Mid Sweden University

For traffic safety reasons, Sweden has lowered speed limits on major roads that lack directional separation of traffic. For some of these roads, regional authorities, municipalities, and other local stakeholders have sent appeals to the government opposing the implemented speed limit reductions. The appeals have mainly referred to negative effects on regional development and have suggested that the speed limit reductions be abandoned. This paper identifies the characteristics of roads where appeals against speed limit reductions have been filed and where local stakeholders claim that speed limit reductions are a threat to accessibility and regional development. The results of logistic regression modelling show that appeals are more likely for speed limit reductions on long road sections, on European roads, and in areas with a state university, and less likely in areas with high population density and areas defined as vulnerable by the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth. We investigated these policy conflicts using frame theory. In this paper, we identify two policy frames: speed limits for traffic safety and speed limits for regional development. These two policy frames are related to different views on how to best strive towards regional accessibility and safety goals in remote areas. The different views are likely not easily aligned by more information or facts since they concern deeper questions, such as what constitutes basic accessibility of good quality and how large risks are acceptable on the road network. This study thus uncovers not only a policy disagreement but a policy controversy in the Swedish context.

This study explores the perceptions ofmaster’s program students in Industrial Engineering andManagement (IEM) at Umeå University, Sweden,concerning the current and future impact of artificialintelligence (AI) on their discipline. Employing a descriptive,cross-sectional survey design, we collected quantitative datafrom participants asked to assess AI’s influence on decisionmaking, human-computer interactions, and informationmanagement, among other areas. While ordinal regressionanalysis revealed no significant correlation between thestudent’s academic year and their survey responses, aWilcoxon signed-rank test indicated a statistically significantbelief that AI’s impact on all surveyed areas would intensifywithin the next decade. Our findings suggest a need forengineering education to evolve to adequately equip futureprofessionals for the expanding influence of AI in IEM.Furthermore, the results add to the ongoing discussion ofAI’s role in engineering education and the broaderindustrial engineering and management field.

Evaluation is often connected to the use of quantitative data. However, in some contexts, quantitative data is not entirely comprehensive. Municipalities offer government services to citizens but have difficulty evaluating the value citizens experience from the services. Therefore, this paper presents the results of a project involving Mid-Sweden University and the Sundsvall municipality in central Sweden by presenting a model for citizen value collection. The value collection targets municipal workers (service providers) and citizens (service receivers). The model is constructed using design science and builds upon the recursive quality management methodology of Plan-Do-Study-Act. The results provide a valuable model for practice (municipalities), allowing citizen and worker values to be collected from municipal services and comparing them to evaluate whether any value gaps must be addressed.

Accessibility is a crucial concept in the study of social inclusion, justice, equity and security as well as the reliability of supply in societies. Research has examined factors that objectively measure accessibility, such as land-use and socioeconomics. However, such approaches often fail to include individual perceptions of accessibility. Thus, this study proposes a multi-linear regression model that focuses on both objective and subjective factors to assess municipal accessibility. In addition, principal component analysis is applied to reduce dimensionality and eliminate the problem of multi-collinearity. The paper contributes a novel model with a higher prediction rate (70.5%) than that of a traditional multi-linear regression model (58%) during an evaluation of accessibility in the Swedish context.

Sweden is experiencing a demographic transition contributing to the rise in care-related costs. This study aims to evaluate whether home care is a better choice than conventional care from an economical and quality standpoint for people over the age of 65. The costs of the two care models were estimated using parametric cost estimation. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process was used to determine which of the two care models was the most beneficial. The cost estimation implied that conventional care is less expensive than home care. However, the sensitivity analysis indicates that a minimal improvement in efficiency is sufficient enough for home care to become the least expensive option. In addition, the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process revealed that home care should be the prioritized option, even after a sensitivity analysis was conducted. Therefore, from an overall perspective, home care is the preferable care model. This paper evaluated a healthcare management problem using conventional methods, introducing new insight on how to perceive complex problems in today's healthcare environment.

Maritime transport facilitates trade with bioenergy feedstocks in the Baltic region. The study aims to provide guidance on efficient organisation of logistics at the port of loading for maritime transport of wood chips. The economic effects of using an intermediate terminal as opposed to direct delivery to port were studied, as well as the relationships between production capacity and storage capacity. Discrete-Event Simulation was used to analyse scenarios where a variable part of the volume is handled through the terminal. The total supply cost, including chipping, transportation, storage and handling at inland terminal and port, as well as loading of the ship, varied between €6.73 and 7.85 per MWh in the different scenarios. The volume passing through the terminal had a significant influence on total cost, showing a supply chain cost increase of €0.78 per m3 (approxi-mately €4.67 per dry tonne) for material delivered through the terminal. The difference in storage cost between port and inland terminal determines whether the terminal volumes affect costs, which was shown by a sensitivity analysis. Even so, the terminal offers a possibility to manage uncertainty, both in production rates and inshipping date, and influences the supply network. The main advantage of using a simulation technique for planning production and logistic flows is the visualisation of risks and margins.

In this paper, we describe a work in progress where a mixed methods approach is used to increase insight into what kind of consequences a temporal disruption or total breakdown of the payment system creates for a large variety of societal actors and to increase insight in how their collaborative behaviour can be guided to be more resilient. This approach includes data from different types of data collections; workshop with high-level decisionmakers from involved sectors, interviews with citizens, representatives from the fuel, foods, and finance sectors, as well as experiences from 15 simulation game exercises with stakeholders. The triangulated and aggregated outcomes of the different data collections resulted in a set of recommendations on how to cope with disruptions in the card payment system.

Large or lengthy disruptions to the card payment system are threats that can cause crisis in society, especially in countries where other payment options are scarce. This paper presents a study that provides suggestions on how to improve a simulation game used to increase societal resilience to payment system disruptions. Questionnaires and interviews have been used to investigate how 16 participant in crisis exercises experience realism, relevance and validity in such exercises. Suggestions on how to improve the simulation game are provided, such as improvements to the 1 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/desi accessed at 2019-09-20 2 Statistics from 2018, analysed by the Swedish Riksbank, see https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/statistik/betalningsstatistik/2018/ payments-patterns-in-sweden-2018.pdf 3 There are several reports of such disruptions in the card payment system, although the duration of the disruptions were shorter than ten days. See for example (all accessed on 2019-10-17): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44335804 graphical interface and introducing supporting roles from the exercise management.

A disruption in one critical infrastructure can quickly lead to cascading effects in several other ones. Much research has been done to analyze dependencies between different critical infrastructures, but little is known about how to mitigate escalation and cascading effects across several critical infrastructures, i.e. how to develop collective critical infrastructure resilience. This research presents the results of 15 simulation-games where groups of 6 to 8 field experts from different sectors were challenged to collaboratively manage a disruption in the payment system that quickly affected food distribution, fuel distribution, transport, health care et cetera. Teams discussed possible strategies, which next were implemented in a computer simulation. Teams could influence the sequence of events on 4 decision points during a 10 day scenario, and play the same scenario several times to test alternative solutions. Each simulation-game session lasted a full day. Data analysis involved the recorded team discussions as well as computer simulation logs of the implemented decisions and their impacts. The results show how escalation and the severity of cascading effects largely depends on the quality of the early crisis response and not so much on the initial disruption. Also, it is shown how cross sectorial collaboration is required. Responses where groups focus too much on cascading effects in one area lead too poor overall performance for society at large. Groups tend to overbalance their mitigating strategies initially, until they arrive at a more balanced strategy that covers challenges in several different critical infrastructures from an integral perspective.