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Content created by Fredrik Asplund

Fredrik Asplund

Associate Professor at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and Docent in Cyberphysical Systems. Focusing on safe engineering practice / safety practices in engineering firms related to cyber-physical systems, but with an interest in system safety, system/software engineering, innovation ecosystems, empirical software engineering and engineering education.

Currently, the main application domains of the research projects I have been involved in are the automotive and maritime domains. In these projects the focus has often been on autonomous, highly automated and connected vehicles, and their implications in extreme situations – e.g., for ensuring resilience or (when accidents are unavoidable) mitigating injury.

Fredrik Asplund

I am an Associate Professor at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and Docent in Cyberphysical Systems. My research focus is on safe engineering practice / safety practices in engineering firms related to cyber-physical systems.

I primarily investigate behaviour-shaping constraints - aspects of the sociotechnical systems surrounding workers that can constrain their ability to perform their work with the required flexibility (for ensuring safety). These constraints are often implicitly linked to outcomes, which means that explicit descriptions of engineering practice (e.g. safety standards) are often unable or unlikely to offer relevant guidance on them.

Think for instance of testing activities for safety-critical systems. Safety-related testing is often thought to be that which ensures that safety functions, such as emergency shutdown valves, will not malfunction. However, exploratory testing can be as important in ensuring that complex systems are safe, as it allows testers to identify safety-related faults that are too costly or too much of an outlier to identify otherwise. Unfortunately, the implications of exploratory testing on for instance test coverage is implicit. This means that it is also difficult to pin down what makes exploratory testing efficient.

This has led me to consider not only the practices that are considered as belonging to safety engineering, but the wider contribution to safety by all engineering practice as well as the safety-related influence by the value-creation and societal systems surrounding current manufacturers of cyberphysical systems.

Additionally, I have an interest in and have written a few papers on system safety, system/software engineering, innovation ecosystems, empirical software engineering and engineering education.

Currently, the main application domains of the research projects I have been involved in are the automotive and maritime domains. In these projects the focus has often been on autonomous, highly automated and connected vehicles, and their implications in extreme situations – e.g., for ensuring resilience or (when accidents are unavoidable) mitigating injury.

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Language Skills

Swedish100%
English80%
German20%
Russian10%

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Publications

Publications

These are a few of my publications which I think are worth highlighting (and I have found the time to add).

For a more complete list see:

  • Engineer-Centred Design Factors and Methodological Approach for Maritime Autonomy Emergency Response Systems

    This paper was one of outputs from the BOAUT project, in which we investigated assurance related to maritime autonomous surface vessels (MASS). Specifically, we interviewed and put vessel traffic services operators through simulated scenarios to get their input regarding future challenges and changes required for maritime autonomy emergency response systems to function properly. The main take-away was was the need for engineering firms to improve their informal gathering and sharing of information through gatekeepers and/or organisational liaisons. To avoid a too cautious approach to accountability, this will have to include a closer integration of development and operations.

    You will find the fulltext here.

  •
    Knowing too much? On bias due to domain‐specific knowledge in internal crowdsourcing for explorative ideas

    A bit of an odd paper of mine. I became interested in crowdsourcing as a means for safety engineers to change practice at their organisations. This paper looks at how domain-specific knowledge (naturally very important to safety engineers) in internal crowdsourcing. It should benefit idea creation and refinement during crowdsourcing processes greatly, but as it turns out - (also) biases idea evaluation.

    You will find the fulltext here.

  •
    The genesis of public-private innovation ecosystems: Bias and challenges

    This was the first paper that I wrote in relation to (innovation) ecosystems. Perhaps it comes of as a bit negative towards public organisations in innovation activities, much like several other papers in this discourse. However, while the paper discusses challenges to public-private cooperation at length, the underlying data do support that there are combinations of engineers and researchers that are especially likely succeed in innovation.

    You will find the fulltext here.

  •
    Conflict as software levels diversify: Tactical elimination or strategic transformation of practice?

    When I wrote this paper, it was one of the few looking at safety practice from a perspective beyond processes. Processes are important, as they are the firm-internal representation of best practice. (Standards being the representation across domains). However, looking at engineering work solely from that perspective misses the point that some groups of engineers will have their own reasons for preferring "this or that" type of practice. An organisation's values can thus be very important in the way it decides which group of engineers that has the power to enforce its views on how to implement best practice and standards. As I argue in this paper, this suggest that different types of firms (e.g. early adopters) has to adopt different strategies to deal with safety-relevant problems.

    You will find the fulltext here.

  •
    Boundary spanning at work placements: challenges to overcome, and ways to learn in preparation for early career engineering

    I am interested in education in Higher Education Institutions, especially at the master's level (which remains understudied). Working on this paper was interesting, because I got to interview students about their interactions with the firms that offer master thesis projects. While most students enjoyed this type of cooperative education with industry, they also found it challenging. (These challenges differed depending on the skills of the individual student, and the motivation of each firm for offering thesis projects.) The main contribution is the emphasis these challenges put on understanding the motivations of these firms, to allow faculty to support students correctly.

    You will find the fulltext here.

  •
    Work functions shaping the ability to innovate: insights from the case of the safety engineer

    Studying engineering practice is often difficult. The largest contribution of this paper is probably its rather unorthodox use of empirical data from innovation activities. Through this I could suggest that safety engineers gain a specialized understanding of organisational culture and complexity through the (work and) work function they are part of. (Being perhaps one of the most important reasons for me to start working with the community of practice concept.)

    You will find the fulltext here.

  •
    Exploratory testing: Do contextual factors influence software fault identification?

    This is a good example of how it pays to study what engineers actually do, rather than what you imagine they do. I wrote this paper after spending time at a MedTec company, at which exploratory testing was a critical part of identifying potentially unsafe product faults. Although this is interesting in itself, the discourse on exploratory testing often focuses on the individual tester - here I could identify how the contexts of testers gave different testers different opportunities to learn, something which should be managed to improve testing efficiency.

    You will find the fulltext here.

  •
    Rapid integration of CPS security and safety

    I wrote this paper during my Post-Doc in Derby, England. The main contribution of the paper, originally conceived by Robert Oates, is how security and safety can be causally linked. (Based on how the loss of data security can lead to an impact on aspects of data which may have safety implications.)

    You will find the fulltext here.

  •
    The discourse on tool integration beyond technology, a literature survey

    I wrote this paper when summarizing part of the work towards my doctoral thesis. I was mainly addressing the point that while most of the work in tool integration focus only on information technology, there are a lot of other aspects worth discussing - such as the contexts where tool integration is important, classification schemes, non-functional properties, etc. (Funnily enough, one reviewer's main critique was that although the topic was tool integration, the paper did not discuss the Eclipse Platform in detail.)

    You will find the fulltext here.

  •
    Safety-guided design through system-theoretic process analysis, benefits and difficulties

    A paper I wrote after using System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) during my PhD studies. I am very much in favour of control-based methodologies. Much of the work leading up to their popularity is worth reading up on (see for instance my PhD thesis for some concepts to start with). Unfortunately, I have to make the point that these methodologies are nevertheless no panacea, something proponents of STAMP/STPA have a tendency to gloss over.

    You will find the fulltext here.

News

News, Etc.

When I find the time, I will put things of interest that I come across here (news, call for papers, etc.)

Contact

Get in Touch

Email: fasplund@kth.se

Phone: +46 8 790 7405