this type of initiative.”

Veni grant The Veni grant from the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research is one of the most prestigious grants available for young researchers. Obtaining a Veni grant is regarded as an important step in an academic career. Applications are assessed by scientists from inside and outside the Netherlands.

Veni researchers are at the start of their careers, but have already demonstrated a remarkable talent for academic research. The grant gives them the opportunity to further develop their ideas for a period of three years.