What if...
Suppose the opportunity arose - which you cannot resist - to join an interplanetary space mission. You would have to leave next week. Apart from your inspiring personality, what would EUROfusion be missing most? What would you write in your note to your successor? What of your current knowledge would you be most worried to see becoming lost?
Suppose, unfortunately, that an earthquake around Aix-en-Provence appears too damaging for the foundations of the ITER tokamak and all buildings and components reach the status 'fubar'. After celebrating the good news that none of the ITER employees have been hurt, what would the fusion programme need to do in order to reach fusion electricity asap?
Of course, many less abrupt or severe things can happen which still would cause a loss of valuable know-how. Therefore we are glad to discuss with you:
The need for knowledge management in EUROfusion
As ITER is being built, as JET reaches its final campaigns, competences or experiences that are currently widely present may become idle in the coming years, although they can still be essential in the future of the programme.
Also, in order to bring DEMO to the next phase, new terrain has to be covered, from systems engineering to nuclear safety, from fuel cycle to RAMI,
With a breadth of research institutes, EUROfusion represents a long-standing experience, in tokamak and stellarator operation, theory development, engineering and materials research.
In the past decades, Knowledge Management (KM) has started to emerge as a discipline with applications and practices in a variety of industries, including the nuclear sector. Although not as standardised as project management, the first ISO standard on KM (2018) marks a step into that direction.
There exist practices on capturing, sharing, transferring or preserving knowledge and it is now considered a relevant activity to identify the needs for the European fusion community. On the one hand for shared tools and practices, on the other hand on which (critical) knowledge to deal with first.
Knowledge is information in action, reasoning about information, experience
Often in scientific context, knowledge is seen as to be conveyed in publications. While perhaps true for the codifiable "explicit" parts of knowledge, it is widely recognised in the KM literature that there are valuable assets within people's know-how that are not (easily) articulated. Professional experts may naturally not be aware of all their intuitions and routines, whilst in these, the key to their performance lies. Elements of this unconscious "tacit" knowledge are theorised to be most valuable to organisations, while the hardest to capture.
This can be reflected in how solutions are found, which books to choose, whom to discuss with. Depending on the needs, processes and mechanisms will be developed.
Which currently present know-how is most critically at the risk of loss?
In the first workshop, we would like to make a first assessment on where to focus on, from a European Roadmap point-of-view. In order to jointly sketch a picture, you are cordially invited to complete the Registration form (even in case you are not able to attend the workshop). Your input will be used and you will be kept updated on the outcomes and follow-up.
For questions or suggestions, welcome to get in touch with the organising committee: John.Holden@euro-fusion.org - Guido.Lange@euro-fusion.org
