Contribution to conference magazine https://husite.nl/ssc2017/ Conference ‘Smart Sustainable Cities 2017 – Viable Solutions’ The conference ‘Smart Sustainable Cities 2017 – Viable Solutions’ was held on 14 June 2017 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Over 250 participants from all over Europe attended the conference.
Rapport van S3 studenten die aan de Lucas Nuelle panelen hebben gewerkt met de Smart Grid module
MULTIFILE
The potential of technological innovation to address urban sustainability has been widely acknowledged over the last decade. Across cities globally, local governments have engaged in partnership arrangements with the private sector to initiate pilot projects for urban innovation, typically co-funded by innovation subsidies. A recurring challenge however is how to scale up successful projects and generate more impact. Drawing on the business and management literature, we introduce the concept of organizational ambidexterity to provide a novel theoretical perspective on sustainable urban innovations. We examine how to align exploration (i.e., test and experiment with digital technologies, products, platforms, and services) with exploitation (i.e., reaping the financial benefits from digital technologies by bringing products, platforms, and services to the market), rooted in the literature on smart cities. We conclude that the concept of ambidexterity, as elaborated in the business and management literature and practiced by firms, can be translated to the city policy domain, provided that upscaling or exploitation in a smart city context also includes the translation of insights from urban experiments, successful or not, into new routines, regulations, protocols, and stakeholder/citizen engagement methods.
Currently, many novel innovative materials and manufacturing methods are developed in order to help businesses for improving their performance, developing new products, and also implement more sustainability into their current processes. For this purpose, additive manufacturing (AM) technology has been very successful in the fabrication of complex shape products, that cannot be manufactured by conventional approaches, and also using novel high-performance materials with more sustainable aspects. The application of bioplastics and biopolymers is growing fast in the 3D printing industry. Since they are good alternatives to petrochemical products that have negative impacts on environments, therefore, many research studies have been exploring and developing new biopolymers and 3D printing techniques for the fabrication of fully biobased products. In particular, 3D printing of smart biopolymers has attracted much attention due to the specific functionalities of the fabricated products. They have a unique ability to recover their original shape from a significant plastic deformation when a particular stimulus, like temperature, is applied. Therefore, the application of smart biopolymers in the 3D printing process gives an additional dimension (time) to this technology, called four-dimensional (4D) printing, and it highlights the promise for further development of 4D printing in the design and fabrication of smart structures and products. This performance in combination with specific complex designs, such as sandwich structures, allows the production of for example impact-resistant, stress-absorber panels, lightweight products for sporting goods, automotive, or many other applications. In this study, an experimental approach will be applied to fabricate a suitable biopolymer with a shape memory behavior and also investigate the impact of design and operational parameters on the functionality of 4D printed sandwich structures, especially, stress absorption rate and shape recovery behavior.
Circular BIOmass CAScade to 100% North Sea Region (NSR) economic activity and growth are mostly found in urban areas. Rural NSR regions experience population decline and negative economic growth. The BIOCAS project expects revitalizing and greening of rural areas go hand in hand. BIOCAS will develop rural areas of the NSR into smart specialized regions for integrated and local valorization of biomass. 13 Commercial running Bio-Cascade-Alliances (BCA’s) will be piloted, evaluated and actively shared in the involved regions. These proven concepts will accelerate adoption of high to low value bio-cascading technologies and businesses in rural regions. The project connects 18 regional initiatives around technologies, processes, businesses for the conversion of biomass streams. The initiatives collaborate in a thematic approach: Through engineering, value chain assessments, BCA’s building, partners tackle challenges that are shared by rural areas. I.e. unsustainable biomass use, a mineral surplus and soil degradation, deprivation of potentially valuable resources, and limited involvement of regional businesses and SMEs in existing bio-economy developments. The 18 partners are strongly embedded in regional settings, connected to many local partners. They will align stakeholders in BCA’s that would not have cooperated without BIOCAS interventions. Triple helix, science, business and governmental input will realize inclusive lasting bio cascade businesses, transforming costly waste to resources and viable business.Interreg IVB North Sea Region Programme: €378,520.00, fEC % 50.00%1/07/17 → 30/06/21
Het project Circulaire Parkkade (CPk) is een project aan de Heysekade in de Zuid-Rotterdamse wijk Heijplaat waarbij een circulaire en grotendeels zelfvoorzienende woonbuurt wordt gebouwd. Er worden 19 woningen gebouwd van hergebruikte en biobased materialen en de gemeenschappelijke tuin staat in het teken van de productie van groente en fruit. De toekomstige bewoners wekken en slaan gezamenlijk elektriciteit en warmte op en zuiveren zelf het opgevangen regenwater. De ecologie hangt hier nauw mee samen: diversiteit in planten, de begroeiing en het oppervlaktewater binnen de wijk. Doordat de bewoners hun eigen systemen beheren, wordt ook bijgedragen aan de sociale cohesie van de wijkbewoners. In de verkennende fase van het project wordt een studie uitgevoerd naar een passend businessmodel dat rekening houdt met de circulaire aspecten. Vanwege het karakter van het project, de wijk en de woningen, is een klassieke grondexploitatie niet van toepassing. Het ontbreken van afval, klassiek eigendom en voorzieningen, zijn atypische uitgangspunten voor het opstellen van een grond- en opstal exploitatie. De studie moet antwoord geven op circulaire aspecten van de systemen voor warmteopwekking en –opslag, elektrische distributie icm smart technologie, water, voedsel, groen en (het ontbreken van) afval. Op basis van deze aspecten kan een geïntegreerd circulaire businessmodel worden opgesteld, dat de noodzakelijke input is voor de engineering, ontwikkeling en bouw van de CPk. Tevens beoogt het project het netwerk betrokken bij de CPk te versterken en verbreden. Deze aanvraag is tevens voorbereidend op een subsidieaanvraag in het kader van de aankomende call NWA Route 12 Circulaire economie en grondstoffenefficiëntie.
