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The Indoorisation of Outdoor Sports. An Exploration of the Rise of Lifestyle Sports in Artificial Settings

During the last twenty years, a remarkable new type of service has been developed in the world of sports, which can be described as the indoorisation of outdoor sports. Typical outdoor sports like climbing, skiing, surfing, rowing, and skydiving, which used to be exclusively practiced in a natural environment of mountains, oceans, rivers and the air, are now being offered for consumption in safe, predictable and controlled indoor centers. The present article emphasizes the rise of indoor lifestyle sports, such as rafting, snowboarding, skydiving and surfing. It discusses the conditions under and ways in which commercial entrepreneurs in the Netherlands have created this market, the meanings that they have ascribed to their centers and the dilemmas with which they have been confronted. It is argued that the rise of this economic market cannot be understood if it is solely interpreted as the result of economic, technological or natural developments. These economic activities were also embedded in and influenced by shared understandings and their representations in structured fields of outdoor sports, mainstream sports and leisure experience activities. A better understanding of the indoorisation of outdoor lifestyle sports can be achieved by recognizing how these structures and cultures pervaded the rise of this new market.

A Rising Ocean

This is a report of the research done during the Summer School 2022 at the Digital Methods Initiative (UvA). The work and the report were developed in collaboration with the participants in the datasprint: Gabrielle Aguilar // Federica Bardelli // Laura Bruschi // Miranda García // Giulia Giorgi // Matthew Hanchard // Bakar Abdul-Rashid Jeduah // Natalie Kerby // Goran Kusić // Bruno Mattos // Samir van Oeijen Rodríguez // Alessandro Quets // Eivind Røssaak // Miazia Schueler // Zijing Xu // Xin Zhou // Chloe Sussan-Molson // Maud Borie // Alireza Hashemzadegan // Misha Velthuis. Abstract:Sea-level rise has long been one of the most locally tangible impacts of climate change, both now and in the future. Due to accelerating climate change, the annual rate of sea-level rise has almost tripled over the last century, and the mean sea level rise is expected to rise 0.3m-1.0m by 2100 (Duijndam et al., 2021). The IPCC states that risks include increased flooding, erosion, loss of ecosystems and permanent submergence (Oppenheimer et al., 2019). In the UK, there are fierce debates over whether to protect or surrender coastal homes threatened by sea-level rise (Fisher, 2022), while in the Netherlands the trust in its strong water management and engineering tradition has led to the so-called myth of the dry feet—the idea that sea-level rise in the Netherlands, a country that in part lies below sea-level, can be countered by merely building higher dams (Schuttenhelm, 2020). Scenarios for the future of the Netherlands include new adaptation strategies of living with the water, in which parts of the land are given back to nature to preserve larger cities (Deltares, 2019). Globally, some of the world’s most populous cities, such as New York, Bangkok and Shanghai are amongst the most vulnerable (C40 Cities, 2018), while the existential threats to small islands such as Kiribati, Seychelles and the Maldives could result in entire states disappearing from the world (Martyr-Koller et al., 2021). Emblematic images of people wading through the flooded streets of Venice holding up their shopping bags or stopping for a coffee travelled the news and social media outlets as an illustration of the climate crisis, and the collision of rising sea levels, a sinking city, surging seasonal winds and failing governance as the city experienced its worst floods in 50 years (National Geographic, 2019).There have been some notable efforts to visualise scientific projections of sea-level rise (e.g. Climate Central, 2015), as well as more creative attempts to communicate the threat such as the iconic Der Spiegel depicting a submerged Koln Cathedral (Mahony, 2016). Yet it is argued that sea-level rise remains a relatively low public concern given the huge potential risks to ecosystems and human habitats (Akerlof et al., 2017), while a recent advanced review of digital media research on climate communication found no research focused on the issue (Pearce et al., 2019). In this project, we will try to fill this gap, looking to see how both present and future sea-level rise is being imagined and interpreted on social media platforms, in terms of textual and visual content, information sources, locations, and point in time (i.e., future or present).

Co-creation in a quintuple helix

Co-creation in a quintuple helix, the art of including natural environments of society in a living lab that includes different types of stakeholders and monitoring the quality of this process of co-creation.In the last decade, co-creation has not only become a widely used concept in academic discourses but also in public policies that aim to tackle so called 'wicked problems', a term coined in the 1970s (Rittel & Webber, 1973) that is nowadays often interchangeably used with societal challenges or SDGs.This focus on tackling societal challenges by governments in collaboration with citizens opened the door for new concepts such as ‘living labs’ in 2006 (Rădulescu et al., 2022) ‘policy labs’, ‘innovation hubs’, ‘co-creation labs’ and recently ‘public sector innovation (PSI) labs’ (Fuglsang & Hansen, 2022; Hansen & Fuglsang, 2020; McGann et al., 2021; Torvinen & Jansson, 2022). The use of labs has also been addressed by the OECD in their publication on innovation in the public sector outlook to make policymakers aware of the importance of public sector innovation (OECD, 2015).Literature research in combination with questionnaires into these types of labs showed that the definitions of PSI labs are quite ‘fuzzy’, sometimes even interchangeable and are heavily dependent on the national, regional and local context as well (McGann et al., 2018). In addition, research also showed that it is difficult to distinguish good practices, let alone to define specific conditions for these good practices (Meister Broekema et al., 2022).In addition, an inductive analysis of a large number of EU policies shows that on a conceptual level, the EU uses specific interpretations of social innovation (Moulaert & MacCallum 2019) and co-creation in open innovation (‘Open Innovation 2.0’ 2013), influenced by the concept of triple- and quadruple helix innovation in which universities, governments and enterprises are collaborating, sometimes for the benefit of society as a whole (Carayannis & Campbell 2012; Leydesdorff 2010). Co-creation as such is used merely as a criterion within social innovation projects that aim to tackle societal challenges, therefore neglecting the quality of the process of co-creation (Meister Broekema et al. 2021).In order to maximise the impact of co-creation and be able to tackle societal challenges such as climate change, it is therefore essential to focus more on the quality of co-creation between 4 helixes in these processes and include the environment as a fifth helix (quintuple helix innovation as defined by Carayannis et. al. 2012). In the talk, a novel framework will be presented that will support collaborators in a project that aims to tackle a societal challenge by including the right stakeholders at the right time and monitor progress and satisfaction continuously (Meister Broekema 2023) in a quintuple helix setting.This presentation will contribute mostly to SDG 17 (partnership for the goals) and SDG4 (Quality Education) and is best suited for SDG13 (Climate Action).The insights can be used to enable multiple stakeholders from government, education and research, enterprises and citizens within a natural environment (mountains & oceans) to co-create in a quintuple helix setting, maximising their impact on climate change and strengthening partnerships for this goal.

Towards a virtual twin for the ocean: Technical performance and useability testing of the 'Immersive ocean platform'.

Digital Twins of the ocean : autogenerated 3D environments for validating offshore wind farm operations.

Within the context of the Iliad project, the authors present technical challenges and the first results of having valid 3D scenes of (non-)existing offshore wind farms procedurally and automatically generated within either the Unreal or Unity game engine. The Iliad – Digital Twins of the Ocean project (EU Horizon 2020) aims to develop a ‘system of systems’ for creating cutting-edge digital twins of specific sea and ocean areas for diverse purposes related to their sustainable use and protection. One of the Iliad pilots addresses the topic of offshore floating wind farm construction or maintenance scenario testing and validation using the Unity 3D game engine. This work will speed up the development of these scenarios by procedurally and automatically creating the Unity 3D scene rather than manually (which is done at present). The main technical challenges concern the data-driven approach, in which a JSON configuration file drives the scene creation. The first results show a base wind farm running in Unreal 5.1. The final product will be able to handle environmental conditions, biological conditions, and specific human activities as input parameters.

Queer as the Ocean

Queer as the Ocean, already showcased at the Warming Up festival and Society 5.0 in 2023.