Course content

This course will address the use of remote operations in concrete contexts across different industries. Remote functions are typically performed from secure premises in an organization or at a vendor’s location, with the essential support of digital technologies, often remote from what must be monitored or operated. Several services of this type have been developed over the years in different industries, for example remote energy supply, oil and gas, aquaculture, emergency services, and military operations.

Recently, advanced remote functions have been developed. Real-time operations, engineering/operational support, and environmental monitoring and other tasks are increasingly performed at greater distances. The primary case for remote operations is usually to limit the number of personnel on a facility and thus limit exposure to hazardous environments, as well as to enable easier and faster access to expert support independently of the location. Ongoing digitalization based on smart sensor networks, drones, Artificial Intelligence (AI), broadband on the sea floor, digital twins etc., gives several opportunities but also new challenges for existing work tasks/services but also for future remote operations.

The design, planning, and performance of remote operations requires a multidisciplinary approach to define strategic capabilities of both technical and organizational nature to coordinate the cross-disciplinary functions and sharing of responsibilities between remote and local operations. This involves the development and use of suitable technological solutions, enforcing control-of-work policies, building and further developing competence, ensuring the reliability of remote communications, and not the least identifying and preventing the operational risks and challenges associated with remote functions such as health, safety, security in general and cybersecurity more specifically.

The course will:

• Explore four generic configurations of remote operations, by critically evaluating their advantages, disadvantages, and risks: the remote-control room, the remote collaborative centre, remote at vendor premises, and remote access from anywhere
• Conceptualize remote operations as an information infrastructure encompassing technical, competence, work processes and governance configurations
• Address the technical, organizational and competence-related challenges in the design, planning, and use of remote operations from a socio-technical perspective

The goal of the course is to:

• Expose students to the state of the art in configurations of remote operations in different contexts across different industries
• Enable students to identify and critically assess the technical, organizational, and competence-related challenges in the design, planning, and use of remote operations
• Foster collaborative student learning through group work and presentations

Learning outcome

Knowledge:

• Define the concept of remote operation, its features, advantages, and disadvantages (risks)
• Describe how remote operations have developed and their sources of origin
• Illustrate the basic interests and stakeholders that exist in the field of remote operations
• Represent the development of remote operations as an information infrastructure with technical, competence, work processes and governance configurations
• Identify the challenges related to scalability and replicability in remote operations in light of ongoing digitalization initiatives
• Identify the challenges related to collaboration across boundaries (time, domain, space) in light of ongoing digitalization

Skills:

• Determine the basic steps to conduct an ‘as-is’ study of present conditions in an empirical setting in a relevant organization
• Plan the basic change process to take advantage of remote operations configurations and digitalization capabilities

General competencies:

• Identify and assess the main sociotechnical challenges in a real-world deployment of remote operations
• Plan remote operations in a real-world scenario by deploying an appropriate configuration of the human, technology, work process and governance resources

Learning methods and activities

Lectures, seminars, group work, e-learning, assignments, project work, reflection.

There can be guest lecturers in English.

Compulsory assignments

• Mandatory activities

Specific conditions

Course materials

Articles and book chapters, to be defined at the beginning of the course.