Review - Gen IV Nuclear Energy Systems Roadmap

This article is a brief review of the Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems Roadmap.

The roadmap represents a joint effort among participating countries who are hoping to develop the next generation of nuclear reactors by the year 2030.

Overall, the roadmap document is of excellent quality, addressing all elements of the canonical roadmap (why, what, how and when).

The roadmap develops a series of timelines representing the activities and decision points within each of the most promising research areas associated with nuclear reactor technology (click on image to enlarge):



Of particular note is the identification of outstanding issues that need to be addressed/resolved in order for each of the selected technology alternatives to (ultimately) pan out.

Another important contribution of the roadmap is the identification of research activities that cut across and therefore have the potential to support multiple technology alternatives.

If there is a deficiency with this document, I can't find it.

Your comments are welcome.

Z

Review - Aluminium Transformation Roadmap

This is a high-level review of an excellent technology roadmapping example -- the Canadian Aluminium Transformation Technology Roadmap.

Pros:

- The roadmap document contains an informative and authoritative overview of the aluminium industry in Canada, effectively presenting the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the industry today. In the canonical roadmap model, this overview represents the top-most layer, capturing the business drivers.

- The roadmap document contains an innovative and effective way to present the canonical middle roadmap layer, representing "what" the industry plans to do in response to the identified business drivers. While referred to as "opportunities" as opposed to "products and services", the idea is the same; each opportunity includes textual and graphical symbology which tells us the priority, timeframe, complexity and economic impact associated with it (click on image to enlarge):



Cons:

- The roadmap does not delve into the canonical bottom layer representing "how" we might execute on the opportunities identified previously, but instead presents a set of four overall recommendations. The net result is a lack of focus or insight into the potential solutions to specific challenges facing the aluminium industry.

Summary:

- The Canadian Aluminium Transformation Technology Roadmap is an excellent artifact, effectively capturing the "why" and "what" layers of the canaonical roadmap. The ground work has been laid for follow-on efforts to address the "how" layer.

Review - Quantum Computation Roadmap

A particularly good roadmapping example is the Quantum Computation Roadmap (QCR)

The purpose of the QCR is to coordinate research in quantum computing across a number of laboratories and institutions around the world.

Two semantic elements used to great effect in the roadmap are "status" (denoted by green, yellow and red bubbles) and "promise" (denoted by green, yellow and red triangles); each approach to overcoming obstacles in quantum computing is associated with subjectively-assigned status and promise values. Status tells us how far along a particular idea has come (ranging from "it's still an idea" all the way to "we are good to go"). Promise tells us the likelihood that a given idea, if implemented successfully, will actually address the problem it is supposed to solve (ranging from "this might possibly work, but who knows" to "if this idea works, we are gold").

The only thing that is really lacking in the roadmap is a graphical timeline view, which must be reverse-engineered from the documentation (click for larger image):



Nonetheless, this is a minor deficiency and the result is a living document that provides a vehicle for coordination and communication within the quantum computing community.