Technology assessment
Claims about technology are easy to make and hard to check. Technology assessment at The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI) asks what a technology can actually do, under which conditions, on what evidence and with what limits. It examines readiness, validation, capability claims and evaluation evidence, so that institutions can tell a demonstration from a dependable capability before they adopt, procure or regulate. This page sets out the method and the boundaries. It is part of innovation and technological change.
- Institution
- The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
- Service level
- R0: information and enquiries
Innovation pipeline
GCRI · Stage gates
By readiness level
Readiness criteria
pilot vs gate
Pilot issues
- I-1Data licence for pilot siteTo check9 d
- I-2Observer protocol signedDone8 d
GCRI · Innovation pipelineInnovation pipeline, in outline: domain structure with placeholder names and illustrative values, not a record.
The short answer.
Technology assessment at GCRI asks what a technology can actually do, under which conditions, on what evidence and with what limits, so that institutions can tell a demonstration from a dependable capability before they adopt or procure it. It examines readiness, validation and capability claims, and an assessment is never a certification.
Draft to published version.
Fig.How a finding is reviewed before it is published. Design, not a record.
Systemic exposure in California.
Where people and networks concentrate, the exposure through which shocks travel between systems, shown for California as an example geography for this subject.
Four questions behind every assessment.
A fourth question runs through all three: what would make the technology fail, and has that been looked for?
How mature is it?
Evidence on maturity in the intended setting, not in the most favourable one.
Has it been tested?
Independent tests against stated objectives, with the test conditions reported.
What exactly is claimed?
Capability statements separated into measured, estimated and asserted.
How capability is reported.
- Measured capability is published with workload, data size, hardware, configuration, software version and interval
- Peak, sustained, available and allocated capacity are reported separately
- Device counts and specifications are descriptors, not application results
- Energy, cooling and water use are tracked, with measurements kept apart from estimates
- Failures and limitations found during testing are reported, not removed
From evaluation plan to recorded result.
- 01
Evaluation plan
Objectives, metrics, conditions and stop rules agreed before testing.
- 02
Controlled test
Experiments in Nexus Labs test environments or the annual Nexus Universe programme, with independent observation.
- 03
Recorded result
Results with their method, limits and evidence label, published where rights allow.
Terms used on this page.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Technology assessment | A scientific, interactive and communicative process that examines the societal aspects of science and technology to inform public and political opinion, as the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment network describes it. |
| Technology readiness level | A scale from basic principles to proven operation that describes how mature a technology is. |
| Operational design domain | The conditions under which an automated system is designed to function. |
| Conformity assessment | The process of demonstrating that a product or system meets specified legal or standard requirements, by self-assessment or a third party. |
Testing is not certification.
An assessment describes what was tested and found. It is not accreditation, certification, an endorsement or approval for use, and evaluation never depends on a provider's level of contribution. Providers can start at technology and infrastructure providers. See also responsible technology and the Labs Evidence report series.
Questions and answers.
Can a vendor cite a GCRI assessment in marketing?
Who pays for an assessment?
Are negative results published?
Does GCRI use readiness levels?
Can an assessment be challenged?
Around GCRI.
Start with an enquiry.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.