TAP Case Study Library

STPP's Technology Assessment Project (TAP) research anticipates the implications of emerging technologies and uses these insights to develop better technology policies. The TAP project uses an analogical case study approach to analyze the social, economic, ethical, equity, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. Here we have collected the case study research developed for our most recent report on advanced nuclear energy, The Reactor Around the Corner: Understanding Advanced Nuclear Energy Futures. We hope these can serve as a resource for others interested in the analogical case study method, and in other case-based approaches to understanding technologies in society.

TAP Case Study Library

A large, red Coca-Cola delivery truck with a weathered trailer drives down a coastal city street lined with palm trees and traffic under an overcast sky.

In San Cristóbal, Mexico, potable water is increasingly scarce, in large part due to a subsidized Coca-Cola bottling plant that has been in operation since 1994. These conditions have shaped daily life, with residents drinking large quantities of Coca-Cola in place of water, resulting in high rates of diabetes and heart failure alongside acute environmental harms.

Read the Chiapas Coca-Cola Plant case study

An image of the grey Moses-Saunders hydroelectric power station on the St. Lawrence River with a Canadian flag flying in the distance.

The Moses-Saunders Dam was built on Indigenous land and began operation in 1913. The dam and resultant Seaway became a nexus of commercial and industrial activity, altering ecosystems and poisoning the nearby Akwesasne people. The Akwesasne spent decades seeking compensation for health and environmental harms, while also attempting to secure reliable access to the Dam’s hydroelectric energy supply.

Read the Moses-Saunders Dam case study

An industrial plant with billowing steam and large storage silos stands behind a harvested golden field under a dramatic cloudy sky.

Carbon capture and storage is designed to capture and sequester carbon. While these technologies can reduce carbon emissions, the captured carbon can also be reused in carbon-intensive and environmentally harmful industries, potentially reinforcing unsustainable energy reliances.

Read the Carbon Capture and Storage case study

A wide, eye-level shot of a massive concrete gravity dam spanning a blue river, flanked by lush green trees and dry, sun-scorched foothills under a clear sky.

Examining dam projects broadly reveals the harms of deploying energy infrastructure without community engagement. Though dams have more recently been framed as a necessary “green” energy technology, they may still perpetuate local harms and settler-colonial frameworks of economic development and resource usage if governed without equity and community benefits in mind.

Read the Global Dam Projects case study

Several brown and white cows rest in a lush green pasture beside a calm waterway with small black ducks.

The Dutch system of governing water resources reveals the benefits of embedding democratic decisionmaking in a national political order, even when that resource requires high-stakes and technical stewardship.

Read the Dutch Water Governance case study

A large, gray littoral combat ship with a trimaran hull is guided through a harbor by a small black and white tugboat under a bright blue sky.

Littoral combat ships were built by the U.S. Navy for modern sea warfare using immense government funds, but in the end the technology proved a failure, resulting from technological lock-in that suppressed concerns of cost, effectiveness, and public benefits for alleged national security needs.

Read the Littoral Combat Ships case study

A black-and-white, high-angle view of a long, narrow, and dilapidated multi-level prison cell block with peeling paint and metal railings.

In the development of prison infrastructure, developers often use the promise of local job opportunities and local economic benefits to garner public support. Yet these touted benefits rarely materialize, leaving local communities with false hopes and little-to-no economic and employment gains.

Read the Prisons case study

A Boeing 737 MAX 9 commercial airplane in a blue and white livery climbs through a pale, overcast sky with its landing gear still extended.

The Boeing 737 Max fleet of commercial jets distill the cascade of negative, sometimes deadly, impacts borne by the public when corporate cultures value innovation and profits over safety, and regulatory agencies are outpaced by industry knowledge.

Read the Boeing 737 Max case study

A vintage black-and-white photograph of an old steam locomotive and its coal tender parked on a track next to a wooden building and a line of trees.

The history of track gauges in the U.S. railroad system reveals how technology changes motivated by profit can undermine local laws, local economies, and public will. The case of Erie, Pennsylvania in particular displays how communities may rebel, sometimes violently, against these technological changes.

Read the Track Gauges case study

A healthcare worker holds a vial of the COVISHIELD vaccine in a brightly lit clinic while patients and staff blurred in the background wait.

Vaccines are often used as a geopolitical bargaining chip by wealthy and powerful states, particularly when they are developed in response to a global crisis. This urgency often results in the inequitable distribution of resources and the exploitation of neocolonial dependencies to shift the risks of technological waste onto less powerful states, often with negative environmental impacts.

Read the Vaccines case study

Lithium mine at Bolivia's Uyuni Salt Flat at an altitude of 3,700 meters, the Uyuni salt desert is the largest in the world at 8,000 km².

Electric vehicles (EVs) are promoted as integral to addressing climate change, but their construction is reliant on lithium mining, which is largely done in low-income countries and often near or on Indigenous land. Communities involved in the lithium supply chain bear the environmental and social costs while wealthier nations and corporations reap economic and climate benefits.

Read the Electric Vehicles and Lithium Ion Batteries case study

A white circular protest button features the words "FIGHT AIDS" in large purple block letters, followed by "NOT PEOPLE WITH AIDS or HIV" in smaller text between two horizontal lines.

The U.S. AIDS epidemic of the 1980s provides an important window into how government regulation changes in response to different political stimuli, and how grassroots organizing can help shape regulation to maximize public benefits.

Read the HIV/AIDS Treatment Regulation case study

A vintage poster for Ætna Dynamite features a man in a hat holding a red flag as an explosion blooms behind him in shades of yellow and white.

Dynamite was invented in the hopes of making explosions safer, more controlled, and more accessible for industrial processes, but the decentralization of this high-risk technology also made it vulnerable to dual uses for both rampant capital and industrial expansion as well as geopolitical power grabs.

Read the Dynamite case study

Several large industrial ships and a jack-up rig are docked at a busy port under a gray sky, flanked by towering yellow and orange construction cranes.

The Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline is a clear contemporary example of energy infrastructure being used by and vulnerable to geopolitical forces. The case distills how energy infrastructure can be deployed to reinforce geopolitical influence, how international cooperation is pivotal to realizing large-scale energy projects, and that geopolitical instabilities can result in potentially devastating ecological and carbon impacts.

Read the Nord Stream 2 case study

In a black-and-white photograph, Dr. Norman Borlaug and a group of scientists in hats stand in a vast wheat field, smiling as Borlaug examines a handful of wheat stalks.

Borlaug wheat, a kind of high-yield wheat developed by scientists during the Green Revolution, stands as an exemplary case of technology developed abroad but forcefully adopted in places without robust research capacities. The transfer of Borlaug wheat failed to consider local conditions and perspectives, and resulted in harm to local environments and economies.

Read the Borlaug Wheat and the Green Revolution case study

An older, blue and white ATM is built into a wall made of glass blocks next to a paved outdoor area.

ATMs are a dispatchable and modular iteration of traditional banking services with the potential to stabilize communities and expand access to financial resources in rural regions, low-income communities, and communities of color. Yet their distribution is far from equitable, and the technology does not always align with community values and needs.

Read the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) case study

The NASA Space Shuttle Challenger sits vertically on its launchpad, attached to its large orange external fuel tank and two white solid rocket boosters.

The Challenger Space Shuttle disaster is a tragic and deadly example of a technology with high institutional and public expectations that became vulnerable to imperfect internal communication, an acclimation to risk, and lenient safety regulations.

Read the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster case study

Village life : Farmers on Sugar cane field

The Baliraja Dam is a small dam project based in Maharashtra, India. The project was built through a combination of local input, grassroots organizing, and expert technical assistance to create a project responsive to local needs and governed by the local community.

Read the Baliraja Dam case study

A person seen from behind at a winter protest holds a handmade white sign that reads "DEFEND THE ATLANTA FOREST" in bold black letters, decorated with simple green evergreen trees.

The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center (colloquially known as “Cop City”) is an extensive police training facility in Atlanta. Widespread grassroots opposition to the project—based in concerns over inequitable siting, limited community input, and the likely propagation of police violence—was met with violent state backed repression and surveillance.

Read the Atlanta’s Cop City case study

BP Deep Water Horizon disaster, fire boats surround a massive offshore oil rig while trying to extinguish the flames with water cannons.

On April 10, 2021, the British Petroleum (BP) oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and released over 100 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The spill was environmentally catastrophic with severe public health consequences, but there was delayed and inadequate compensation and cleanup by BP due to loose regulation and powerful market interests.

Read the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill case study

A pencil drawing of a telephone pole from an above perspective.

In the early-to-mid twentieth century, the U.S. government set out to expand telephone technology to rural regions of the country. While brief periods of government regulation of the telephone helped bolster equitable distribution, monopolies eventually overpowered public regulation, which slowed expansion of the telephone and limited community autonomy in rates and services.

Read the Early Last-Mile Telephones case study

An aerial black-and-white photograph shows a large, winding, multi-level concrete highway interchange in a grassy area with a few vintage cars driving on it.

United States highway construction of the 1950s was a government-led effort towards modernity, economic growth, centralization, and national security. However, highway development relied on land seizure from low-income, oftentimes minority populations, deepening patterns of racially discriminatory, environmentally harmful infrastructural development.

Read the US Interstate Highway System case study

Protesters in a city street hold a wide red banner reading "HONOR TREATY RIGHTS" alongside tall vertical banners with messages such as "STAND NO DAPL" and "STANDING ROCK" to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is a controversial major oil pipeline in the US that transports crude oil across multiple states. Its route near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe raised substantial concerns over the threats it posed to water, human health, plants, animals, and tribal sovereignty and sites. This controversy deepened as protests by tribe members and activists were violently suppressed by the deployment of the US National Guard.

Read the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) case study

An overhead view of a city street shows two cyclists and a yellow taxi navigating a wide, diagonal crosswalk marked with white stripes and integrated streetcar tracks.

Pedestrian deaths in the US have been vastly higher compared to other nations in the past ten years. This disparity is largely a result of regulatory capture (or the influence of corporate actors on public regulatory agencies) in the automobile industry, and a cultural view of safety and human error as an unavoidable, cost-benefit analysis problem that results in weak safety regulations.

Read the Pedestrian Safety and Vehicle Regulatory Capture case study

A green tractor with a yellow sprayer attachment treats a tilled field bordering a lush cornstalk line, framed by soft green foliage in the foreground.

Pesticide drift is the off-site movement of pesticide during its application. This drift can introduce toxic chemicals to plants, animals, and people, resulting in serious health and environmental damages. Paths to remediation and compensation for harms from pesticide drift are under-regulated, leaving many victims—who are oftentimes low-income—to navigate difficult health and bureaucratic processes without support.

Read the Pesticide Drift case study

A woman in a vintage factory setting meticulously paints numbers on a clock face with a fine brush, sitting at a workbench lined with numerous timepieces.

The Radium Girls were a group of young women employed by the U.S. Radium Company to paint watchfaces with glowing radium-based paint in the 1910s and 1920s. These women faced incredibly harmful and even deadly health impacts resulting from exposure to radium and unsafe working conditions, and their story reveals how marginalized communities are often viewed as expendable by corporations and given minimal information on occupational risks to harmful ends.

Read the Radium Girls case study

A vintage illustration shows a man with a lantern standing on a wooden walkway above large industrial pipes in a brick-lined underground tunnel labeled "Charterhouse Street."

Sewer systems are a key example of a technology that can stabilize communities and curb public health and environmental harms. “Clustered” waste systems, where pools of waste from many different sewage sources combine into one centralized system, shows that localized governance of such a stabilizing technology can help maximize public benefits and increase community autonomy.

Read the Sewer Systems case study

Large metal pots simmer on portable wood-burning stoves in a dirt clearing outside traditional thatched-roof dwellings under a bright, partly cloudy sky.

Stoves are an ancient technology, but in modern contexts, they stand as an example of how advanced technologies meant to streamline and improve efficiency are not enough to ameliorate inequities in quality of life, public health, and energy poverty outcomes, particularly when Western or foreign-designed technologies are applied in other global contexts.

Read the Stoves case study

A whale being speared with harpoons by fishermen in the Arctic sea. Engraving by A. M. Fournier after E. Traviès.

Whaling for oil was once a widespread practice that became particularly lucrative by the 17th century to light homes, streets, and later, maintain industrial equipment. But the decline of whale oil use shows how market forces alone are not enough to spark an energy transition, with whale protection activism playing a key role in essentially eradicating commercial whaling practices and whale oil use after decades of decline.

Read the Whale Oil case study

massive, brightly lit industrial hall features high blue-and-white striped walls, a large yellow overhead crane, and a group of workers gathered on a polished floor beneath the flags of Ecuador and China.

The Ecuadorian government partnered with the Chinese government to develop the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric power plant, a response to decades-long energy shortages and an effort to move away from dependence on Western funding. While the project has returned limited electricity benefits for the nation, it has also led Ecuador to cede resources and governance power to foreign developers and triggered environmental harms in Indigenous communities.

Read the Coca Codo Sinclair Dam case study

A colorful map illustrates the various regions of the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Reservation across the Four Corners area, highlighting key towns like Window Rock, Kayenta, and Tuba City against a topographical background.

Arizona currently seeks to bolster data center projects in hopes of gaining statewide economic benefits, yet as utilities raise customer rates to support such growth, decisionmakers fail to expand energy access for Navajo communities who go without reliable electricity and are in desperate need of infrastructure investment.

Read the Arizona Data Centers and Navajo Energy Access case study

A group of men in vintage workwear and flat caps, including the writer Panait Istrati, stand together holding traditional lanterns in this sepia-toned historical photograph.

Romania’s Jiu Valley was once home to a bustling coal mining industry, but as markets have changed and the country shifts to green energy production, the region’s former miners have been left without viable job opportunities. A failed wind power training program meant to replace coal jobs distills the dangers of such initiatives when they are vulnerable to political and economic changes and lack community input.

Read the Jiu Valley Coal Miners case study

An aerial view shows a sprawling, rectangular Google data center equipped with numerous cooling units, situated in a flat landscape near a body of water under a glowing sunset.

In 2024, leaders of the small town of Peculiar, Missouri announced that they were considering a large local data center project from an unnamed tech giant. Community members launched a widespread grassroots movement in opposition to the project, and while they successfully halted the project, the community faced fragmentation and distrust toward local leadership as a result.

Read the Peculiar Data Center case study