Data for: Socio-technical challenges towards data-driven and integrated urban water management: a socio-technical network approach

The files contain the data and the R scripts needed to replicate the analysis of three case study urban water systems as described in: Manny, L. (2023) Socio-technical challenges towards data-driven and integrated urban water management: a socio-technical network approach. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.104360Data-driven and integrated urban water management have been proposed to reduce surface water pollution in light of climate change and urbanization impacts. Besides technological innovation, data-driven and integrated management require information exchange among many actors, e.g., operators, engineers, or authorities. With the aim of achieving a more profound understanding of socio-technical infrastructures, such as urban water systems, I draw on the approach of socio-technical networks to study actors and infrastructure elements as well as multiple relations in-between. In this article, I investigate whether underlying socio-technical dependencies influence social interactions such as information exchange. More specifically related to data-driven and integrated management, I analyze potential challenges, such as organizational fragmentation, data access, and diverging perceptions. Based on empirical data from three case studies in Switzerland, I provide inferential results obtained from fitting exponential random graph models. Findings showed that actors’ relatedness to infrastructure elements affects their information exchange. Among the cases, the presence of the three challenges varied and is potentially contingent upon system size, organizational form, or progress in terms of data-driven and integrated management. Thus, incorporating a socio-technical perspective on social actors and infrastructure elements could help to improve policy design and implementation aiming to achieve more sustainable cities.

本数据集包含复现三项城市水系统案例研究分析所需的数据与R脚本，相关研究详见：Manny, L.（2023）《面向数据驱动与综合城市水管理的社会技术挑战：一种社会技术网络方法》，DOI:10.1016/j.scs.2022.104360。鉴于气候变化与城市化的影响，数据驱动型综合城市水管理方案已被提出，旨在减轻地表水污染。除技术创新外，数据驱动型综合水管理还需要多方主体——如运营方、工程师或管理部门——开展信息交互。为更深入理解城市水系统等社会技术基础设施，本文采用社会技术网络方法，对主体、基础设施要素及其间的多重关联展开研究。本文旨在探究潜在的社会技术依赖是否会影响信息交互等社会互动行为。针对数据驱动型综合水管理场景，本文进一步分析了组织碎片化、数据获取及认知差异等潜在挑战。基于瑞士三项案例研究的实证数据，本文通过拟合指数随机图模型（exponential random graph models）得到了推断性分析结果。研究结果表明，主体与基础设施要素的关联度会对其信息交互行为产生影响。在三项案例中，上述三类挑战的存在情况各不相同，且可能受系统规模、组织形式或数据驱动型综合水管理推进进度的影响。因此，在社会主体与基础设施要素的研究中纳入社会技术视角，有助于优化政策设计与落地实施，助力建设更具可持续性的城市。