Clinton J. Andrews

Understanding where pedestrians direct their visual attention is essential for evaluating perceived safety, informing infrastructure planning, and guiding urban design. Eye-tracking studies typically measure the visual importance of objects using the Percentage of Total Fixation Duration (PTFD) on predefined Areas of Interest (AOIs). However, PTFD suffers from two key limitations: uncontrolled variation in AOI size and visibility limits comparability across studies, and manual AOI annotation is labor-intensive and subject to rater bias. To address these limitations, we propose Size-Weighted Fixation Duration (SWFD), a metric that incorporates both fixation duration and the relative visual size of AOIs, implemented through automated image segmentation. By integrating wearable sensing and computer vision, the proposed method enables scalable and reproducible quantification of pedestrian visual attention in real-world traffic settings. We validated our proposed metrics using data collected from a naturalistic eye-tracking experiment with 30 participants walking a route containing 15 intersections. Eye movements were recorded using Tobii Pro Glasses 3, and AOIs were identified and sized using the PSPNet semantic segmentation model. Comparisons between PTFD and SWFD show that PTFD tends to emphasize large, less task-relevant AOIs (e.g., buildings, roads), while SWFD highlights task-relevant elements requiring active attention (e.g., vehicles, people). SWFD also retains individual fixations, yielding a larger sample size for statistical modeling. Regression models predicting gaze patterns toward vehicles and pedestrians revealed that only the SWFD-based models produced statistically significant results. These findings suggest that SWFD provides a more effective measure of AOI importance and pedestrian visual engagement, contributing to sensor-based pedestrian analysis, pedestrian safety assessments and evidence-based planning and design.

In this study, we analyze how energy efficiency actions, policies, and outcomes are tied to wider socio‐economic and political contexts that are important from a sustainable energy transition perspective. In our two‐part study, we first conduct a bibliometric analysis of 206 publications to identify some of the dominant discourses in the literary construction of energy efficiency actions and outcomes from a sustainable energy transition policy perspective using keywords–energy efficiency, energy policy, sustainable transition, political, conflict, consumption, and equity. Next, we identify and take up five comparatively understudied themes to understand the how and why questions surrounding residential energy efficiency actions, policies, and outcomes for sustainable transition‐(i) efficiency versus consumption; (ii) barriers and conflicts at the individual, household, and institutional levels; (iii) policy processes and heterogeneity; (iv) demonstrable savings versus normative ethics and equity ideals; and (v) public policy and market‐based frameworks. Using a multi‐disciplinary lens, we explore the underlying paradigms, dynamics, synergies, and trade‐offs between different actors, institutions, and situational contexts influencing complex energy efficiency policy processes. We note the role of bargaining, negotiations, and political dynamics as important elements of policy processes that influence adoption, applicability, and jurisdictions of energy efficiency policies. Our study also highlights the need for policies that target absolute energy consumption and careful balancing of socially equitable objectives with economically efficient outcomes in a market‐based framework. We believe that a better understanding and comprehensive discussion of these challenges will inform policymaking and ensure better outcomes.

Decisions about how to respond to coastal flood hazards often involve disagreements over resource allocations. In the United States, large intergovernmental fiscal transfers have enabled rebuilding in areas that experience severe repetitive losses. This case study focuses on Ortley Beach, a barrier island neighborhood in Toms River, New Jersey, to examine the process of rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and competing visions for the future. A decade later, we conducted 32 key‐informant interviews—including residents and local, state, and federal officials—to examine how values, worldviews, and beliefs shape preferences for coastal risk reduction strategies. A central debate was whether public resources should support staying or leaving the island. Key concerns included the economic impacts of strategies on household and public finances, the effectiveness of strategies to mitigate future flood damages, and fairness in the distribution of costs and responsibilities. Conflicts emerged in how stakeholders framed their preferences. Local officials tended to hold more individualistic–hierarchical worldviews, weaker beliefs in climate science, and favored actions to protect high‐value properties to preserve the tax base while externalizing costs. In contrast, some residents and most state and federal officials held more community–egalitarian worldviews, stronger beliefs in climate science, and preferences for long‐term adaptation strategies to reduce risk, including property buyouts. Responding to the primary concern about economic impacts, we recommend enhancing individual and local financial resilience to climate and political shocks by diversifying municipal revenue streams, encouraging proactive risk‐based planning, exploring innovative insurance models, and better accounting for the long‐term costs of rebuilding.

The June issue incorporates a double special issue bringing together the areas of Generative AI, ingenuity and the law; and separately the unintended consequences of emerging technologies aligned to artificial intelligence and subset areas, such as biometrics. The first special issue is led by Joseph Carvalko Jr., Chairperson, Technology and Ethics, Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Institution for Public and Social Policy Studies [1] ; and the second special issue is led by Clinton Andrews of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University and previously the President of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology [2] . In this guest editorial we provide a brief Introduction to the special issues and an overview of each of the accepted papers. We also invite Lucy Batley of Traction Industries located in Newcastle on the Tyne in England to join us, as the inspiration behind the cover design of this issue [3] .

If people want the benefits of innovations, must they simply accept the unintended adverse consequences? Versions of this question haunt many who care about the social implications of technology. Technological design processes could include impact assessment steps, but not all do. Adoption in the marketplace may ignore spillover effects. Jurisprudence is often reactive and focused on remediating obvious wrongs. Public policy also often requires evidence of harm before legislators or administrators are willing to act. The failure to anticipate adverse consequences is sometimes framed as a moral lapse, but it could equally be about competence or incentives. This paper considers the relative merits of methodology (analogizing, interpolating, projecting,) and procedure (reflecting, reasoning, discourse) as systematic approaches to anticipating unintended consequences of innovation. It weighs the efficacy of such approaches against current reactive remedies, highlighting the importance of tailoring approach to context, and building in early learning opportunities (observing and testing). Several examples suggest that society is often playing catch-up and trying to avoid adverse consequences before the innovation is widely deployed rather than before it is initially introduced.

“Only when decent people band together to act in concert to install proper societal mechanisms and to support one another will we be able to reap the fruits of the marvelous new technologies and avert technologic catastrophes and environmental disasters. Engineers, in particular, need to think carefully about how they can act jointly to help one another to practice their profession properly.” —Unger [21, p. 72]