Bootstrapping as the emergence of phenomena

and infrastructure

Elena Parmiggiani Dept. of Computer and Information Science, NTNU

Trondheim, Norway

III workshop, Oslo, Norway 13th-16th Oct 2014

Real-time subsea environmental monitoring in the oil and gas sector

• Go North?

• Environmentally sensitive and unknown areas

• Integrated Operations: – Integrated work processes – Fiber-optic cables – Collaborative technologies

• Uncertainty:

– What is at risk? How?

• NorthOil: development of an integrated infrastructure for real-time subsea environmental monitoring

– What happens in the early stages?

• Information infrastructure studies (Schmidt 2013):

– CSCW: focus on regulating local practices

– STS: broad understanding of II (classification systems; conventions;…)

– IS: managing the interplay between the local and the global

• Need to chart the emerging complexities and side effects because the local/global distinction has been removed (Ellingsen et al. 2013)

Real-time subsea environmental monitoring in the oil and gas sector

Bootstrapping

• IS, design-centered perspective: attracting a critical mass of users for direct usefulness (see e.g. Hanseth and Aanestad 2010) – Chicken-egg problem (Hanseth and Lyytinen 2010) – Incremental stakeholder mobilization (Aanestad and Jensen 2011)

• STS: conjuring a set of meaningful parameters from situated

realities to ensure their inclusion in a global picture (Bowker 1994) – Very general, requires operationalization

• Bootstrapping as a process to initiate new II by leveraging a few (economically and/or politically) strategic solutions in a situated reality so that the direct relevance and meaning for key stakeholders is visible – local/global – long term/short term

The open ocean observatory:

Where oil and gas find LoVe

Lofoten-Vesterålen

NorthOil + technology vendors + Institute for Marine Research NB: No operations in LoVe Get a baseline of environmental behavior 250 m deep 15–20 km off the coast

http://lovedev.azurewebsites.net/

The LoVe project

Pictures source: http://lovedev.azurewebsites.net

Ca 2007: first tests in EU projects

2011: Financed by NorthOil production and development dept.

2013: Fibre-optic cable real-time data; web portal

2014: Inclusion in large-scale corporate project to set

up a cross-organizational infrastructure for environmental monitoring

The LoVe portal

http://lovedev.azurewebsites.net/

• Commercial interest for cod and herring

• Materiality of nature and technology – Pointing the acoustic devices: the swim bladder

– Setting of acoustic devices vs. size of target (larvae, eggs)

– Injection of model-inferred data on eggs and larvae

“The fish is detectable but we have no models; for larvae we have models but we cannot detect

them!”

(environmental advisor)

Placing the sensors: from corals to fish, larvae, and eggs

E.g., if frequency = 70 KHz, poor detection of objects < 2cm (source: internal documentation)

SWIM BLADDER

Classifying the water column?

Chromatogram: – not understandable for

the fishermen of Lofoten-Vesterålen

So what?

Dep

th

Time

http://lovedev.azurewebsites.net/

Classifying: The «environmental value»

• Classification system of the water column

• Relative concentration of biomass

Bootstrapping… how? (1/2)

“So we will do the best out of what’s out there [to make] the technology ready for having more, more [observatories], more

information, and to create more detailed map layers, and detailed information. But if you have the infrastructure ready, it’s ready for

doing that” (environmental advisor) • Local developments and global context are inextricably entwined

– Unpredictable consequences

• Materially mediated solution to balance: – Local measurements / global picture: the environmental value – Long-term environmental behavior / real-time measurements

• Get away with essentialist accounts of II innovation

– Bottom up or top down

Bootstrapping… how? (2/2)

• Choosing a “clean” slate: LoVe

• As few sensors as possible; off-the-shelf devices

• Trustworthiness – Enrollment of local stakeholders: fishermen in Lofoten-Vesterålen

“We can see fish, so imagine that local fisherman can go in there and look: ‘Is there a point in going to the sea today? Do they stay at home?’”

(environmental advisor) – Feeding the measurements into easily understandable classifications

• Bootstrapping the naturalization process – Epistemic work of discovering evolving objects (Subsea environment?

Environmental risk?) • Bootstrapping work construction of risk assessment practices

• Co-construction of (‘natural’) phenomena and the infrastructure

– Sensors, phenomenon, and infrastructure develop together and get entwined in practice

– Challenge to established notions of installed base, also part of this cycle

The point?

New needs

New measurements

New problems

New phenomena

Thanks!

Elena Parmiggiani Dept. of Computer and Information Science, NTNU Trondheim, Norway III workshop, Oslo, Norway 13th-16th Oct 2014