Purpose: Societies depend on interconnected infrastructures that are becoming more complex over the years. Multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills are essential to develop modern infrastructures, requiring close collaboration of various infrastructure owners. To effectively manage and improve inter-organizational collaboration (IOC) in infrastructure construction projects, collaboration status should be assessed continually. This study identifies the assessment criteria, forming the foundation of a tool for assessing the status of IOC in interconnected infrastructure projects.

Design/methodology/approach: A systematic literature study and in-depth semi-structured interviews with practitioners in interconnected infrastructure construction projects in the Netherlands are performed to identify the criteria for assessing the status of IOC in infrastructure construction projects, based on which an assessment tool is developed.

Findings: The identified assessment criteria through the literature and the practitioner’s perspectives results in the designing and development of a collaboration assessment tool. The assessment tool consists of 12 criteria and 36 sub-criteria from three different categories of collaborative capacity: individual, relational, and organizational.

Originality/value: The assessment tool enables practitioners to monitor the status of IOC between infrastructure owners and assists them in making informed decisions to enhance collaboration. The assessment tool provides the opportunity to assess and analyze the status of collaboration based on three categories (i.e., individual, relational, and organizational).

District heating systems are considered a feasible heating alternative to replace natural gas to mitigate emissions in cities. However, urban transitions are very complex because energy systems often operate in densely populated areas, which gives rise to all kinds of interdependencies in cities. These interdependencies can result in unintended consequences which can indirectly help or hinder urban energy transitions. Understanding these influences the transition to climate neutrality. This research investigates the lessons learned from a project conducted in Rotterdam: a high-density city in the Netherlands which is expanding its district heating systems. We use qualitative system dynamics models to explore the underlying complexity and to recognize indirect consequences of policies. Our results cover both technologically oriented and policy-oriented insights, contributing to the literature on transition governance in cities. On the one hand, the national and urban strategies in the Netherlands activate mechanisms that support cities with district heating systems such as Rotterdam. On the other hand, the same strategies could also lead to a potential rivalry between energy efficiency and energy security, which are both crucial goals in urban transition governance. Participative modeling provides policy-makers with an analytical tool to detect systemic dependencies which can be used to identify synergies and barriers among different energy policy objectives. This helps avoiding potential unintended consequences including the use of carbon-heavy systems and displacing investments from energy efficiency and renewable heating systems.

Net-zero district heating systems are considered a feasible heating alternative to replace individual natural gas boilers to mitigate emissions in European cities. However, achieving carbon-neutral cities in Europe is a complex affair due to interdependencies in energy transitions. Energy transitions are discussed as products of interdependencies between socio-technical elements within each context, including but not limited to institutions, society, culture, markets, policies, regulations, and technological disruptions/changes. These interdependencies have the potential to transcend beyond the boundaries of technologies, sectors, markets, policies, cities, and even countries which may result in feedback effects. The presence of feedback effects implies co-evolution: policy-making shapes energy system developments which, in turn, influences policy-making through a range of feedback effects. The objective of this study is to increase knowledge on the implications of feedback effects in energy systems and transition policies by highlighting how they can lead to unexpected systemic consequences, thereby causing inertia or acceleration during the switch out of individual natural gas boilers towards net-zero district heating systems. Understanding the root causes and mechanisms behind district heating transitions could support European policymakers in developing policies that can stimulate the transition toward carbon-neutral cities. Our results implicate that energy transition governance seldom consists of “simple” fixes as often claimed by popular policymakers or influential actors because each decision impacts the whole system. Different policy sub-goals are indispensable for achieving carbon-neutral cities but they are often indirectly in conflict with each other due to feedback effects. Unless feedback effects in transitions are acknowledged by policymakers, they could work against carbon-neutrality targets due to wrong assumptions and prioritizations of inconsistent policy sub-goals. Therefore, it is essential for policymakers to recognize and comprehend how feedback effects between energy systems and policies are formed and operate.

This article analyses current developments in Autonomous Shipping (MASS) by adopting a socio-technical system perspective to explain why the technology is (still) only applied in small-scale niche applications and still not applied on a large scale. Using literature study and an exploratory research approach to obtain in-depth information from naval practitioners and experts in the (autonomous) shipping industry we identify which factors currently stimulate or hamper the diffusion of autonomous shipping.An analysis of the Technological Innovation System (TIS) of the maritime industry shows that the 'standard' building blocks framework requires adjustment with regard to the market building block to make it applicable to analyze and understand developments in and motives and drivers of Autonomous Shipping. A subsequent analysis of the current status of the maritime-specific market building blocks showed these were to a large extent complete, with the exception of cost-benefit aspects. This result shows that large-scale diffusion is primarily hampered by this issue and cannot easily be resolved in the foreseeable future.

Climate adaptation measures are shaped and implemented through processes of governance, where the interactions and decision-making among actors lead to the creation and reinforcement of institutions. Institutions in this respect are the rules that shape the interactions of actors in different phases of climate adaptation. Currently there is no comprehensive method to systematically identify and map dependencies between institutions. This study proposes the Institutional Network Analysis (INA) approach that is based on the Institutional Grammar as a systematic and comprehensive tool to (1) visualise institutional dependencies, (2) identify points of concern in the institutional landscape such as conflicts and voids, and (3) provide quantitative insights into the centrality of actors, embeddedness of institutional outcomes, and dependencies between institutions. The approach is applied to the case of climate adaptation of transport infrastructures surrounding the Port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The analysis reveals a conflict in the use of risk assessment criteria, as parties in the Port may follow their own matrices in the presence of a shared decision-making framework. Nonetheless, the network metric analysis reveals that the criteria, whether shared or individual, build on the same source of risk analysis, suggesting that this duality may not be detrimental for climate adaptation efforts. Additionally, an institutional void is identified for financial responsibilities in locations where infrastructures overlap. Finally, the network metrics show high dependency between institutions in the risk dialogue phase, and reveal the centrality of infrastructure owners ProRail and RWS in the institutional landscape instead of local or regional governmental bodies.

Local governments in China actively promote low carbon city pilots to respond to the challenges of climate change mentioned in the Sustainable Development Goals, including building sustainable cities and communities, and taking climate action. However, relatively little is known about the actual implementation of programs to achieve sustainable cities, especially how combinations of policy instruments are deployed in the realisation of low carbon cities. First, this study contributes to the literature in policy studies by identifying how four types relevant to carbon city development, hierarchy, market, network and information based ones, can be combined in policy mixes and play out in the effective realisation of low carbon cities in other countries. Second, this framework is used to map the application of policy instruments in China's 35 low carbon pilot cities. This study uses fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to explore which configurations of policy instruments are in use and assesses their effects on low carbon city construction. It thus builds a bridge between theory on policy instruments, their combinations and low carbon city development. The presence of hierarchical policy instruments appears to be a necessary condition for low carbon city development and their use prevails. Market-based and network-based instruments complement hierarchical instruments but do not suffice in themselves. Applying hierarchical instruments and market-based instruments together tends to hamper the effect of network instruments and information instruments, whereas network instruments appear to be interchangeable with information instruments. Network governance in China's low carbon city development is still comparatively underdeveloped.

City promotion, city marketing and city branding are all frequently mentioned and examined in the literature on urban governance. Based on the goals and characteristics of different city branding strategies, this study identifies a growing level of sophistication from city promotion via city marketing to city branding and proposes that the degree of urban development of cities is positively related to the use of branding strategies. This proposition is tested among 23 Chinese cities: 21 cities in Guangdong province and two in the Special Administrative Regions – Hong Kong and Macao. The results show a positive correlation between the use of city promotion, city marketing and city branding strategies and a city's level of urban development. Only the largest and wealthiest cities, and those with the strongest tertiary sector report on the use of policies which indicate city branding. The strength of the primary sector is significantly and negatively related to all three identified forms of branding strategy. Furthermore, significant positive statistical inter-relationships exist between the different branding strategies, which confirm the existence of complex relations and overlaps between them. Our findings suggest that local governments should align their city branding strategies with their development goals.

Among known studies of city branding by Chinese megacities to realise urban transformation, there is no explorative study of how smaller Chinese cities engage in city branding and attempt to trigger industrial transformation. In response, this article presents an in-depth case study of city branding processes in a medium-sized Chinese city. Roles, resources and interactions among the city's stakeholders are analysed during the brand creation and implementation stages in two different economic city branding projects. The stakeholder involvement mechanisms we identify confirm that city branding creation in China primarily follows political rather than business channels. Chinese local public authorities and more specifically key politicians, departments, and public enterprises are core stakeholders in branding creation. However, this leads to challenges in the branding implementation, since key public sector players tend to withdraw themselves when implementation begins, leaving previously uninvolved private (and public) players to implement the brands. The unsuccessful transformation contrasts with those observed in Chinese megacities, where involvement of powerful corporations and support from higher levels of government are both much higher. It appears that the imperative of broad stakeholder involvement to make city branding successful as we know it for Western cities may also apply in medium-sized Chinese cities.

Individuals are regularly made responsible for risks they wish to take: one can consent to processing of personal data, and decide what to buy based on risk information on product labels. However, both large-scale processing of personal data and aggregated product choices may carry collective risks for society. In such situations, governance arrangements implying individual responsibility are at odds with uncertain collective risks from new technologies. We, therefore, investigate the governance challenges of what we call risk personalization: a form of governance for dealing with uncertain collective risks that allocates responsibility for governing those risks to individuals. We situate risk personalization at the intersection of two trends: governance of uncertain risk, and emphasis on individual responsibility. We then analyze three cases selected based on diversity: social media, nanomaterials, and Uber. Cross-case comparison highlights issues of risk personalization pertaining to (i) the nature of the risk, (ii) governance arrangements in place, and (iii) mechanisms for allocating responsibility to individuals. We identify governance challenges in terms of (i) meaningful choice, (ii) effectiveness in mitigating risk, and (iii) collective decision making capacity. We conclude that the risk personalization lens stimulates reflection on the effectiveness and legitimacy of risk governance in light of individual agency.