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One dimension of the emerging politics of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) is the development of public concerns over their societal implications and associated policy issues. This study uses original survey data from the United States to contribute to the anticipation of future policy and political issues for CAVs. Several studies have surveyed the public regarding CAVs; however, there are few studies that highlight the multidimensional public concerns that CAVs will most likely bring. The study breaks down the concept of “public” by showing that the demographic variables of gender, age, race, ethnicity, income, location (rural, suburban, urban), and political ideology (conservative, moderate, liberal) are significantly associated with three of the most salient public concerns to date (safety, privacy, and data security). Furthermore, the effects of demographic variables also vary across the type of policy issue. For example, women tend to be more concerned about safety than their male counterparts, and Hispanics (Latinx) tend to be more concerned about privacy than non-Hispanics. The research shows how the social scientific analysis of the “politics” of CAVs will require attention to the variegated connections between different types of public concern and different demographic variables.

 

With the growth of commercial and recreational use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones), there is increasing attention to the need for regulation. A systematic review is conducted using a multiple comparative perspective: across three political jurisdictions (the United States, the European Union, and Japan) and across two areas of societal implication and policy (i.e., privacy and safety), with additional comparisons drawn from regulations for related cyber-physical systems. The multiple comparative analysis conducted in this paper shows that safety is a much more salient concern than privacy. Moreover, safety is focused on technical features of the UAVs, registration and certification, and differentiation by use case. Privacy regulations tend to follow broader digital privacy guidelines. Although there are some privacy rules that are UAV-specific, many of them do not yet directly address privacy challenges that are specific for UAVs. Additional comparisons with safety and privacy policies for automated vehicles and the smart grid reveal areas of potential development for harmonization and policy guidance. The study concludes with ten recommendations for future policy development. 

A salient problem faced by governments and industry alike is how to accelerate energy transitions to enhance affordability, accessibility, and greenhouse-gas reduction. Bringing together acceleration processes and spatial scale dynamics, this study highlights the potential for electricity distribution to play a keystone role in the energy transition. We present and examine survey data of electricity distribution utilities in a region of the U.S. to show how trends in decentralization and digitization are intertwined with decarbonization. These trends rebalance economic value toward distribution networks and away from centralized infrastructure. The survey data show that electricity distribution organizations are deploying local, renewable generation projects that produce electricity for one-third (1/3) less than the cost from a centralized generation-and-transmission entity. We suggest that this change and others are likely to transform distribution operators into more broad-based local power organizations. Although the cost advantage of distributed generation seemingly marks a future of local control and decentralized organizational forms, spatial scale dynamics indicate countervailing centralization trends, including that distribution networks may evolve to dependency on external digital, engineering, and capital providers. The outcome of the resulting conflicts will affect the potential for transition acceleration to be enabled or reduced. 

Ridesourcing advocates and companies promise many benefits to cities, such as increased accessibility, a solution to the last-mile transit problem, and even reduced need for automobiles. However, an important body of research has indicated that ridesourcing is more heavily used by more privileged consumers and in more affluent and whiter neighborhoods. Questions have also emerged about the effects of ridesourcing on public transportation. This study builds on a mobility disparities perspective by analyzing ridesourcing in the context of urban inequality, including gentrification and displacement. Using a large data set from the Chicago area, this study shows that ridesourcing is associated with areas that have seen rising rents and have become whiter and more educated. The results also show that ridesourcing is more prevalent in areas that are accessible by public transportation. Although the causal relationship between ridesourcing and gentrification is complex, the study suggests a new direction in the literature that embeds the analysis of ridesourcing in the broader frameworks of unequal urban development and neoliberalization. The study also suggests policy approaches that could help to reduce some of the connections between ridesourcing and urban inequity. 

This study contributes to the analysis of civil society and knowledge by examining mobilizations by civil society organizations and grassroots networks in opposition to wireless smart meters in the United States. Three types of mobilizations are reviewed: grassroots anti-smart-meter networks, privacy organizations, and organizations that advocate for reduced exposure to non-ionizing electromagnetic fields. The study shows different relationships to scientific knowledge that include publicizing risks and conducting citizen science, identifying non-controversial areas of future research, and pointing to deeper problems of undone science (a particular type of non-knowledge that emerges when actors mobilize in the public interest and find an absence or low volume of research that could have been used to support their concerns). By comparing different types of knowledge claims made by the civil society organizations and networks, the study examines the conditions under which mobilized civil society generates positive responses from incumbent organizations versus resistance and undone science. 

This study develops a comparative, sociotechnical design perspective for interdisciplinary teams of social scientists and computer scientists. Sociotechnical design refers to identifying both technical and governance challenges and to understanding the ways in which the two types of problems affect and define each other. Approaching design as an open-ended, iterative process, the study develops a triple comparative perspective to problem finding and solutions: across two types of technological systems (the smart grid and connected and automated vehicles), three areas of societal implication and values (safety, equity, and privacy), and two continents (North America and Europe with a focus on the U.S. and Germany). The study then describes the implementation in an international collaboration of research and teaching. The collaborative experience and comparative research provide insights into the salience of the values across technological systems, portability of solutions across technological systems, and potential for policy harmonization across countries. 

Utilities and local power providers throughout the world have recognized the advantages of the "smart grid" to encourage consumers to engage in greater energy efficiency. The digitalization of electricity and the consumer interface enables utilities to develop pricing arrangements that can smooth peak load. Time-varying price signals can enable devices associated with heating, air conditioning, and ventilation (HVAC) systems to communicate with market prices in order to more efficiently configure energy demand. Moreover, the shorter time intervals and greater collection of data can facilitate the integration of distributed renewable energy into the power grid. This study contributes to the understanding of time-varying pricing using a model that examines the extent to which transactive energy can reduce economic costs of an aggregated group of households with varying levels of distributed solar energy. It also considers the potential for transactive energy to smooth the demand curve.