Barriers to the digital transformation of infrastructure sectors.

Digital technologies can be important to policy-makers and public servants, as these technologies can increase infrastructure performance and reduce environmental impacts. For example, utilizing data from sensors in sewer systems can improve their management, which in turn may result in better surface water quality. Whether such big data from sensors is utilized is, however, not only a technical issue, but also depends on different types of social and institutional conditions. Our article identifies individual, organizational, and institutional barriers at the level of sub-states that hinder the evaluation of data from sewer systems. We employ fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to compare 23 Swiss sub-states and find that two barriers at different levels can each hinder data evaluation on their own. More specifically, either a lack of vision at the individual level or a lack of resources at the organizational level hinder the evaluation of data. Findings suggest that taking into account different levels is crucial for understanding digital transformation in public organizations.

Linking energy scenarios and waste storylines for prospective environmental assessment of waste management systems.

Multiple international and supranational organizations call upon changes in current waste management practices to play a key role in developing more sustainable economies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular method used to assess the sustainability of future waste management options. The uncertainties about future energy systems and waste compositions, however, may lead to ambiguous LCA results. One way to deal with this challenge is the development of joint energy and waste scenarios to investigate the robustness of waste management options. To date, joint energy and waste scenarios rely on the integration of large economic and engineering models. Complex models can hamper the transparency required for decision-makers to understand and implement LCA recommendations. Here we present the alternative of combining diverse energy scenarios and stakeholder-based waste storylines. This is a more qualitative approach than previous sustainable energy/waste evaluations and has a double aim: to address upfront the energy and waste composition sensitivity and enhance transparency by both relying on well-documented energy scenarios and involving stakeholders in the waste storyline formulation. We apply the approach to the Swiss municipal solid waste (MSW) management system in the context of the energy transition away from nuclear power. Three energy scenarios capture how radical the transition might be, while the storylines reflect societal developments and waste policies leading to low, high, and average MSW amounts. The approach delivers feasibility spaces of energy systems and waste compositions as input to the LCAs. It ensures a high level of transparency, which, in conjunction with the participation of decision-makers, has the potential to increase the chances of implementation of the recommendations based on LCA results.

Discourse coalitions in Swiss waste management: gridlock or winds of change?

As a complex socio-technical system, waste management is crucially important for the sustainable management of material and energy flows. Transition to better performing waste management systems requires not only determining what needs to be changed but also finding out how this change can be realized. Without understanding the political context, insights from decision support tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) are likely to be lost in translation to decision and policy making. This study strives to provide a first insight into the political context and address the opportunities and barriers pertinent to initiating a change in Swiss waste management. For this purpose, the discourses around a major policy process are analysed to uncover the policy beliefs and preferences of actors. Discourse coalitions are delineated by referring to the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier, 1998) and using the Discourse Network Analysis (Leifeld and Haunss, 2012) method. The results display an incoherent regime (Fuenfschilling and Truffer, 2014) with divergent belief clusters on core issues in waste management. Yet, some actors holding different beliefs appear to have overlapping interests on secondary issues such as the treatment of biogenic waste or plastics. Although the current political context hinders a system-wide disruptive change, transitions can be initiated at local or regional scale by utilizing the shared interest across different discourse coalitions.