A short presentation summarising the activities of BUas in the Greening Games project, primarily focused on the ideas of 'systemic' or 'theming' of pro-environmental content in video games.
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The aim of this study is to determine the contribution of student interventions to urban greening processes. In two Dutch cities action research was conducted, including reflexive interviews a year after the first intervention, to assess factors causing change in the socio-ecological system. Results show that students and network actors were mutually learning, causing the empowerment of actors in that network by adding contextualized knowledge, enlarging the social network, expanding the amount of interactions in the socio-ecological system and speeding up the process. Students brought unique qualities to the process: time, access to stakeholders who tend to distrust the municipality and a certain open-mindedness. Their mere presence made a difference and started a process of change. However, university staff needed to keep the focus on long-term effects and empowerment, because students did not oversee that. After a year, many new green elements had been developed or were in the planning phase. In Enschede, the municipality districtmanagers were part of the learning network, which made it easier to cause changes in the main ecological network. In Haarlem however, no change took place in the main ecological network managed by the municipality, because no political empowerment of the civil society group had developed yet.
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Stedelijke natuurversterking is bij uitstek een thema dat door de schalen heen moet worden bekeken. Van pocket park en gevelbekleding tot stedelijke groenstructuur, de biodiversiteit komt het beste tot bloei door samenhang.In het SIA-project Natuurinclusieve Gebiedsontwikkeling onderzochten vier hogescholen - Aeres Hogeschool, Avans Hogeschool, Hogeschool van Amsterdam en Hogeschool Van Hall Larenstein - drie schaalniveaus van gebiedsontwikkeling om de transitie naar natuurinclusieve gebiedsontwikkeling te versnellen. Gekoppeld aan drie casussen waren dit: gebouw (Spoorzone Waarder), straat (Knowledge Mile Park - KMP - Amsterdam), en gebied (Almere Centrum-Pampus). De casussen belichten veelvoorkomende typen ingrepen, zoals kleinschalige nieuwbouw, verbetering van de publieke ruimte, en binnenstedelijke woningbouw. Ondanks dat elke case een eigen thematisch zwaartepunt had - biobased materialen (Spoorzone Waarder), natuurlijke vergroening (KMP), en governance (Almere) - heeft via deelonderzoeken en tussen hogescholen kruisbestuiving plaatsgevonden. De white paper geeft de belangrijkste resultaten en lessen hiervan weer.Urban nature enhancement is a theme that needs to be considered across different scale levels. From pocket parks and façade greening to urban green infrastructure, biodiversity thrives best through connectivity.In the SIA-project Nature-inclusive Area Development, four universities of applied sciences - Aeres University of Applied Sciences, Avans UAS, Amsterdam UAS, and Van Hall Larenstein UAS- researched three scale levels of area development to accelerate the transition to nature-inclusive area development. This was linked to three case studies: Waarder Railway Zone (building), Knowledge Mile Park (KMP - street - Amsterdam), and Almere Centre-Pampus (area). The case studies represent common types of urban interventions, such as small-scale new developments, improvement of public space, and inner-city densification. Despite each case having its own thematic focus - biobased materials (Waarder Railway Zone), natural greening (KMP), and governance (Almere) - cross-pollination took place through sub-studies and collaboration between universities. The following pages present the main results and lessons learnt.
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The Steenbreek program is a private Dutch program which aims to involve citizens, municipalities and other stakeholders in replacing pavement with vegetation in private gardens. The Dutch approach is characterized by minimal governmental incentives or policy, which leaves a niche for private initiatives like Steenbreek, that mainly work on behavioural change. The aim of this paper is to build a model based on theory that can be used to improve and better evaluate depaving actions that are based on behavioural change. We tested this garden greening behaviour model in the Steenbreek program. The main result is that the model provides an understanding of the ‘how and why’ of the Steenbreek initiatives. Based on this we are able to provide recommendations for the improvement of future initiatives. Steenbreek covers a wide range of projects that together, in very different ways, take into account elements of the theoretical framework; either more on information factors, or on supporting factors, sometimes taking all elements together in a single action. This focus is sometimes understandable when just one element is needed (e.g., support), sometimes more elements could be taken into account to be more effective. If a certain element of the framework is lacking, the change of behaviour will not (or will only partly) take place. The model also gives insight into a more specific approach aimed at the people most susceptible to changing their behaviour, which would make actions more effective.
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The importance of sustainability is rapidly increasing and by now has an increasing impact on the operations of organizations. In modern organizations many of the business processes are supported by IT, which makes the relation between sustainability and IT an important subject. However, how to integrate business strategy with IT operations in relation to sustainability is unclear. In this paper we focus on the role of Enterprise Architecture in this process and try to answer “How Enterprise Architecture may contribute in the traceable transformation from sustainability principles towards requirements on Green IT in the field of higher education.” Based on a literature study and qualitative research at different organizations we adapted the Sustainable Information Systems Management (SISM) model of Erek et al (2012). The SISM Revisited model not only guides organizations in identifying areas of interest for aligning the sustainability strategy of an organization with its IS/IT activities, but we expect it will be useful to implement sustainability in organizations as well.
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The cloud has become an essential part of our daily lives. We use it to store our documents (Dropbox), to stream our music and films (Spotify and Netflix) and without giving it any thought, we use it to work on documents in the cloud (Google Docs).
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Presentation about the power of urban greening on street level
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Urban nature enhancement is a theme that needs to be considered across different scales. From pocket parks and façade-greening to urban green infrastructure, biodiversity thrives best through connectivity.In the SIA-project, Nature-inclusive Area Development, four universities of applied sciences - Aeres University of Applied Sciences, Avans University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, and Van Hall Larenstein University of AppliedSciences- researched three levels of area development to accelerate the transition to nature-inclusive area development. The study consisted of three case studies: Waarder Railway Zone (building), Knowledge Mile Park (KMP - street - Amsterdam), and AlmereCentre-Pampus (area).
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'Versteende pleinen in steden zijn hitte-eilanden. Gemeenten willen daarom meer groen, maar dat is niet eenvoudig. In Groningen zijn nieuwe bomen geplant in een innovatief waterbergingssysteem. De Grote Markt ging op de schop.'
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Coastal flood managers seek to anticipate future flood risk and as a result consider the adaptation of flood defences. Instead of crest heightening, dikes can be adapted to include hydrodynamic reducing vegetated foreshores to form a nature-based hybrid flood defence, for instance; at managed realignments. In this study we investigated the potential of vegetated revetments as a natural continuous connection between the realigned dike and restored foreshore. We applied the historic grass sod transplantation technique with the aim to improve our understanding of the strength of a transplanted sod revetment. In Living Lab Hedwige-Prosperpolder, dikes were available for in-situ experiments during managed realignment preparations. We transplanted grass sods and studied erosion resistance after one growth season. Our results show transplanted sod vegetation continued to grow and started to attach to the clay layer. While erosion occurred under extreme wave impact and overflow, the sod pulling method revealed individual sod strength. In conclusion, sod transplantation is a good technique to source local material for green realigned dike revetments. A vegetated dike revetment can hereby create a natural continuous connection between the realigned dike and foreshore, which benefits flood protection as well as flora and fauna.
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