Research approach
As main basis for the research activities and review of projects the TST (for Techniques, Society, and Territories) approach has been used.
The promotion and the success of freight transport innovations are by far not only a question of techniques or technologies. Many non-technological (social, economic, legislative…) factors have a strong influence. To take into account all these indirect but crucial factors, the AIMS method is based on a combination of a system approach and a socio-economic approach in order to identify the framework conditions for freight transport innovations in a broader, not only technical sense.
It uses a socio-economic approach understood in the North-American meaning as: “a global approach of the economic behaviour of our society, which offers an interdisciplinary perspective of the economic problems and completes a purely economic analysis with elements coming from other disciplines” (“The Socio Economy” - Beat Burgenmeier, editions Economica 1994). The time factor is taken into account in a crucial way, because the socio-economy has to prepare the future and in particular new organisations due to new techniques (taken in the widest sense) and/or technologies improvement and implementation.
Moreover, a systemic approach is used: it describes a system as a series of interrelated elements in such a way that if one of them is defective (either an element, an interface or an interrelation) the whole system thereby suffers. To simplify, the definition of the De Rosnay System is used as a reference, namely: “a system is composed of a set of elements interrelated in such a way that if one of these elements fails, the whole system becomes dysfunctional” (“Le Macrocosme”, PUF, Paris, 1975). Using such an approach implies:
- to give more importance to the interrelations than to the elements themselves;
- to think each element as an object dipped in an environment and interacting with it.
To depict the freight transport system, three interrelated systems are identified:
- the community of actors representing the society (individuals and organisations);
- the techniques (technologies, processes, finance and economy…);
- the territory (geography, geopolitics, culture…).
Face to a demand, the society relies on techniques in a broad sense, not simply technologies, but also administrative frameworks, financial standards... within a given territory having geographical, geopolitical, cultural, ideological, religious characteristics to propose an offer. To maximise the success of research, offer and demand must be put in adequacy, i.e. constraints and obstacles identified and solutions suggested.
