Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute

Governments worldwide are increasingly exploring the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support and transform policymaking. Despite the growing number of national AI strategies and initiatives, systematic evidence on how AI is integrated across the stages of the policymaking process remains limited. This lack of clarity risks fragmented integration and slows the diffusion of effective practices. This study addresses this gap by examining how AI-enabled policy actions are incorporated into policymaking processes across eight European countries. We analyze policy documents to identify AI-enabled policy actions and map them across the phases of the public policy cycle. The analysis reveals 33 AI-enabled policy actions and reveals uneven integration across policy stages and countries. While several actions focus on data infrastructure, digital public services, and agenda setting, considerably fewer initiatives target implementation monitoring, evaluation, and responsibility-related governance mechanisms. The study contributes to the literature by (1) systematically mapping AI-enabled policy actions across the policy cycle, (2) identifying integration gaps in current policymaking practices, and (3) outlining directions for future research.

Aims Burnout is caused by long term psychosocial stress and has, besides the fatigue and mental health burden, been associated with increased risk of adverse physical health, such as type 2 diabetes. Physical activity seems to be a protective factor against burnout and its negative health consequences. This study aims to investigate the glucose and insulin levels related to physical activity level in individuals with stress related burnout, by assessing these metabolic markers in response to a standard oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT).Methods Altogether, 38 individuals with burnout (13 men and 25 women) in the age 24-55 were included in the study. The burnout cases were divided into three groups based on self-reported physical activity level.Results The burnout cases who reported that they were sedentary exhibited significantly higher insulin levels during the OGTT compared to burnout cases reporting that they were physically active to any degree. This relationship was independent of severity of symptoms of burnout and depression.Conclusions The observed higher insulin levels in the sedentary burnout cases indicate an increased diabetes risk in these individuals and point at an important reason for physical activity being included in the treatment regimen for this patient group.

Data sharing is increasingly essential for digital government and data-driven innovation, yet many public organizations remain reluctant to make their data openly available. While prior research has examined factors influencing open data adoption, little theoretical work explores why resistance persists within public agencies. This study develops an Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) model tailored to government data sharing to identify predictors of organizational resistance. An initial model was derived from literature and refined through interviews with 21 public organizations across six European countries. The resulting model - IRT4DS - identifies 39 barriers spanning usage, value, risk, tradition, and image dimensions, and 23 countermeasures mapped to the most critical barriers and the actors responsible for addressing them. By extending IRT into the context of governmental data sharing, the study advances theoretical understanding of why public data often remains closed and provides actionable guidance for policymakers seeking to design enabling data ecosystems and reduce structural and cultural barriers to OGD adoption.

In Autonomous Public Transport (APT), particularly with shuttle buses, passengers travel in smaller, more intimate vehicles-and in the future, such vehicles may operate without an authoritative driver or host. This setup may lead to potential safety concerns, as passengers are left alone together. Additionally, this future absence of a driver or host means that there is no one to address questions or uncertainties that may arise. One proposed solution is introducing a robot onboard the bus, serving a similar role to a human host. To explore this solution, an experiment was conducted in Barkarby, Stockholm, Sweden. Passengers, generally unfamiliar with APT or social robots, experienced two short rides on a bus equipped with either an embodied Furhat robot as the host or a disembodied voice agent in the ceiling. Data were collected from passenger-agent interactions, post-questionnaires, and semi-structured focus group interviews. Results indicate a division in passenger preferences, with some favoring the robot and others the voice assistant. Passengers asked more questions to the robot, suggesting a clearer affordance for interaction. While the questionnaires did not show significant differences, passenger behaviors indicated that they anthropomorphized the robot more. The interviews revealed that passengers felt more secure with a human operator and doubted the robot's authority during incidents with aggressive passengers or accidents. Our findings show that social robots can help make autonomous buses feel more welcoming and interactive. Future APT systems have many design issues that need to be resolved before riders can find them safe and appropriate to use, and social robots can play a role in resolving such issues-both the ones we see today, and potentially ones that will appear in the future.

High Capacity Transport (HCT) is a key element in Sweden’s efforts to develop a more efficient transport system. HCT vehicles are heavier and/or longer than conventional heavy vehicles and can carry more load per vehicle, leading to reduced fuel consumption and emissions. In Sweden, the conventional legal limits for heavy vehicles are 25.25 meters in length and 64 tonnes in weight. However, since April 2018, vehicles up to 74 tonnes have been permitted on parts of the road network with a new bearing capacity classification called BK4. In addition, five longer vehicle combinations, up to 34.5 meters, have been introduced on selected routes in two phases: December 2023 and April 2025. With the introduction of HCT vehicles in Sweden, regulations governing heavy vehicle access to the road network have been revised, and a PBS-based framework has been implemented. PBS, or Performance-Based Standards, regulates vehicle performance requirements rather than imposing strict limits on length or weight. The PBS II project aimed to further develop the PBS framework in Sweden and support its implementation. One critical area requiring deeper investigation was the influence of tire characteristics on HCT vehicle performance. Moreover, the assessment procedure for HCT vehicles and a supporting evaluation tool needed further refinement. These challenges were addressed within the PBS II project, resulting in standardized tire models for HCT vehicle assessment and an enhanced open-access PBS tool. The project was coordinated by VTI, the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, with partners including Chalmers University of Technology, Volvo Group Trucks Technology, Scania, Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket), Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen), Parator Industry AB, Nokian Heavy Tyres Ltd (Finland), and the University of Oulu (Finland). The PBS II project commenced in autumn 2018 and concluded at the end of 2021.