With increase in awareness of the risks posed by climate change and increasingly severe weather events, attention has turned to the need for urgent action. While strategies to respond to flooding and drought are well-established, the effects - and effective response - to heat waves is much less understood. As heat waves become more frequent, longer-lasting and more intense, the Cool Towns project provides cities and municipalities with the knowledge and tools to become heat resilient. The first step to developing effective heat adaptation strategies is identifying which areas in the city experience the most heat stress and who are the residents most affected. This enables decision-makers to prioritise heat adaptation measures and develop a city-wide strategy.The Urban Heat Atlas is the result of four years of research. It contains a collection of heat related maps covering more than 40,000 hectares of urban areas in ten municipalities in England, Belgium, The Netherlands, and France. The maps demonstrate how to conduct a Thermal Comfort Assessment (TCA) systematically to identify heat vulnerabilities and cooling capacity in cities to enable decision-makers to set priorities for action. The comparative analyses of the collated maps also provide a first overview of the current heat resilience state of cities in North-Western Europe.
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This report has been established within the Flexiheat project. Flexiheat has focused on increasing flexibility in district heating systems. The intelligent district heating network is a dynamic network: an open network where different waste heat and renewable energy sources are connected, that has multiple producers and groups of consumers and facilitates the connection between different energy infrastructures (gas, heat and electricity). Eventually this will lead to an optimal deployment of the available heat sources and an increased cost-efficiency of district heating. Flexiheat aims to develop new concepts for these intelligent, flexible district heating networks. One of the strategies is to allow third party access to the network. A smart control system is developed to manage the heat flows across the network. This system makes use of dynamic pricing. In this exploration the concept of third party access in relation to the Flexiheat project will be discussed. The development of new business and price models based on the Flexiheat approach has led to an analysis of possible alternative price models for consumers.
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Research Questions • What are the characteristics of vulnerable populations in The Hague? • What are their needs in order to adapt to heatwaves, and how do they cope? • What are existing sustainable solutions for protecting vulnerable populations? • How can the municipality of The Hague increase urban resilience with regards to heat?
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Which parameters are the most important factors in the decision making process of heat networks?
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The liveability of cities worldwide is under threat by the predicted increase in intensity and frequency of heatwaves and the absence of a clear spatial overview of where action to address this. Heat stress impairs vital urban functions (Böcker and Thorsson 2014), hits the local economy (Evers et al. 2020), and brings risks for citizens’ health (Ebi et al. 2021). The ongoing densification of cities may escalate the negative consequences of heat, while rising climate adaptation ambitions require new pathways to (re)design public places for a warmer climate. Currently, policy makers and urban planners rely on remote sensing and modelling to identify potential heat stress locations, but thermal comfort models alone fail to consider socio-environmental vulnerabilities and are often not applicable in different countries (Elnabawi and Hamza 2020).In the Cool Towns Interreg project, researchers collaborated with municipalities and regions to model urban heat stress in nine North-Western European cities, to find vulnerabilities and to measure on the ground (see Spanjar et al. 2020 for methodology) the thermal comfort of residents and the effectiveness of implemented nature-based solutions. Using the Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) index, several meteorological scenarios were developed to show the urban areas under threat. The PET maps are complemented by heat vulnerability maps showing key social and environmental indicators. Coupled with local urban planning agendas, the maps allowed partner cities to prioritize neighbourhoods for further investigation. To this end, community amenities and slow traffic routes were mapped on top of the PET maps to identify potential focus areas.A comparative analysis of the collated maps indicates certain spatial typologies, where vital urban activities are often influenced by heat stress, such as shopping areas, mobility hubs, principal bicycle and pedestrian routes. This project has resulted in the development of a multi-level Thermal Comfort Assessment (TCA), highlighting locations where vulnerable user groups are exposed to high temperatures. Standardized for European cities, it is a powerful tool for policy makers and urban planners to strategically identify heat stress risks and prioritize locations for adapting to a changing climate using the appropriate nature-based solutions.
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Methods to design viable business networks (BNs) treat the concept of viability merely in terms of profitability. Further, the methods are restricted to mono-commodity (a single product or a service) BNs. However, business literature suggests that besides economic value (profit), non-economic values (e.g. lowering CO2 emission) play an important role in making BNs viable. Furthermore, BNs can also be multi-commodity (e.g. electricity, gas, heat). Hence, we aim to develop an method to determine a viable configuration of services for multi-commodity BNs. In addition, the term viability is used in an extended scope to include non-economic values.
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This study tries to understand the power of knowledge within collaborative care networks to provide insights for designing successful collaboration within care networks by combining intersectionality and epistemic (in)justice. Becoming an informal carer for someone with an acquired brain injury (ABI) causes a dramatic disruption of daily life. Collaboration between professionals and carers with a migration background may result in unjust and unfair situations within care networks. Carer experiences are shaped by aspects of diversity which are subject to power structures and processes of social (in)justice in care networks. In this study, intersectionality was used to both generate complex in-depth insights into the different active layers of carer experiences and focus on within-group differences. Intersectionality was combined with the theoretical concept of epistemic (in)justice to unravel underlying dynamics in collaborative care networks contributing to the understanding that carers with a migration background are often not seen as ‘knowers of reality.’ This qualitative study conducted in the Netherlands between 2019 and 2022 incorporated three informal group conversations (N = 32), semi-structured interviews (N = 21), and three dialogue sessions (N = 7) with carers caring for someone with an ABI. A critical friend and a community of practice, with carers, professionals, and care recipients (N = 8), contributed to the analysis. Three interrelated themes were identified as constituting different layers of the carer experience: (a) I need to keep going, focusing on carers' personal experiences and how experiences were related to carers social positioning; (b) the struggle of caring together, showing how expectations of family members towards carers added to carer burden; and (c) trust is a balancing act, centering on how support from professionals shaped carers' experiences, in which trusting professionals' support proved challenging for carers, and how this trust was influenced by contextual factors at organizational and policy levels. Overall, the need for diversity-responsive policies within care organizations is apparent. Carers with a migration background need to feel heard so they can meaningfully tailor care to meet recipients' needs.
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gains and internal gains from appliances,heat gains from occupants are an importantsource contributing to space heating indomestic buildings. It is necessary toconsciously consider all of these heat gainswhen aiming at accurately estimating theheat loss coefficient (HLC) of a building.Whilst sensor technology and algorithms areavailable to quantify the contribution of theheating system, solar gains and electricalappliances, the accurate estimation of thesensible heat gain from occupants ischallenging due to its stochastic character.
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The future will be warmer with more tropical days, heat stress and related impacts for the healthy and liveable city. This is clear from many scientific studies and papers. Yet many local governments in the Netherlands claim to have insufficient understanding of the importance of these impacts in order to make the necessary step to climate adaptation and to take practical actions to manage the risks associated with rising heat levels. They struggle with defining the urgency of heat stress and finding good arguments for the need to adapt urban environments to rising temperatures. In order to provide urban professionals with reasons to adapt their urban environments to heat, we analyzed the potential impacts of urban heat from international policy reports and scientific literature. We summarized the impacts in a mind map. This map visualizes the large number and variety of heat-related risks. They can be subdivided into risks for health, open space, liveability, water and infrastructure networks. We believe that this mind map provides useful insight into the reasons to take heat adaptation actions. It can also be a helpful visual for urban professionals in outlining the reasons to take action for heat adaptation.
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This paper aims to develop a tool for measuring the clients’ maturity in smart maintenance supply networks. The assessment tool is developed and validated for corporate facilities management organizations using case studies and expert consultation. Based on application of the assessment tool in five cases, conclusions are presented about the levels of maturity found and the strengths and limitations of the assessment tool itself. Also, implications for further research are proposed.
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