Consolidation and Standardisation needs in International and Global Governance

Experts convene to tackle challenges in standardising global governance and technology integration

In a recent workshop, experts from various fields gathered to discuss the intricacies of global and international governance processes, focusing on the integration of technology and the standardisation of practices across different sectors. The workshop, which is the third in a series, aimed to address the risks and challenges faced by different industries and to propose solutions that uphold human functions across time.

Sebastien Rumley, an Associate Professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland, highlighted the evolution of IT and its impact on sustainability. He emphasised the need for accurate measurement and methodology in assessing IT’s environmental footprint, pointing out the challenges in standardising these measurements due to the rapid obsolescence of technology and the proliferation of devices. Rumley stressed the importance of consolidating and validating efforts to reduce IT’s negative impact, but also acknowledged the difficulty in reconciling bottom-up initiatives with top-down regulations.

Ian Dunmill, Assistant Director at the International Bureau of Legal Meteorology in France, spoke about the significance of accurate measurement in legal metrology and its impact on everyday life. He described how the harmonisation of measurement units and methods is crucial for international trade, safety, and regulation. Dunmill also touched on the challenges of remote calibration, particularly in space, and the potential of digitalisation to improve measurement systems while mitigating risks such as corruption and manipulation of results.

Christophe Xerri, formerly a director at the International Atomic Energy Agency and now with Sailing Brain Consulting, provided insights into the standardisation of nuclear transportation packages. He explained how the goal of ensuring safety has remained constant, but the processes and regulations must be updated regularly to account for new knowledge, technological advancements, and return of experience. Xerri outlined the iterative process of review and adaptation, which involves a balance between stability and responsiveness to change, and the importance of deliberation among experts and stakeholders.

Masahito Kawamori, a project professor at Keio University and founder of the Lausanne Research Institute, discussed the importance of consistency in systems and standards. He suggested that lessons from symbolic AI and knowledge representation, such as temporal logic and possible world semantics, could be applied to the standardisation process. Kawamori emphasised the need to dynamically update knowledge and maintain smaller, consistent subsystems within larger systems.

The session underscored the importance of considering the time factor in standardisation processes, with a focus on the optimal frequency of review cycles and the challenges of synchronising measurements. The experts agreed that while the goals of standardisation remain the same, the methods and approaches must evolve to reflect new circumstances and developments. The workshop concluded with a call for continued dialogue and collaboration among experts to ensure that standards and processes remain relevant and effective in a rapidly changing world.

Aleve Mine:
Shall we start? Well, let’s start. Just let me know if you need now the presentation PowerPoint when you need me to share. Okay. Well, right now I would say I’ll just say first few words. Is everybody there? I see six. Christopher, Christoph. Perfect. So, hello and welcome. This is the third workshop of a series on a global and international governance process that considers all risks everywhere at the same time. It has an ICT track synchronized with a deliberative track. It helps uphold human functions across time. These functions or needs are depicted in the oval graph of the economy that maybe you can actually, if you would be able to put my slides, that would be awesome. No, no, I think it’s white. I can’t see too well from here, but it’s white. Yes. Can you put the last slide, please? The last slide. There you go. So, yes, this is the oval graph of the economy that disappeared, that reappeared. Yes. In the first two sessions we we spoke about consolidation. Can I ask you to go back one slide? Back one slide. Yeah, so this is the process within which consolidation is embedded. So it intervenes in two places in the process, in the evaluation and in the strategy. So conceptual consolidation on the left, as you see, and then simulation and scenario building, that’s the other spot where it intervenes. Today, we will discuss some standards such a process and platform may require. It involves things like data collection, modeling, consolidation, simulation, strategic decision making, iterative limit calculations, and procedural design. Each speaker will take a different angle. Interventions will be rather brief, and then we’ll discuss including interventions from the floor. Our speakers are, without their substantial bios, which I’ll ask you to check on the session page, Sebastian Rumley, Associate Professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland, Ian Dunmill, Assistant Director at the International Bureau of Legal Meteorology in France, and Christophe Xerry online of the Sailing Brain Consulting, formerly a director at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Masato Kawamori. online, also a project professor at Keio University and newly the founder of the Lausanne Research Institute. That’s Lausanne like the city nearby Geneva. And I would like to briefly make an are partnering up. announcement. It is that the One Goal Initiative for Governance and the Lausanne Research Institute This is a very recent decision and I’m looking forward to a collaboration on all of the projects that we will work on together. Thank you very much Masahito. So the previous years I was able to find other women to talk. This year it didn’t happen, but I’m sure you will appreciate how relevant the contributions today will be. If there’s anything anyone wants to say and doesn’t have the time to do so during the session, I’m in now also the participants here and online. So please feel free to get in touch and if you have something to say that you would like to see in the outcomes document, get in touch very rapidly because I’m going to have to deliver the outcomes document. So I would suggest Sebastien to start if you could put the… I think she’s going to. I need to share. Just one second. You’re also online then. It’s not responding. Do you want to try to? No, the Zoom is not responding. Zoom is not responding. Maybe while it’s…

Sebastien Rumley:
So I’m going to say a few words. So I’m an IT guy. I’m into IT. I’ve been into energy before, also electrical networks, into IT for sustainability, but also sustainability by IT. So the two things somehow work together. And I’ve asked me to intervene in a session because there is simulation in a picture you’ve seen before, and simulation is IT. And so that was relevant. Is it?

Aleve Mine:
No, she’s going to change the image. She’s going to put yours. Oh, yeah. And we’re back. I think we were offline for a second. Is everybody still there? I hope they’re still there. So Sebastian, go ahead.

Sebastien Rumley:
Yeah, right. So I’ve been asked to be very brief. So this was IT 30 years ago, 40 years ago probably. the ones who remember, IT was like this, way more colorful than today. It was expensive. So I remember to afford this thing was quite a deal in the family. So not too many devices. Once you had it, you know why you had it. So it was useful and you had no regrets about buying an IT system. And it was so quickly obsolete that you had no regrets to replace it. After three years, you really knew why you need another one because the one was totally obsolete. So at the time, I think the negative impact was that there were many, a lot of value with IT, but the impact was just money. Now we have those kinds of things. So I guess you remember what I’m talking about here. So what is this? This is first much cheaper. You can have smartphones for a hundred bucks. It’s nothing compared to $2,000 that the $3,000 that a full system was costing at the moment. So the result, we are ending with billions of devices all around. Somehow from useful, it’s still useful, but there are now something new as a gadget use, a lot of gadget use. So do I really need this new feature? There’s things that we can question about. It’s still quickly obsolete, but for the different reasons. Now this computer has not changed from the ones that were produced like eight years ago, but Apple will still have an incentive to have me changing it. So the main impact now is cost. It does still cost money, but it costs me, it costs my children, it costs the future, a lot of other things, pollution, resource depletion, waste, carbon and so on. That’s the negative impact of IT. We want to curb it, of course. To curb, you need to measure. To measure, you need a methodology. And to start with, you need units. And this is an article that I think is defining everything here. So we are here just next to the ITU building. Internet. And there have been these papers. It’s 10 years old, but the thing is not changed much. They say that when you’re trying to capture the electricity that is required to send some data over internet, all the papers that you can find have numbers that vary from 1 to 20,000. When you measure something, and it should be the same thing, when you measure something and you get measurements that vary from 1 to 20,000, most likely you’re not measuring anything or your measurement methodology is just not the right one. So we still don’t know how to measure IT yet. We don’t know how to measure the impact of IT. Although we have a lot of things coming up. So from the bottom up, we can have this green IT, green coding. We have the website carbon calculator. We have green IT. We have all kinds of tools, websites, associations, NGOs that tell us how to count negative impacts of IT. On the other hand, we have top-down regulations that come, the CSRB from Europe. We have the AIR Act, and we have others. The poor IT guys that are in the middle, it’s very hard to know which one to trust. Should I try to implement? I don’t know how to implement the big things that come from the regulators. that the bottom fix that’s the right one and I’m ending we had a session this morning I’ve shown this picture that was for the the comments like we were talking about the comments of sustainability and when I’m thinking of comments I’m come I’m thinking a lot about open source and this is a very very valid picture that you can probably have our zoom that is now connecting us our Spotify is probably one of this box and here we have something here and if this things breaks everything is broken and then I would like to replace this picture by maybe this is all what we have right now or maybe in the future all modern IT impact measurements we have all these things and problem is that at some point here we have just a wacky self-certified methodology designed ten years ago that has no value that’s never been reviewed and still everybody is using it going back to the code so this is not equal it was a it was it’s a couple of years but apparently one guy in an open source community was jailed unfortunately it was the guy that had all the accesses for a library that was downloaded 20 millions of times per week and this created a little problem because in the jail you cannot have access to Internet so he cannot fix the latest security issue and so I’m very worried that maybe in 15 years once we would have all the standardization about negative impact we will then realize that one of the little thing that we have done here is actually totally wrong so consolidate you’ll tell me how this fits into your consolidation but consolidate, validate, certify, standardize, bottom-up efforts all these efforts are good but they are a little bit noisy in my opinion to try to marshal them and to somehow like find the connection with the standards and from what I’m seeing in the fields the two things I cannot see one single connection between the two aspects the bottom up and the top down.

Aleve Mine:
I think about consolidation what you mentioned earlier today about all of the different things that exist but they are not all useful and that is something that can be consolidated but on the other hand somebody mentioned earlier today that those things that are not necessarily seen as useful now maybe somebody does something with them later so I think that there in the in the oval that you’ve seen at the beginning here in this session there is a there’s a function called conservation so I mean we can consolidate the operating the active operations but then still conserve information about all the other things that were there before we consolidated I think that that’s where it boils down so next is Ian thank you very much

Ian Dunmill:
okay good um sorry get that out of the way um thank you yes uh my name is Ian Dunmill I’m representing the uh the international organization of legal metrology and I just want to talk a bit about why accurate measurement is important to us all First of all, at the international level, there are two different organizations that look after metrology. Just for anybody who’s in any doubt about what they’re listening to, I’m talking about metrology, which is measurement, not meteorology, which is to do with the weather, just in case anybody thinks I’m in the wrong room. So the International Bureau of Weights and Measures was founded in 1875, just outside Paris, at the time to harmonize, or try to harmonize, on the use of the metric units. And gradually over time, they came to develop the International System of Units, the SI. At that time, they thought that making people use the same units would solve all the measurement problems worldwide, but it became quite quickly apparent there are a number of practical problems to do with how units are actually used, how they’re regulated, and so on. And so the organization that I work for was founded in 1955, because of there being world wars and depressions and things that got in the way of the technical discussions that were going on. We’re also based in Paris, and our main product, if you like, is harmonized models of technical legislation on measuring instruments. So what is legal metrology, as opposed to metrology, which I just said was the science of measurement? Well, it’s about how regulation is applied to measurement, or measurement is applied to regulation. And in most countries across the world, it is one of the oldest areas of legislation. I’m from the UK originally, and in a Magna Carta that was signed in 1215, there are even some points in there about using standard measures across the country. But using those standard measures or deciding on them is of no use if there isn’t traceability to the measurement between the standard and the standard. and where you’re actually measuring. So for example, if you are in a shop buying looks like cheese in this case, over that scale that’s shown there, you need to know that there is a unbroken chain of the accuracy of those measurements, the calibration of the different instruments, right back to the standard for the kilogram. Unfortunately, it’s not the nice looking Chinese standard on the right anymore. That’s nicer photo than the current definition, which is just a physical calculation based on fundamental standards, fundamental constants rather. Even in ancient times, that transibility concept was used because when the pyramids were built, they decided to use standards of length based on the length of Pharaoh’s forearm. They had to replace the standard every time there was a new Pharaoh, but they used the same principle as we use today. They had a very durable granite standard length, and then they had wooden working standards, which the masons actually doing the stone cutting would use, and they had penalties in place in the law for misuse of the units or for fraud of the units. In those days, I think it was a death penalty for misusing, which is obviously these days, they’re a bit more reasonable about the penalties that are applied. So the legal metrology, it does affect everyone’s life all the time. You can see some examples there, whether you’re buying your food, whether you’re filling your car, visiting a doctor, consuming utilities in your house, the water, the electricity, gas, and so on, or even if you’re being taken to court for some measurement-based infraction that you’ve done, you need to know that the measurements are reliable. So society’s confidence in the appropriate level of accuracy is what counts, but most people don’t actually think about any of that. It’s just part of the fabric of the society they live in. It’s also something which supports the sustainable development goals. given a few examples on this slide, showing that from trade, even at the very most basic level, through the second picture, they’re showing sort of international exports, which can affect the economy of a country, there is support to the Sustainable Development Goals there, and also things like improving the safety of very overloaded, unsafe vehicles in countries has a significant effect on the economy of a country. So, in fact, it was just mentioned just now, Sebastian, about making sure that units and methods are being used consistently. It’s essential the same units are being used across the world, the same methods are being used to take measurements, although the uncertainty of those measurements can vary considerably according to the capabilities of the person taking the measurement and the conditions that they’re working under. If you don’t, then there’ve been numerous quite famous incidents where measurement, measurements, not using the standard measurements has caused major problems. For example, NASA had a situation where in their software, they mixed up SI units and non-SI units, imperial units used in the United States, and the crashed, which wasted them $327 million because it wasn’t able to do the science that it was intended to do. Similarly, there was a case or there’ve been several cases where aircraft have been misfueled. The worst, most infamous case is probably one in 1983, where they did fuel conversions based on pounds per litre instead of kilograms per litre and basically put about a quarter of the amount of fuel into the plane that it should have had. Luckily, it managed to glide 130 kilometres after running out of fuel. But it just goes to show this is a very significant effects that can happen to non-standardised measurements. As we’re moving now into digitalization across the world, then there is a digital version of the International System of Units, which is being created by the BIPM, and they’re making use of digital calibration certificates to transmit this uncertainty information through the measurement chain. We’re also looking at machine readable and usable documents, as well as the possibility of remotely calibrating instruments. That’s something which is quite significant actually, and I’ve just mentioned to me about satellites. If satellites are being used to take measurements of the Earth’s atmosphere as part of climate change mitigation and so on, they’re trying to assess levels of gases in the atmosphere. How do you know that that instrument that’s on a satellite up in space is measuring correctly when you not calibrated it when it was sitting on the ground? You then stuck it on top of a rocket, shook it around an awful lot and throw it up into space. So remote calibration is a very important topic, which of course, even in poorer countries, it can, going to a digitalized system, a metrology, can help in reducing the risk of corruption. There’s less opportunity for people to take payoffs for saying that things are accurate when they’re not, falsified certificates and so on. But there is a big risk in all this with if there is not a full standardization, if manipulation of results can happen, which can’t be seen, it’s less evident, and maybe disproportionate solutions are found to some of those things which might have adverse effects in other areas. For example, if the certification chain is, or there are some proposals about whether we should be using blockchain as a method for guaranteeing the chain of calibration certificates, but the environmental costs of that are probably higher than the risk that’s actually there. There are easier solutions to finding that, to getting that level of confidence in the certificates. I just wanted to leave the quote here, which actually relates very much to something that Sebastian said as well. Lord Kelvin, back in 1883, later gave his name to the International Unit of Temperature, but he said, if you can’t measure something, then you don’t know anything about it. So in order to measure any of the things, and to know anything about any of the problems which we have in the world, whether they are through internet consumption or whether we’re talking about climate change, then accurate measurements are essential. Thank you.

Aleve Mine:
Thank you so much. Thank you both very much. I found that very interesting, the remote calibration. I’m puzzled as to how to do that, because you’re calibrating a black box somehow.

Ian Dunmill:
Yeah, well, I have to say, I’m not an expert on knowing how to do it. It’s just something which is being proposed. And one of the ideas, I think, is through the use of digital twins of devices. So the idea is that you can create an AI model or a digital model of anything. Therefore, you can use that to help you in the process of remotely calibrating other instruments. I don’t know. I can’t give you more details about it.

Aleve Mine:
So then the only thing that comes to my mind is sensitivity to the initial conditions. You would have to have additional sensors which are being used to detect things which today are being done at the same time by the human doing the calibration. So very fascinating. Thank you so much. Christophe, are you there?

Christophe Xerri:
Yes, I am.

Aleve Mine:
Okay. Would you be able to put Christophe…

Christophe Xerri:
You put it on screen or do you want me to share my screen?

Aleve Mine:
Whichever works best for you guys, I don’t know.

Christophe Xerri:
If you have it and if you want to put it, it’s just Swiss Knight, so it will be easy to scroll through. So please do it on your site.

Aleve Mine:
There you are.

Christophe Xerri:
Okay, yeah. If you can put it in full screen, it would be perfect. So what I’m trying to illustrate here is some of the principles which are in the concept paper of Eleve. We lost it, but it will come back.

Aleve Mine:
It’s back.

Christophe Xerri:
It’s back for you, but not for me. Not yet. Ah, now it’s coming. Okay. Good, good, good. Yeah, thank you. So what I’m trying to illustrate is some of these principles that some of the goals we have remain the same. However, you have to account for new circumstances, new developments. And in this respect, you have a kind of iteration to update your processes and your regulations and norms to maintain the overall goal, but with a proper frequency. Next slide, please. So I will take here the example of normalization of nuclear transportation package. And one of the reasons I’m talking about nuclear transportation package is that in the nuclear world, it’s one of the few things which is moving from one country to another. So it’s particularly important that there is a kind of common way to assess and to be comfortable that what you receive from country A will be safe enough for country B and so on. Next. So, what is the goal, and what is and will remain the goal over time is ensure safety and you want to maintain it over time. So safety means no significant impact on the environment and no significant impact on humans. And that’s basically the safety fundamental that you want to maintain in any case. And doing so, you are facing, when you want to implement that, and to take also some of the words of the concept paper, you have either incompleteness of knowledge or new knowledge. Incompleteness of knowledge because when you start defining something, then science is making progress, engineering is making progress, we discussed about measurement, measurement is beginning to be more and more precise and accurate. So you want to address either incompleteness of knowledge or the improvement of knowledge in a way. New knowledge because what you do transport at some time is there, but there may be new things which are also radioactive that you need to transport. Whether it’s a new isotope for medical use or a new type of fuse with all these new SMRs. You have plenty of new ideas, so you have new things that you have to transport. So you need to make sure that your norms and regulations take that into account. And also in progress in design and manufacturing process of the packages themselves. That’s something you want also to take into account. And as I mentioned, new technologies to test and measure. I think the previous presentation gave a very good example. understanding and explanation of all the progress which are made in this respect. Next one. And of course, when you have norms and regulations are implemented, and it’s also important to take into account the return of experience of what is working well, what is more difficult and easier to measure, or because you experienced a couple of troubles and you want to address that in the next regulation. So, it’s also important that you take that into account in achieving the standard and the goal over time. Next. So, how do we do that? Next. So, the process, we have norms and regulations which are discussed at the UN level, at the United Nations level. So, that’s a recommendation, and then each country will translate that to its own regulations, because the UN has no power of law enforcement. But that being said, that is a basis that basically all countries will use for their own regulation, and especially nuclear transportation package, because they are moving from one country to another one. You may decide to do things different for reactors from one country to another, but for transportation package, you have more reasons to be unified. So, in order to ensure that the goal is achieved over time, and taking into account everything which comes up, there is a process which is a review of regularly, a regular review, in this case, if it does not change, it is every five years, and you review everything and you update as needed. So, it doesn’t mean that you will necessarily update each five years. but you still review. I mean, in practice, there are always things which can be improved, so experts are always tempted to make some adjustments anyway. Next. So here, one of the things that you have to consider is the frequency of review. So, why it is five years? Because if you do that every year and every year, you have a new regulation and new things to apply, it’s completely unstable. And you just can’t work, because at the time you decide to implement, you need a little bit of time, and you want the process to be stable. So if you decide to review, say, every year, it will just be an unstable system, and that can create more problems than solutions. On the other hand, if you wait every 25 years, as an example, there are so many things going on during that time that you will have gaps, and that is also not good. So in this case, the experts have decided that five years is reasonable enough in terms of what may change, and not too punitive in terms of application. The second point is identification of incomplete knowledge and new knowledge, as we defined it previously, including return of experience. And that will be basically coming from a bottom-up approach from countries and practitioners who will say, well, I’ve got this new thing to transport, or I’ve got these new materials that I can use to make transportation packages, or I’ve got these new measurement methods. And just to give one example, which is more recent, we had some type of packages which were used, and you fill them, you transport them, you empty them, and you restart, right? So it’s kind of, and all that within a period of, say, two years max. Now we have cases where the same material is in the same package, but stays there for 30 or 40 years. So, we had to decide whether we would apply the same recertification of the package every three years, I think. Whether you would need to empty it or whether you could find a smart way to ensure that the condition of the package remains without emptying it. And then we defined norms and regulations and processes, as was also mentioned. So, the way to do is as important as what you want to do. So, that has been completed when I was working at the IAEA and is now implemented. Just to give one example of things which may happen. And of course, you need also access to meaningful return of experience, which is also a bottom-up consolidation. Everyone coming up with this case of, that’s perfect, don’t change anything. Here, I’ve got a problem, please, we need to think about it. Next. Processes through deliberation, which is also something I think is in the paper. Deliberation between experts and stakeholders. So, it’s not only four people sitting in a room and deciding everything. Of course, deliberation within people who know about the topic and stakeholders in terms of they want to make sure that everything is going well. You cannot involve everyone because that would be counterproductive. When people don’t have the technical knowledge, it’s very difficult to make a proper analysis of what needs to be changed. Now, you may have people who are stakeholders, not experts, which would not have a solution, but which can raise questions for the expert to answer the questions. So, that is done. Also, you need to find a balance of being open enough, but not… too widely. Next. Yes, and so after this bottom-up aspect on both new knowledge and return of experience, after a phase of opening up deliberations, then you have implementation, and then you come back to a kind of consolidation in reverse. So from the UN IEA updated norms and regulations, each country will translate that into its own regulations. So we have a kind of circularity or bottom-up, then top-down, to ensure that everything is working. And I think at the end of what I wanted to tell you, just to give you an example of an existing process, this process is here since more than 40 years as far as I know, which is basically in line with the ideas of maintaining a goal as the same goal, but still keeping up to date with what happens in the real world. Thank you very much for your attention.

Aleve Mine:
Thank you so much. The time factor plays a role on the one hand, on the optimal frequency. So the optimal frequency on the one hand can be a standard, and in my mind it’s also like a scientific optimum that is a result of a potential research, you know. So I mean, you know, there’s science and there’s standardization together there. So the time factor on the one hand works about the frequency of the cycle of this process. And on the other hand, as Ian mentioned on the incompleteness of knowledge, whereby when we measure something somewhere in some way, and we measure something else somewhere else in some other way, and then we model, we populate the model that we have, or that we want to use with that information, but they don’t correspond to the same thing, to the same object. We’re not modeling the same object. So there’s the time factor there. My head is exploding about how to obtain a model that is not a chimera of the world. Thank you so much, Christophe. Masahito, are you there? I would love it if you would be able to make some free comments with your view of the history of We have four minutes left. science. If there’s anything you can say about that, that would be awesome until now.

Masahito Kawamori:
Four minutes, okay. So one of the things that I would like to discuss is consistency. And one thing that I would like to bring up here is, I think the previous speakers talked about incompleteness of knowledge. And I think we can learn a lot from symbolic AI and knowledge representation, which took place about 10 years ago, or even before the deep learning has become very popular. One of the problems that they tackled was what they call the frame problem, the problem of limiting the belief, beliefs that have to be updated in response to actions or new knowledge. So how to keep dynamically changing subsystems of a bigger system consistent within themselves is related to temporal logic and possibility of using possible words, semantics, to describe the problem would be an interesting exercise to model the process of standardization. And so because of the time limitation I’ve just jumped to my conclusion. So consistency is one of the important requirements of a system including standards and also of consolidation which is the topic of this session. But many systems seem self-contradictory or contradictory with other systems at some point. But if we take a more dynamic view and we learn from lessons from knowledge representation in symbolic AI, artificial intelligence, then maybe we can apply the results, their results, such as temporal logic or dynamic logic and possible world semantics and mechanism to update our knowledge to build smaller consistent subsystems with more facts to practical problems such as standardization or documents or legal systems. So this is I think one of the common themes we talked about today in completeness of our system or knowledge and new knowledge and actions and we need to update our knowledge. So this is my comments.

Aleve Mine:
Thank you. Thank you so much. That is awesome. It is time, and I’m sorry that we are here, continue to ask us the questions, even if we’re disconnected. And before that, thank you all for joining online. I would like to, if we’re still online, I would like to give a special thanks for those two people who traveled here from Paris just for this. I’m like so honored, and from Lausanne for this. And I’m really humbled by the high level of the inputs. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.