University of Applied Sciences Augsburg
Recent publications
An increasing number of renewable energy sources driven by ambitious sustainability efforts is both changing and challenging electricity systems worldwide. Successfully dealing with a variable and highly decentralized electricity supply associated with the rising share of renewable energy sources will be crucial in the near future. This paper investigates the potential of information technology (IT) for regional marketing of energy flexibility from the machine level in factories to the electricity-grid level. In this context, energy flexibility describes the capability to react quickly and cost-efficiently to alternating electricity availability. Based on a literature review of regional marketing mechanisms, existing concepts of IT platforms, and current real-world model regions, this paper aims to apply a holistic research approach to better understand the challenges regarding the energy transition on a regional level and corresponding requirements for IT platforms used for flexibility marketing. The approach allows to identify relevant key challenges and flexibility marketing use cases, attributing core importance to underlying production processes. In particular, target processes for respective use cases are derived based on a description of current regional marketing of demand flexibility. Successful implementation of target processes is required to provide regional energy flexibility via IT platforms. A comparison between current processes and target processes finally allows defining the need for change and development, e.g., of new intelligent interfaces, already during the conceptual test of new IT platforms. The introduced research approach was applied to one exemplary use case within the energy-flexible model region Augsburg of the Kopernikus project SynErgie , Germany. The paper especially illustrates that service-oriented IT platforms simplify the communication process between the relevant players in energy flexibility marketing.
Process mining has received tremendous attention from research and industry, establishing itself as a highly sought-after technology. Despite the technological maturity of process mining solutions, which has been achieved through extensive investments in research and development, organizations still face the challenge of elusive value when systematically adopting process mining. The authors attribute this dilemma to a lack of support for scaling and managing process mining project portfolios. To address this practical need and research gap, the authors propose a method for managing portfolios of so-called process mining value cases, which are defined as process mining-enabled business process improvement projects, towards an evolutionary roadmap (mapper). The method is designed to support organizations identify portfolios of process mining projects that generate value by improving business processes. The method was developed through a combination of design science research and situational method engineering and comprises five activities that each outline techniques, roles, and tools: strategize, identify, select, implement, and monitor. The method has been instantiated as a software prototype and iteratively evaluated for applicability and real-world fidelity by involving an expert panel of academics and practitioners. The usefulness of the artifact was substantiated through a real-world case study in a naturalistic setting.
Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Urbanisierung, Klimakrise und demografischer Wandel stellen Herausforderungen für die Lebensqualität und die Gesundheit der Stadtbevölkerung dar. Ein Konzept der gesundheitsorientierten Stadtplanung ist die sog. „Walkability“, d. h. eine fußgängerfreundlich gestaltete Umwelt. Ziel der Studie war es, einen Ist-Zustand der Walkability für die Stadt Regensburg zu erheben und davon ausgehend Möglichkeiten zur Verbesserung der Walkability zu diskutieren und abzuleiten. Methodik Anhand eines Mixed-methods-Studiendesigns, bestehend aus einer datenbasierten Vorbewertung (QGIS-Analyse mittels des OS-WALK-EU-Tools) und fragebogenbasierten Vor-Ort-Begehungen unter Einsatz des Walking Route Audit Tools (WRAT), wurden quantitative und qualitative Kriterien der Walkability in Regensburg im Zeitraum vom 08.09.2022–28.02.2023 untersucht. In die datenbasierte Analyse flossen Geodaten zur Bevölkerungsdichte, den Erholungsräumen und den Einrichtungen des alltäglichen Lebens ein. Zu den Bewertungskritierien der Begehungen gehörten Attraktivität, Komfort, Direktheit, Sicherheit und Kohärenz der Gehwege auf 5 ausgewählten Routen. Ergebnisse Auf der stadtweiten Betrachtungsebene nahm die Walkability nach der datenbasierten Bewertung zentrifugal von der Stadtmitte Regensburgs hin zu den Außenbereichen (und v. a. in den nordöstlichen Stadtvierteln) ab. Hier zeigte sich ein Optimierungsbedarf im Sinne einer Stadt der kurzen Wege und dem Postulat der nahräumlichen Erreichbarkeit von Einrichtungen des alltäglichen Bedarfs. Bei den Begehungen schnitten die Altstadt und das Dörnberg-Quartier am besten ab. Auf Quartiersebene konnten zudem konkrete und einfach umsetzbare Verbesserungsmaßnahmen abgeleitet werden. Schlussfolgerung Walkability als Rahmenkonzept der gesundheitsorientierten Städteplanung stellt eine gesamtgesellschaftliche Aufgabe dar. Der öffentliche Gesundheitsdienst könnte perspektivisch ein Bindeglied zwischen Politik, Verkehrsplanung und Bürgerschaft in der kommunalen Gesundheitsförderung sein und Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung der Walkability aktiv mitgestalten.
Research on positive associations between servant leadership, basic need satisfaction (BNS), and employees’ work motivation is well-established. From a self-determination theory perspective, we argue that servant leadership behavior is not only positively associated with BNS but also with how errors are perceived and managed in an organization. In previous studies, error management culture (EMC) was shown to positively affect firm performance. However, research on antecedents of EMC in organizations is scarce. Thus, we conducted two studies and tested a research model (total sample size N = 1,306) proposing a serial mediation of EMC and BNS for the relationship between servant leadership and five forms of employee motivation according to self-determination theory. Results replicate previous research on the positive association between servant leadership and BNS. Expanding existing findings, we found evidence for a positive relationship between servant leadership and EMC. In addition, the relationship between servant leadership and three different motivation types (i.e. amotivation, identified, and intrinsic motivation) was serially mediated by EMC and BNS in both studies. These findings offer important practical implications, as previous studies on error management mainly focused on the outcomes of EMC but did not investigate the relationship between EMC and servant leadership or BNS. In addition, the results suggest that an organization should be considered as a whole. Besides the leadership style, EMC should be taken into account since it turned out to be a relevant predictor of BNS, too.
Im Massivbau werden vor allem in massigen Konstruktionen sowie auch in statisch unbestimmten Bauteilen mit Kurzfasern bewehrte Betone eingesetzt. Diese Fasern übertragen auch nach Rissbildung Zugspannungen. In Deutschland ist vorwiegend der Einsatz von Stahlfasern durch Vorgaben der DAfStb‐Richtlinie „Stahlfaserbeton“ geregelt. Die internationale Norm fib Model Code 2010 und das fib Bulletin 105 lassen auch andere Fasermaterialien zu. In dieser Arbeit wird die Verwendung von recycelten Kohlenstofffasern als Bewehrung in Faserbeton untersucht, um dessen Tragfähigkeit und Duktilität zu erhöhen. Angesichts des zunehmenden Anteils von kohlenstofffaserverstärkten Polymeren (CFK) im Materialkreislauf, insbesondere in der Windenergiebranche, konzentriert sich diese Arbeit auf die Wiederverwendung von CFK‐Abfällen. Zwei Mischungen recycelter Kohlenstofffasern werden auf ihre Leistungsfähigkeit in Faserbeton mit variierenden Volumengehalten untersucht. Aufbauend auf einer Analyse der Fasermischungen werden durch experimentelle Untersuchungen Kennwerte ermittelt, die das Festigkeitsverhalten sowie die Frischbetoneigenschaften des mit Kohlenstofffasern bewehrten Betons (CFRC) beschreiben. Im 3‐Punkt‐Biegezugversuch kann der faserverstärkte Beton mit 2 Vol.‐% eine Steigerung der Biegezugfestigkeit von +60 % gegenüber dem unbewehrten Beton erreichen. Zudem zeigen die Untersuchungen, dass die Zugabe von Kohlenstofffasern die Verarbeitbarkeit beim Betoniervorgang erschwert.
Online international collaboration projects provide students with valuable opportunities to apply their critical cultural awareness (CCA), which involves evaluating the values of one’s culture and other cultures using a systematic approach. In such projects, mediation tasks can play a crucial role by facilitating participants’ access to the meaning of a text that would otherwise be inaccessible due to linguistic, semantic, or cultural barriers. However, the potential of using videos for mediation in online collaboration projects to engage CCA remains underexplored. This exploratory study addresses this gap by investigating the mediation efforts of Colombian and German university students who utilised English as a lingua franca during online intercultural encounters. The results showed that using videos for mediation stimulated critical evaluation and reflection on students’ and their partners’ cultures. Interacting and mediating in a virtual environment encouraged students to explain stereotypes and share their thoughts on different cultural aspects, including social injustice issues, thereby fostering a deeper engagement with culture-related concepts. Findings demonstrated that the choice of videos influenced the depth of evaluation and analysis. Consequently, employing certain types of videos as a foundation for mediation activities proved a powerful tool for engaging students in CCA during international encounters.
As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) advance, concerns about their sustainability impact grow. The emerging field "Sustainability of AI" addresses this issue, with papers exploring distinct aspects of ML’s sustainability. However, it lacks a comprehensive approach that considers all ML development phases, treats sustainability holistically, and incorporates practitioner feedback. In response, we developed the sustainable ML design pattern matrix (SML-DPM) consisting of 35 design patterns grounded in justificatory knowledge from research, refined with naturalistic insights from expert interviews and validated in three real-world case studies using a web-based instantiation. The design patterns are structured along a four-phased ML development process, the sustainability dimensions of environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and allocated to five ML stakeholder groups. It represents the first artifact to enhance each ML development phase along each ESG dimension. The SML-DPM fuels advancement by aggregating distinct research, laying the groundwork for future investigations, and providing a roadmap for sustainable ML development.
The paper analyses the “twin transition” of digitalisation and sustainability at the firm level. Operational definitions of digitalisation and sustainability allowing the development of fitting empirical indicators are discussed. The possible technical and social transmission channels of the effects of digitalisation on a sustainable firm development are analysed. Less energy consumption induced by intelligent sensoring systems, the reduction of meetings in presence by video conferences or the promotion of home office work leading to less travel activities may lead to a more sustainable production. Digitalisation might also act as pre-condition of eco-process innovations (e. g. the introduction of intelligent control systems leading to material and energy savings). The empirical analysis is based on firm data of the recent Eurobarometer 486/2020 of the European Commission. The econometric results show that “digitally active” firms seem to be more sustainable for all available indicators, but the marginal effects considerably differ between measures such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, or the use of smart devices and intelligent sensors for the various sustainability-related activities of the firms.
Ensuring the security of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) is crucial to protect Industrial Control Systems (ICS) from potential risks and vulnerabilities. Therefore, research of security methodologies for PLCs has been present for many years, including investigations of attack vectors and attack prevention at an early stage. The most common attack vectors of PLCs are carried out remotely, which might be mitigated by isolating PLCs to outer network. However, potential risks and vulnerabilities cannot be completely eliminated. This paper presents an attack vector of isolated PLCs by exploiting their backplane bus, which serves as the innermost communication layer of the system. By utilizing this layer, attackers may avoid confrontation with conventional softwarebased security techniques that protect PLCs from unauthorized access. To evaluate the feasibility of our technique, a malicious device is developed and enhanced to attack the industrial PLC called Revolution Pi (RevPi). Finally, countermeasures to prevent such attacks are proposed.
Currently, there are no adequate methods for dealing with changes in the healthcare system brought about by electronic health applications (eHealth) or the associated ethical implications in practice. This can be attributed to the lack of comprehensive interdisciplinary approaches that could support teams in integrating ethical considerations into the agile software development process. To close this gap, the DARE approach has been developed and tested in interdisciplinary collaborative research. The DARE method is a modular system designed to improve the development of ethically sound software in a deliberative, agile, and responsive manner.
The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources poses major challenges for balancing increasingly weather-dependent power supply and demand. Although demand-side energy flexibility, offered particularly by industrial companies, is seen as a promising and necessary approach to address these challenges and realize benefits for companies, its implementation is not yet common practice. Often facing highly complex process landscapes and operational systems, process mining provides significant potential to increase transparency of actual process flows and to discover or reflect existing dependencies and interrelationships of activities, instances or resources. It facilitates the implementation of energy flexibility measures and enables the realization of monetary benefits associated with flexible process operation. This paper contributes to the successful integration of energy flexibility into process operations by presenting a design science research artifact called PM4Flex. This is a prescriptive process monitoring approach that uses linear programming to generate recommendations for pending process flows optimized under fluctuating power prices by utilizing established energy flexibility measures. Thereby, event logs and corresponding company- as well as process-specific constraints are considered. PM4Flex is demonstrated and evaluated based on its implementation as a software prototype, its application to exemplary data from two real-world processes exhibiting power cost savings of up to 75% compared to the original execution, and based on semi-structured expert interviews. PM4Flex provides new design knowledge at the interface of prescriptive process monitoring and the energy domain providing decision support to optimize industrial energy procurement costs.
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1,715 members
Tobias Maile
  • Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering
Thomas Osterland
  • Process Engineering
Peter Rösch
  • Faculty of Computer Science
Alexandra Teynor
  • Faculty of Computer Science
Alexander Von Bodisco
  • Faculty of Computer Science
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Address
Augsburg, Germany
Head of institution
Prof. Dr. Gordon Thomas Rohrmair