Purpose

Legionnaires’ disease is a major threat to public health. Solutions to deal with this problem are usually siloed and not entirely effective. This paper aims to model the information requirements of legionella-safe cooling towers in the era of Industry 4.0.

Design/methodology/approach

A year-long design science research was conducted in a cooling tower producer for heavy industries. The project started with a bibliometric analysis and literature review of legionella in cooling towers. Goal modeling techniques are then used to identify the requirements for digital transformation.

Findings

The improvement of legionella prevention, detection and outbreak response in digitally enabled cooling tower should involve different stakeholders. Digital twins and blockchain are disruptive technologies that can transform the cooling tower industry.

Originality/value

For theory, this study revises the most recent advances in legionella protection. Legionella-safe systems must be prepared to anticipate, monitor and immediate alert in case of an outbreak. For practice, this paper presents a distributed and digital architecture for cooling tower safety. However, technology is only a part of outbreak management solutions, requiring trustworthy conditions and real-time communication among stakeholders.

中文翻译：

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军团菌安全冷却塔的数字化转型：一种生态系统设计方法

目的

退伍军人病是对公共健康的主要威胁。处理这个问题的解决方案通常是孤立的，并不完全有效。本文旨在模拟工业 4.0 时代军团菌安全冷却塔的信息需求。

设计/方法/方法

在一家重工业冷却塔生产商进行了为期一年的设计科学研究。该项目从对冷却塔中军团菌的文献计量分析和文献回顾开始。然后使用目标建模技术来确定数字化转型的要求。

发现

改进数字化冷却塔中军团菌的预防、检测和爆发响应应涉及不同的利益相关者。数字孪生和区块链是可以改变冷却塔行业的颠覆性技术。

原创性/价值

从理论上讲，本研究修订了军团菌保护方面的最新进展。军团菌安全系统必须准备好在爆发时预测、监控和立即发出警报。为了实践，本文提出了一种用于冷却塔安全的分布式数字架构。然而，技术只是疫情管理解决方案的一部分，需要可靠的条件和利益相关者之间的实时沟通。