Amsterdam faces the challenge of accommodating 50,000 to 90,000 new homes in the next five to ten years. That is equivalent to 10% of the city’s current total housing stock. The new homes have to be built within the existing urban fabric. This will entail high densities and the construction of new ‘un-Dutch’ typologies with high-rise residential buildings. Densification is currently accelerating in many Western cities and high-rise living environments are gaining ground as today’s typology. Yet these new typologies come with potentially serious risks to the liveability of cities in general and those new environments in particular (Asgarzadeh et al. 2012; Lindal and Hartig 2013; Gifford 2007). Urban designers and (landscape) architects are challenged to prevent and soften the negative impact that is often associated with extremely densified environments. This entails mitigating contradictive demands: to create high-density capacity andshape streetscapes that relate to a human scale. Designers might resort to the large body of applied design solutions and theories, yet these tend to be derived from more traditional urban fabrics of low-density developments (for example: e.g. Sennett 2018; Haas 2008; Jacobs 1993; Banerjee and Southworth 1990; Alexander et.al. 1977; Jacobs 1961).Therefore, the question of the research project Sensing Streetscape is if the classical design solutions are without any alterations, applicable in these new high density settings and able to create streetscapes with a human scale. A combination of emerging technologies and principles from both worlds; neuroscience and architecture offer the opportunity to investigate this question in-depth as a relation between the designed and the visually perceived streetscape.
DOCUMENT
The realization of human rights standards depends in part on the commitment of local actors. It can be argued that local public service professionals such as social workers can also be regarded as key players. The possible role of social workers becomes imperative if these professionals are working in a policy context that is not congruent with human rights. If existing laws or policies cause or maintain disrespect for human rights, social workers are in a position to observe that this is having an adverse impact on clients. When social workers are regarded as human rights actors, the question arises how they can or should respond to law and policy that impedes them in carrying out their work with respect for human rights. This article adds to existing theories on social workers as human rights actors by examining the practices of social professionals working in such a challenging policy context. The research took place among professionals in social district teams in the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands. Following a series of decentralizations and austerity measures the social care landscape in the Netherlands has changed drastically over the last few years. As a result, social workers may find themselves on the one hand trying to realize the best possible care for their clients while on the other hand dealing with new laws and policy expectations focused on self-reliance and diminished access to specialist care. The article explores how social professionals’ responses to barriers in access to care affect human rights requirements. In doing so, this socio-legal study provides insight into the ways in which everyday social work relates to the realization of human rights at the local level.
DOCUMENT
This study involves the adaptation of the Organizational Justice Scale developed by Niehoff and Moorman (1993) to Turkey, and the findings of the reliability, and validity tests. The survey was conducted with a sample of 254 employees working in various departments of a public organization in Erzurum, Turkey. The results of the reliability and validity analysis revealed that the scale was a valid and reliable device and that its factor structure gen- erally fits the original factor structure. The overall coefficient of the instru- ment was found to be 0.905. The factor analysis revealed that though the fac- tor structure was explained by three factors as in the original, six items were loaded on different components. As a result, it has been concluded that the scale developed by Niehoff and Moorman (1993) is a reliable and valid in- strument that can be used in measuring the perception of organizational jus- tice in Turkey.
DOCUMENT
Due to the existing pressure for a more rational use of the water, many public managers and industries have to re-think/adapt their processes towards a more circular approach. Such pressure is even more critical in the Rio Doce region, Minas Gerais, due to the large environmental accident occurred in 2015. Cenibra (pulp mill) is an example of such industries due to the fact that it is situated in the river basin and that it has a water demanding process. The current proposal is meant as an academic and engineering study to propose possible solutions to decrease the total water consumption of the mill and, thus, decrease the total stress on the Rio Doce basin. The work will be divided in three working packages, namely: (i) evaluation (modelling) of the mill process and water balance (ii) application and operation of a pilot scale wastewater treatment plant (iii) analysis of the impacts caused by the improvement of the process. The second work package will also be conducted (in parallel) with a lab scale setup in The Netherlands to allow fast adjustments and broaden evaluation of the setup/process performance. The actions will focus on reducing the mill total water consumption in 20%.
Designing with the Sun is a KIEM-GoCI explorative research project on the theme Energy Transition and Sustainability. The project is aimed at network and agenda building and design research that explores new (cultural) practices of renewable energy consumption, based on a shift from ‘energy blindness’ to ‘energy awareness’. Up until now the solar industry has been propelled forward by technical innovations, offering mostly pragmatic, economic benefits to consumers. Innovation in this field mostly concerns making solar panels more efficient and less costly. However, to succeed, the energy transition also needs new cultural practices. These practices should reflect the ways renewables are different from fossil fuels. For solar, this means using more direct solar energy, when the sun is there, and being able to adapt to periods of low energy. Currently, consumers are mostly ‘blind’ to the infrastructure behind fossil-based energy. However, for energy sources such as solar and wind ‘awareness’ of their availability becomes more important. What could such an awareness look or feel like? How can it be enacted? And how can a change in practice that is more attuned to availability be experienced positively? Solar companies see opportunities in using design to help build motivating practices and narratives within the solar field, enabling awareness through personal relationships between consumer and solar energy. However, the knowledge of how to get there is lacking. In a research-through-design trajectory, and together with partners from the Creative Industries, Designing with the Sun aims to explore new ways of relating citizens to solar energy. Ultimately, these insights should enable the newly emerging field of solar design to contribute to the emergence of more sustainable and rewarding energy awareness and practices.
The scientific publishing industry is rapidly transitioning towards information analytics. This shift is disproportionately benefiting large companies. These can afford to deploy digital technologies like knowledge graphs that can index their contents and create advanced search engines. Small and medium publishing enterprises, instead, often lack the resources to fully embrace such digital transformations. This divide is acutely felt in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Scholars from these disciplines are largely unable to benefit from modern scientific search engines, because their publishing ecosystem is made of many specialized businesses which cannot, individually, develop comparable services. We propose to start bridging this gap by democratizing access to knowledge graphs – the technology underpinning modern scientific search engines – for small and medium publishers in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Their contents, largely made of books, already contain rich, structured information – such as references and indexes – which can be automatically mined and interlinked. We plan to develop a framework for extracting structured information and create knowledge graphs from it. We will as much as possible consolidate existing proven technologies into a single codebase, instead of reinventing the wheel. Our consortium is a collaboration of researchers in scientific information mining, Odoma, an AI consulting company, and the publisher Brill, sharing its data and expertise. Brill will be able to immediately put to use the project results to improve its internal processes and services. Furthermore, our results will be published in open source with a commercial-friendly license, in order to foster the adoption and future development of the framework by other publishers. Ultimately, our proposal is an example of industry innovation where, instead of scaling-up, we scale wide by creating a common resource which many small players can then use and expand upon.
