Over the past decade, interest, stakeholder engagement, and investment in the cultivation of intermediate wheatgrass (IWG) as a perennial grain crop have increased across the Upper Midwest, USA. IWG has been promoted as a multipurpose crop that provides both agricultural products and ecosystem services. Our objective in this study was to describe the current IWG landscape in the Midwest from the perspective of farmers growing the crop, including their objectives, management practices, and the challenges they face. We also examined the concept of multifunctionality within the context of integrating a minor crop into existing farming systems. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with IWG growers in the Upper Midwest. Results show that, beyond direct agronomic benefits, these growers were motivated by a broader vision of agriculture. Due to its distinctive traits, IWG served as a tool to accomplish various non-commercial dimensions of farming such as environmental conservation, education, and community building, and for fulfilling farmers’ roles as producers, environmental stewards, and citizens. At the same time, the regional socio-technical context imposed strong constraints on IWG production, particularly in terms of profitability and processing. Cropping practices reflected both the influence of uniform technical recommendations and the need for adaptation to individual farm systems and farmer expertise. Overall, this study provides insight into farmers’ perspectives, motivations, and concerns regarding IWG cultivation in the United States.

The integration of AI systems into the military domain is changing the way war-related decisions are made. It binds together three disparate groups of actors – developers, integrators, and users – and creates a relationship between these groups and the machine, embedded in the (pre-)existing organisational and system structures. In this article, we focus on the important, but often neglected, group of integrators within such a socio-technical system. In complex human–machine configurations, integrators carry responsibility for linking the disparate groups of developers and users in the political and military system. To act as the mediating group requires a deep understanding of the other groups’ activities, perspectives and norms. We thus ask which challenges and shortcomings emerge from integrating AI systems into resort-to-force (RtF) decision-making processes, and how to address them. To answer this, we proceed in three steps. First, we conceptualise the relationship between different groups of actors and AI systems as a socio-technical system. Second, we identify challenges within such systems for human–machine teaming in RtF decisions. We focus on challenges that arise (a) from the technology itself, (b) from the integrators’ role in the socio-technical system and (c) from the human–machine interaction. Third, we provide policy recommendations to address these shortcomings when integrating AI systems into RtF decision-making structures.

The defense industry tends to anticipate environmental issues through eco-design integration in the overall design process. This leads to focus on the impact of technological and design choices of complex systems while maximizing operational performance. Such development involves long and complex processes and is constrained in a project owner and industrial project manager context. In this context poorly described in the literature, the objective of this paper is to identify barriers and drivers to achieve an efficient application of eco-design. A comprehensive analysis of the interactions and the current design processes is performed in the context of the French defense industry. Through internal documentation and semi-structured interviews with the key actors, the generic design process of a project owner is analysed (including relationships with industrial project manager). The failure modes that currently limit the integration of eco-design in projects are also identified.

Seasonal effects can significantly impact the robustness of socio-technical systems (STS) to demand fluctuations. There is an increasing need to develop novel design approaches that can support capacity planning decisions for enhancing the robustness of STS against seasonal effects. This paper proposes a new network motif-based approach to supporting capacity planning in STS for an improved seasonal robustness. Network motifs are underlying nonrandom subgraphs within a complex network. In this approach, we introduce three motif-based metrics for system performance evaluation and capacity planning decision-making. The first one is the imbalance score of a motif (e.g., a local service network), the second one is the measurement of a motif’s seasonal robustness, and the third one is a capacity planning decision criterion. Based on these three metrics, we validate that the sensitivity of STS performance against seasonal effects is highly correlated with the imbalanced capacity between service nodes in an STS. Correspondingly, we formulate a design optimisation problem to improve the robustness of STS by rebalancing the resources at critical service nodes. To demonstrate the utility of the approach, a case study on Divvy bike-sharing system in Chicago is conducted. With a focus on the size-3 motifs (a subgraph consisting three docked stations), we find that there is a significant correlation between the difference of the number of docks among the stations in a motif and the return/rental performance of such a motif against seasonal changes. Guided by this finding, our design approach can successfully balance out the number of docks between those stations that have caused the most severe seasonal perturbations. The results also imply that the network motifs can be an effective local structural representation in support of STS robust design. Our approach can be generally applied in other STS where the system performances are significantly impacted by seasonal changes, for example, supply chain networks, transportation systems and power grids.

In the uncertain process of product development, the developer is decisively responsible for product success. He operates in a complex environment that directly influences his synthesis and analysis activities. The context of the socio-technical system of product development has already been extensively researched and defined by a large number of factors. However, the developer is described as part of the context and not as the centre, which means that many of these factors have no interaction with the developer. For the design of methods and tools that support the developer in his activities in the development process, a summarizing understanding of the influences on and by the developer is necessary. In order to create a unified understanding of the developer at the centre of product development, a Systematic Literature Review was conducted. In this article, the procedure and findings are presented. The aim was to identify factors from the literature that significantly influence the interaction of the developer in his environment. As a result, these were documented in a model, which represents the basis for further, human-centred research in the context of product development.