Mittuniversitetet

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) systems, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, enable the automatic creation of content that closely resembles human-produced work, allowing for both constructive and potentially harmful applications. This study investigates the impact of GAI on digital resilience in society, focusing on the opportunities and challenges these technologies present. Digital resilience is defined as the capacity to maintain societal functions despite disruptions to or by digital systems. This study draws on a systematic literature review of 164 research articles, with findings categorized into three key perspectives: technology, organization, and governance. Within each perspective, themes for further research are identified. The results highlight the importance of recognizing GAI’s dual nature to both support and threaten digital resilience. To promote secure digitalization, our study calls for more empirical research on the risks associated with GAI applications, transparent artificial intelligence usage, and the establishment of ethical guidelines. The study also advocates for increased interdisciplinary research to ensure that new technologies and resilience can coexist as foundational elements of a resilient, democratic society.

Technological developments have enabled private and public actors to access near-Earth space. Space systems are both critical infrastructure and important sub-systems of other critical infrastructures (e.g., GPS and weather forecasting) dependent on space technology. However, unlike other critical infrastructures, space systems are relatively unexplored from a security perspective. The paper presents a system model based on a synthesis of the current research front discussed in national and international research literature, reports, and studies. The soft systems methodology is used to develop the model useful for actors concerned with risk management to increase the understanding of systemic dependencies of space systems and strengthen the resilience in critical infrastructures and services. This paper provides insights into digital risks for space systems, highlighting serious societal consequences and areas for enhanced space security. Based on the system model and the analysis provided for a better understanding of the relationships among these systems, future research needs to strengthen cybersecurity in space systems as exemplified.

This paper examines the role of aviation in general and regional airports in particular for societal resilience and future development in geographical peripheral and sparsely populated areas. It concentrates on a Swedish case study that shows that the official Swedish transportation policy conveys a strong focus on passenger numbers, which lead to economic challenges for the smaller, regional airports and airlines in running a viable business. In addition, the study emphasizes that these regional airports in addition to other services play an important role for society’s ability to handle medical or traffic accidents, natural hazards like wild-fires, and security-related transports and to establish proper preparedness for ensuring resilience and territorial sovereignty (as required for the NATO membership). Despite of being an important part of a resilient transportation system, the regional airports are a high-cost factor for the Swedish municipalities that run them, while the benefit occurs at the societal level. This problem of the common good – that the costs and benefits are unevenly distributed – brings the risk that municipal operators choose to close the airports, which considerably affects societal resilience in rather remote and rural areas. Insights from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic indicate that rescaling is a very difficult endeavor if robust maintenance has been neglected in times with low traffic volumes in addition to societal adaption. Future research could address how costs and responsibilities could be more evenly distributed to strengthen societal resilience in sparsely inhabited and geographical remote areas.

The paper aims to develop a set of key variables that can be used to model accessibility for informed and sustainable regional planning for sparsely populated remote areas. Based on a thematic analysis of empirical data from a Swedish case, the study extracts regional peculiarities related to the concept of regional accessibility. These peculiarities formulate a set of key variables that can be used to develop new accessibility models or expand existing ones to support decision-making at the policy design stage through a knowledge-based approach. The findings of the paper pinpoint characteristics of destinations that unpack the regional accessibility concept. The paper contributes with a fresh perspective on regional planning, addressing the often-overlooked distinct features of sparsely populated remote areas. Based on these insights, the suggested set of key variables reflects the regional peculiarities without neglecting the uniqueness of these areas. The extracted variables may be incorporated in modeling to simulate accessibility dynamics to offer contextually informed perspectives for policymakers. As a result, the findings from this paper strengthen informed decision-making concerning accessibility in planning for sustainable regional development.

Infrastructure developments depend on decision makers' perceptions of the particular policy issue and a preferred future state. The complex relationship between accessibility and rural development and the long periods from problem recognition to transport infrastructure realisations bring further uncertainty into regional planning. Therefore, government and public administration tend to rely on narratives to explain the policy issue and to transfer their perspectives into the policy process. However, oversimplified narratives unduly limit the understanding of the problem and so the choice of solutions. This paper aims therefore to contribute to an understanding of the recognition of accessibility and transport infrastructure as a policy problem for sustainable regional development in rural areas. It investigates the narrative that emerges from local officials' perceptions about a future society, reasons for sustainable growth and the collaboration at the local and regional levels in central Sweden. The analysis details the four key perspectives of the narrative: local people, work and leisure, an urban neighbourhood and public transport services. The findings stress the narrative's lack of oversight and inclusion that accounts for societies' heterogeneity. In particular, the analysis expounds a remarkable faceless story that conveys a prevalent lack of understanding of stakeholder needs and the role of critical infrastructure for societal development in rural areas. 

Simulation modeling is an effective tool that enables knowledge-based approaches to support decision-making for complex problems. Agent-based modeling (ABM) simulation is particularly powerful in the visualization of macro-outcomes of individual and group-specific behaviour, for example in urban and regional planning. However, the adoption of ABM in practice often overlooks its capabilities. Ineffective planning sets sparsely populated remote regions to risk of suffering from long-term consequences, such as population decline. In these settings, it is important to bring municipalities into a dialogue to share the advantages of common planning at a regional scale for their mutual advancement. This study aims to explore the potential of applying ABM and its visual capabilities to support regionwide planning. For this purpose, we develop a model of accessibility of a Swedish region to enhance awareness of common problems with regional accessibility and lift the planning focus from a local scale to a regional one. The model in this paper draws on empirical data from interactions with planners in a region of six municipalities with varying degrees of urbanization in a sparsely populated remote area in Sweden. The model visualizes the dynamic changes in accessibility and demonstrates how destination clustering outplays on a higher system level usually overlooked in planning. The simulation of the case shows that aggravated agglomeration effects will prevent municipalities from developing their centers if they do not consider the opportunities in neighbouring areas within the same region. The paper contributes insights that stimulate the adoption of simulation in complex domains, such as public planning that seeks to align local and regional perspectives.

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.

The reliability of infrastructure that is critical to society's functionality, survival and progression has gained significance for both national security and research because of its large-scale and interdependent nature. However, the theoretical basis of the relatively new research field of critical infrastructure is incomplete and the common parlance about the underlying concepts is ambiguous. This article addresses this issue and presents the results of a substantial review of scientific literature on the concepts of systems, infrastructure and governance. The results demonstrate that the concepts encounter a common challenge in characterising their key elements, structures and processes because of their recursive nature. The multi-level character of critical infrastructure systems provokes governance to systemically address the properties of adaption, emergence and entropy which the complex system-of-systems exhibits. This article contributes with both a conceptual study of the terms system, infrastructure and governance and a detailed review of the state of the art regarding these concepts in the current scientific literature to an enhanced understanding of the theoretical foundations of the associated fields. Subsequent research could interrelate other concepts, such as vulnerability, resilience, sustainability and feedback with the provided state of the art.