Gilbert Fridgen

University of Luxembourg · Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust

Credit risk assessment is a standard procedure for financial institutions (FIs) when estimating their credit risk exposure. It involves the gathering and processing quantitative and qualitative datasets to estimate whether an individual or entity will be able to make future required payments. To ensure effective processing of this data, FIs increas...

This paper analyzes the development of the European Union's digital identity policy. The analysis focuses on the dynamics leading to a sudden shift from identity management as a sensitive topic under national competence towards a common, harmonized, user-centric European Digital Identity Framework layering on top of Member States' existing systems....

Energy performance certificates (EPC) aim to provide transparency about building energy performance (BEP) and benchmark buildings. Despite having qualified auditors examining buildings through on-site visits, BEP accuracy in EPCs is frequently criticized. Qualified auditors are often bound to engineering-based energy quantification methods. However...

Private permissioned blockchains are deployed in ever greater numbers to facilitate cross-organizational processes in various industries, particularly in supply chain management. One popular example of this trend is Hyperledger Fabric. Compared to public permissionless blockchains, it promises improved performance and provides certain features that...

With high levels of intermittent power generation and dynamic demand patterns, accurate forecasts for residential loads have become essential. Smart meters can play an important role when making these forecasts as they provide detailed load data. However, using smart meter data for load forecasting is challenging due to data privacy requirements. T...

The energy transition into a modern power system requires energy flexibility. Demand Response (DR) is one promising option for providing this flexibility. With the highest share of final energy consumption, the industry has the potential to offer DR and contribute to the energy transition by adjusting its energy demand. This paper proposes a mathem...

Purpose: This paper aims to establish a fundamental and comprehensive understanding of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) by identifying and structuring common characteristics within a taxonomy. NFTs are hyped and increasingly marketed as essential building blocks of the Metaverse. However, the dynamic evolution of the NFT space has posed challenges for th...

Art and collectibles markets tend to involve lower liquidity and higher fees than public equity markets. Distributed ledger technology can tokenize artworks and collectibles, so that claims to these assets can be exchanged digitally without intermediaries. Tokenization offers investors access to a global market plus a digitized paper trail, as well...

Electric vehicles (EVs) are an important cornerstone to achieve transport decarbonization. Still, simultaneous charging of EVs when home charging increases peak demand, especially during evenings. Smart charging allows optimal distribution of load, thus preventing peak loads. Nevertheless, this incorporates certain risks for the EV user, e.g., unav...

Increasing trust in energy performance certificates (EPCs) and drawing meaningful conclusions requires a robust and accurate determination of building energy performance (BEP). However, existing and by law prescribed engineering methods, relying on physical principles, are under debate for being error-prone in practice and ultimately inaccurate. Re...

Current debates on the sustainability of blockchain technology primarily focus on proof of work (PoW) cryptocurrencies. This narrow focus leads to one-sided discussions that emphasize the poor sustainability of blockchain technology. What these discussions neglect is that non-PoW blockchains have much lower energy needs. Current debates also turn a...

Various flexibility options in power systems, such as storage, grid expansion, and demand flexibility, gain increasing importance to balance the intermittent power supply of renewables. On the demand side, especially the industrial sector represents promising potential for Demand Response, i.e., the alignment of its power demand with the current po...

Technology-driven challenges, both existing and emerging, require banks to invest in IT capabilities, especially in artificial intelligence (AI). Digital options theory presents a valuable guide rail for these investments. However, the nature of AI as a moving frontier of computing requires certain extensions to established digital option thinking....

After being granted asylum in European countries, refugees need to go through a multitude of administrative processes before they can participate in society. However, these processes are often challenging, as refugees struggle to understand them, lack instructions for managing paperwork, and do not possess the required language skills. Prior resear...

In the last decades, several developments have transformed electricity systems in Europe towards liberalized and decentralized systems that are coupled inter-sectorally and interregionally. These developments have yielded various significant benefits, such as increased efficiency and robustness. However, we argue that they have also caused new inte...

This position paper discusses the challenges of blockchain applications in businesses and the public sector related to an excessive degree of transparency. We first point out the types of sensitive data involved in different patterns of blockchain use cases. We then argue that the implications of blockchains’ information exposure caused by replicat...

Indonesia's current energy policy, which relies on cheap fossil fuels and focuses on two out of the three horns of the energy trilemma, namely, energy security and energy equity, may impede its efforts to higher shares of renewable energy sources. This paper develops three generic models that allow policymakers to analyze the impact of introducing...

The ongoing energy transition increases the share of renewable energy sources. To combat inherent intermittency of RES, increasing system flexibility forms a major opportunity. One way to provide flexibility is demand response (DR). Research already reflects several approaches of artificial intelligence (AI) for DR. However, these approaches often...

In 2020, Germany reached a maximum share of 50.5% intermittent renewables in electricity generation. Such a high share results in an increasing need for flexibility measures such as international transmission flexibility, i.e., electricity imports and exports. In fact, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany changed from a former electricity net expo...

Digital technologies play an important role for the delivery of many public services. However, selecting and adopting the ‘right’ digital technologies is often challenging, especially for federally structured governments. Universal factors for successful adoption are hard to establish, and the particularities of federalism, such as the separation o...

Decentralised finance (DeFi) is a category of unlicensed, unregulated, and non-custodial financial services that utilise public, distributed ledgers like Ethereum. The Bloomberg Galaxy DeFi Index, launched in August 2021, includes nine Ethereum-based projects – non-custodial exchanges as well as lending and derivatives platforms. Each project is go...

The inclusion of intermittent and renewable energy sources has increased the importance of demand forecasting in power systems. Smart meters can play a critical role in demand forecasting due to the measurement granularity they provide. Consumers' privacy concerns, reluctance of utilities and vendors to share data with competitors or third parties,...

Read access link: https://rdcu.be/cBoEb

Situation faced: The German asylum procedure requires close cooperation and information exchange between various authorities at the municipal, state, and federal levels. Federal separation of competencies inhibits the delegation of process governance to a central authority such as the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). This separatio...

This is the third thematic report prepared by the new team leading the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum, aiming to present the latest updates and developments within the EU blockchain ecosystem. This is part of a series of reports that will be published addressing selected topics in accordance with the European Commission priorities. The aim is...

Towards greener production, manufacturing companies face several challenges, for example peak load shaving or flexible production planning as parts of demand-side management (DSM). DSM uses processes that can be shut down, shifted, or controlled. Advances in digitalization in the energy sector and manufacturing systems create transparency which in...

Growing electric vehicle (EV) dissemination will increase charging infrastructure installation at home. Similar daily routines are associated with high peak loads due to simultaneous EV charging. However, predominantly residential power transmission is not designed for such high loads, yielding charging bottlenecks and restricting future charging a...

In the financial services industry, blockchain is assumed to have significant impacts. From research and practice, we observe two main paradigms of how organizations interact with blockchain. First, organizations use blockchain to optimize existing processes (blockchain-based business process optimization – BPO). Second, organizations use blockchai...

The phenomenon of a blockchain use case called initial coin offering (ICO) is drawing increasing attention as a novel funding mechanism. ICO is a crowdfunding type that utilizes blockchain tokens to allow for truly peer-to-peer investments. Although more than $7bn has been raised globally via ICOs as at 2018, the concept and its implications are no...

To achieve a sustainable energy system, a further increase in electricity generation from renewable energy sources (RES) is imperative. However, the development and implementation of RES entail various challenges, e.g., dealing with grid stability issues due to RES’ intermittency. Correspondingly, increasingly volatile and even negative electricity...

Electric retail rate design is relevant to utilities, customers, and regulators as retail rates impact the utility's revenue as well as the customers' electricity bills. In California, regulators approve rate proposals by privately owned vertical integrated utilities. Approval, however, is subject to compliance with multiple, potentially conflictin...

Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) zählt derzeit zu den prominentesten digitalen Technologien und verspricht in Zukunft erheblichen Geschäftswert zu generieren. Es wird erwartet, dass KI einen Großteil der heute existierenden Branchen beeinflussen wird bzw. das bereits tut. Das gilt entsprechend auch für den Bankensektor. Im Vordergrund sollte dabei jedoc...

Private permissioned blockchains, such as Hyperledger Fabric, are widely deployed across the industry to facilitate cross-organizational processes and promise improved performance compared to their public counterparts. However, the lack of empirical and theoretical results prevent precise prediction of the real-world performance. We address this ga...

The enormous power consumption of Bitcoin has led to undifferentiated discussions in science and practice about the sustainability of blockchain and distributed ledger technology in general. However, blockchain technology is far from homogeneous - not only with regard to its applications, which now go far beyond cryptocurrencies and have reached bu...

Ali Sunyaev & Niclas Kannengießer (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) discuss the key concept of decentralization, which the token economy is built on, from two fundamental perspectives (i.e., technical and political decentralization) and provides propositions to discuss decentralization. Moreover, this chapter explicates the need for interdiscipli...

Blockchain solutions are a promising alternative for use in the public sector when the delegation of process governance to a central authority is not possible or desirable. In particular, blockchain supports the retention of decentralized structures and allows individual authorities to share process information over the blockchain while simultaneou...

The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic led to decreases in electricity demand and a rising share of Renewable Energy Sources in various countries. In Germany, the average proportion of net electricity generation via Renewable Energy Sources rose above 55 % in the first half of 2020, as compared to 47 % for the same period in 2019. Given these alte...

Cross-organizational collaboration and the exchange of process data are indispensable for many processes in federally organized governments. Conventional IT solutions, such as cross-organizational workflow management systems, address these requirements through centralized process management and architectures. However, such centralization is difficu...

Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) promise to revolutionize business ecosystems by permitting secure transactions without intermediaries. A widely recognized challenge that inhibits the uptake of DLT is scalability and performance. Hence, quantifying key metrics such as throughput and latency is crucial for designing DLT-based infrastructures, a...

Many countries have a clear policy objective of increasing their share of renewable energy sources (RESs). However, a major impediment to higher RES penetration often lies in the historically grown structures of a country's electricity sector. In Indonesia, policymakers have relied on cheap fossil fuels and state control to provide the population w...

Indonesia's current energy policy, which relies on cheap fossil fuels and focuses on two out of the three horns of the energy trilemma, namely, energy security and energy equity, may impede its efforts to higher shares of renewable energy sources. This paper develops three generic models that allow policymakers to analyze the impact of introducing...

To achieve a sustainable energy system, a further increase in electricity generation from renewa-ble energy sources (RES) is imperative. However, the development and implementation of RES entail various challenges, e.g., dealing with grid stability issues due to RES’ intermittency. Corre-spondingly, increasingly volatile and even negative electrici...

When talking about blockchain technology in academia, business, and society, frequently generalizations are still heared about its – supposedly inherent – enormous energy consumption. This perception inevitably raises concerns about the further adoption of blockchain technology, a fact that inhibits rapid uptake of what is widely considered to be a...

Sector coupling (SC) describes the concept of a purposeful connection and interaction of energy sectors to increase the flexibility of supply, demand, and storing. While SC is linked to research on smart energy system and locates itself in the research stream of 100% renewable energy systems, it currently focusses on counteracting challenges of tem...

Zusammenfassung Der enorme Stromverbrauch von Bitcoin hat dazu geführt, dass in Wissenschaft und Praxis oft eher undifferenziert Diskussionen über die Nachhaltigkeit von Blockchain- bzw. Distributed-Ledger-Technologie allgemein geführt werden. Allerdings ist die Blockchain-Technologie bereits heute alles andere als homogen – nicht nur hinsichtlich...

To expand intermittent renewable electricity sources (RESs), worldwide energy policy makers have introduced fixed feed-in tariffs (FITs). However, FITs typically expire after a limited time period. Due to the intermittent electricity supply of RES, market distortions, and insufficient flexibility options, exclusive participation in wholesale electr...

Das vorliegende Diskussionspapier in der dritten Auflage dokumentiert den Arbeitsstand des Clusters III – Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik im Kopernikus-Projekt SynErgie im September 2020. Das Diskussionspapier soll zur Abstimmung und Diskussion der Konzepte anregen, deren Ergebnisse wiederum in die Weiterentwicklung dieser Konzepte einfließ...

Given the growing share of uncertain renewable energy production, the energy transition challenges modern power systems and especially calls for increased flexibility. However, relevant information on the highly asset-specific flexibility potential is typically only known to plant operators themselves and not, e.g., to transmission system operators...

Building operation faces great challenges in electricity cost control as prices on electricity markets become increasingly volatile. Simultaneously, building operators could nowadays be empowered with information and communication technology that dynamically integrates relevant information sources, predicts future electricity prices and demand, and...

To combat climate change, many countries all around the world currently foster the development of renewable energy sources (RES). However, in contrast to traditional energy systems that relied on few central power plants, RES are typically highly decentral and spread all over a country. Against this backdrop, the promotion of a decentralization of...

In many countries, industry is one of the largest consumers of electricity. Given the special importance of electricity for industry, a reliable electricity supply is a basic prerequisite for further industrial development and associated economic growth. As countries worldwide transition to a low-carbon economy (in particular, by the development of...

The expansion of renewable energy requires appropriate flexibility in the electricity system in order to maintain the balance between electricity generation and consumption at all times. The industrial sector plays a central role for a successful energy transition due to the power-intensive processes and the resulting high electricity demand. Indus...

Multi-sided platforms are omnipresent in today’s digital world. However, establishing a platform includes challenges: The platform utility usually increases with the number of participants. At an early stage, potential participants expect the platform utility to be low and lack an incentive to join (i.e., “chicken and egg” problem). Blockchain-enab...

Multi-sided platforms are omnipresent in today’s digital world. However, establishing a platform includes challenges: The platform utility usually increases with the number of participants. At an early stage, potential participants expect the platform utility to be low and lack an incentive to join (i.e., “chicken and egg” problem). Blockchain-enab...

The rapid standardization and specialization of cloud computing services have led to the development of cloud spot markets on which cloud service providers and customers can trade in near real-time. Frequent changes in demand and supply give rise to spot prices that vary throughout the day. Cloud customers often have temporal flexibility to execute...