"Business as usual"? Safe-by-Design Vis-à-Vis Proclaimed Safety Cultures in Technology Development for the Bioeconomy.

Safe-by-Design (SbD) is a new concept that urges the developers of novel technologies to integrate safety early on in their design process. A SbD approach could-in theory-support the development of safer products and assist a responsible transition to the bioeconomy, via the deployment of safer bio-based and biotechnological alternatives. Despite its prominence in policy discourse, SbD is yet to gain traction in research and innovation practice.

Capability Approach and Inclusion: Developing a Context Sensitive Design for Biobased Value Chains.

Biomass such as crops and agricultural waste is increasingly used as the primary resource for products like bioplastics and biofuels. Incorporating the needs, knowledge, skills and values of biomass producers in the design of global value chains - the steps involved in creating any finished product from design to delivery - can contribute to sustainability, reliability and fairness. However, how to involve biomass producers, especially if they are resource poor, remains a challenge.

Uncertainties and uncertain risks of emerging biotechnology applications: A social learning workshop for stakeholder communication.

Emerging applications of biotechnology such as new genomic techniques may give rise to new uncertainties and uncertain risks. Particularly the increased complexity and limited knowledge of possible risks associated with these new techniques, make it currently impossible to perform an adequate environmental risk assessment. As a result, there is a risk that such techniques don't get beyond experiments demonstrating the proof of principle, stifling their further development and implementation.

Societal values, tensions and uncertainties in resource recovery from wastewaters.

The recovery of resources, including water reuse, has been presented as a solution to overcome scarcity, and improve the economic and environmental performance of water provision and treatment. However, its implementation faces non-technical challenges, including the need to collaborate with new stakeholders and face societal acceptance issues. Looking at the prominence of the circular economy in current policy developments and the challenges to resource recovery, exploring these issues is urgently needed.

Differences in barriers for controlled learning about safety between biotechnology and chemistry.

The increasing societal demand for safer, biobased products, and processes creates opportunities for industrial biotechnology and chemistry. To succeed, controlled learning about new emerging risks is crucial but both fields endure difficulty in doing so by their respective regulation and risk management culture.

Safe-by-Design in Engineering: An Overview and Comparative Analysis of Engineering Disciplines.

In this paper, we provide an overview of how Safe-by-Design is conceived and applied in practice in a large number of engineering disciplines. We discuss the differences, commonalities, and possibilities for mutual learning found in those practices and identify several ways of putting those disciplinary outlooks in perspective. The considered engineering disciplines in the order of historically grown technologies are construction engineering, chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, urban engineering, software engineering, bio-engineering, nano-engineering, and finally cyber space engineering.

Responsible Learning About Risks Arising from Emerging Biotechnologies.

Genetic engineering techniques (e.g., CRISPR-Cas) have led to an increase in biotechnological developments, possibly leading to uncertain risks.

Value Conflicts in Designing for Safety: Distinguishing Applications of Safe-by-Design and the Inherent Safety Principles.

Although both the Inherent Safety Principles (ISPs) and the Safe-by-Design (SbD) approach revolve around the central value of safety, they have a slightly different focus in terms of developing add-on features or considering initial design choices. This paper examines the differences between these approaches and analyses which approach is more suitable for a specific type of research-fundamental or applied. By applying the ISPs and SbD to a case study focusing on miniaturized processes using Hydrogen Cyanide, we find that both approaches encounter internal value-conflicts and suffer from external barriers, or lock-ins, which hinder implementation of safety measures.

Safe-by-Design: Stakeholders' Perceptions and Expectations of How to Deal with Uncertain Risks of Emerging Biotechnologies in the Netherlands.

Advanced gene editing techniques such as Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR)/Cas have increased the pace of developments in the field of industrial biotechnology. Such techniques imply new possibilities when working with living organisms, possibly leading to uncertain risks. In the Netherlands, current policy fails to address these uncertain risks because risk classification is determined process-wise (i.

Creative tensions: mutual responsiveness adapted to private sector research and development.

The concept of mutual responsiveness is currently based on little empirical data in the literature of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). This paper explores RRI's idea of mutual responsiveness in the light of recent RRI case studies on private sector research and development (R&D). In RRI, responsible innovation is understood as a joint endeavour of innovators and societal stakeholders, who become mutually responsive to each other in defining the 'right impacts' of the innovation in society, and in steering the innovation towards realising those impacts.

The Need for Governance by Experimentation: The Case of Biofuels.

The policies of the European Union concerning the development of biofuels can be termed a lock-in. Biofuels were initially hailed as a green, sustainability technology. However evidence to the contrary quickly emerged.

Mass-vaccination programmes and the value of respect for autonomy.

Respect for autonomy is problematic in relation to public health programmes such as vaccination, as the success of such programmes depends on widespread compliance. European countries have different policies for dealing with objectors to vaccination programmes. In some countries compliance is compulsory, while in others objectors are exempted or allowed to enter the programme under specific conditions.