Background: Teamwork is essential in healthcare, but team performance tends to deteriorate in stressful situations. Further development of training and education for healthcare teams requires a more complete understanding of team performance in stressful situations. We wanted to learn from others, by looking beyond the field of medicine, aiming to learn about a) sources of stress, b) effects of stress on team performance and c) concepts on dealing with stress. Methods: A scoping literature review was undertaken. The three largest interdisciplinary databases outside of healthcare, Scopus, Web of Science and PsycINFO, were searched for articles published in English between 2008 and 2020. Eligible articles focused on team performance in stressful situations with outcome measures at a team level. Studies were selected, and data were extracted and analysed by at least two researchers. Results: In total, 15 articles were included in the review (4 non-comparative, 6 multi- or mixed methods, 5 experimental studies). Three sources of stress were identified: performance pressure, role pressure and time pressure. Potential effects of stress on the team were: a narrow focus on task execution, unclear responsibilities within the team and diminished understanding of the situation. Communication, shared knowledge and situational awareness were identified as potentially helpful team processes. Cross training was suggested as a promising intervention to develop a shared mental model within a team. Conclusion: Stress can have a significant impact on team performance. Developing strategies to prevent and manage stress and its impact has the potential to significantly increase performance of teams in stressful situations. Further research into the development and use of team cognition in stress in healthcare teams is needed, in order to be able to integrate this ‘team brain’ in training and education with the specific goal of preparing professionals for team performance in stressful situations.
MULTIFILE
Virtual communities are online spaces with potential of integration of (member-generated) content and conversations [7,8]. In our research project we are interested in the adoption and building of virtual communities in organized sports, that is to say in the voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) in the Netherlands. Since these VSCs have massively transferred their communication with members from paper club magazines to online channels, these virtual communities arise from the use of a growing number of websites, e-mail and social network sites (SNSs). Although virtual communities are broadly investigated, such as social communities, brand communities, and public communities, there is little scholarly interest in virtual communities of member organizations that VSCs are an example of. The study that is to be presented at SECSI 2019 concerns the clubs’ use of SNSs (ClubSNSs), such as Facebook and Twitter, within the virtual communities. These SNSs are increasingly used by the VSCs to facilitate organizational communication and to obtain a good internal climate [9]. However, academic understanding of the impact of ClubSNSs’ content and conversations on the organizational performance of the VSC is in its infancy. In our study, we examined this impact of ClubSNSs use on the involvement among members and whether we can explain this by members’ identification with the club. Furthermore, we have tried to categorize ClubSNSs by content types, such as informative, conversational or sociable ClubSNSs, and their role in stimulating the use of ClubSNSs. In this way we attempted to gain insight into the effect of types of ClubSNSs’ content and conversations on membership involvement and the mediating role of identification with the club. This insight can help VSCs to develop effective ClubSNS channels that contribute to organizational goals such as supportive and loyal membership.
MULTIFILE
The design and realization of a healthy indoor environment is a challenge that is investigated from different perspectives at the unit Building Physics and Systems (BPS; Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning) of Eindhoven University of Technology. Performance requirements (for instance, with respect to air quality, thermal comfort and lighting) and performance based assessment methods are the point-of-departure, focusing at computational techniques supporting the design process. Different specific application fields such as dwellings, offices, schools, but also, operating theatres, churches, musea and multifunctional stadiums, underline the applied approach that is part of the research within the unit. In the design of healthy environments, the performance based design assessment is crucial in arriving at innovative design solutions and optimized indoor and outdoor environments. In this assessment computational support tools and experimental verification play an important role. However, assessing the right indicators in an objective way, applying the correct tools and correct application of these tools is not yet well established. Alongside, developments are still ongoing. The work performed in the unit by the different researchers relates to the research questions that can be derived from this notice. The paper gives an introduction to the Unit BPS and presents a brief overview of recent and ongoing research. An extensive list of references is provided for further reading and supports the conclusion that healthy environments can and should be addressed from a wide angle.
LINK
The energy transition is a highly complex technical and societal challenge, coping with e.g. existing ownership situations, intrusive retrofit measures, slow decision-making processes and uneven value distribution. Large scale retrofitting activities insulating multiple buildings at once is urgently needed to reach the climate targets but the decision-making of retrofitting in buildings with shared ownership is challenging. Each owner is accountable for his own energy bill (and footprint), giving a limited action scope. This has led to a fragmented response to the energy retrofitting challenge with negligible levels of building energy efficiency improvements conducted by multiple actors. Aggregating the energy design process on a building level would allow more systemic decisions to happen and offer the access to alternative types of funding for owners. “Collect Your Retrofits” intends to design a generic and collective retrofit approach in the challenging context of monumental areas. As there are no standardised approaches to conduct historical building energy retrofits, solutions are tailor-made, making the process expensive and unattractive for owners. The project will develop this approach under real conditions of two communities: a self-organised “woongroep” and a “VvE” in the historic centre of Amsterdam. Retrofit designs will be identified based on energy performance, carbon emissions, comfort and costs so that a prioritisation strategy can be drawn. Instead of each owner investing into their own energy retrofitting, the neighbourhood will invest into the most impactful measures and ensure that the generated economic value is retained locally in order to make further sustainable investments and thus accelerating the transition of the area to a CO2-neutral environment.
The RAAK Pro MARS4Earth project focuses on the question of whether it is possible to develop a prototype of a modular and autonomous aerial manipulator (drone + robot arm) that can physically interact with a realistic outdoor environment, and what possibilities this creates to several application domains. In essence, the aerial manipulator acts as "arms and hands in the air", which can be used for both active interaction (maintenance of offshore windturbine) and passive interaction (selective plant treatment and firefighting). The modular aerial manipulator consists of four basic building blocks: • Mission-specific interaction module(s); • Intelligent surface exploration; • Adaptive interaction control algorithm(s); • Advanced on-board perception and decision module(s). In the meantime the first version of the aforementioned modular building blocks have been designed and realized by various consortium partners. However, due to the various measure of the COVID 19, consortium partners and researchers were not able to carry out the integration of various modules to realize the complete system. Moreover, it was not possible to conduct thorough tests in the operational environment to evaluate the performance of the first prototype. This is a crucial step tp realize the aerial manipulator with the envisaged modularity and performance. In this RAAK Impulse project, we will conduct integration of the first versions of the modules developed by the various consortium partners. Moreover, we will conduct thorough test in Emshave and Twente safety campus to investigate the functionality and performance of the developed integrated prototype. With this Impulse, we will be able to make up for the delay caused by the COVID -19 measures and conclude the project by realizing the original objectives of the MARS4Earth project.
Introduction The research group Biobased Resources & Energy (BRE) of Avans focusses on recovery of valuable building blocks from low-value solid and liquid residual streams from agriculture, households and industries. For the valorisation of these residual streams, BRE looks into different biological, chemical and mechanical processes. One of the main issues in the utilisation of residual streams is economic feasibility and the recovery of multiple resources from one residual stream. Using membrane technologies in combination with biological, chemical and/or mechanical processes could offer great opportunities. Central Research Question What is the applicability of membrane technologies for valorisation of different residual streams and is it possible to integrate membrane technology in current and new biorefining projects of research group BRE: Set-up In order to reach the goal of this postdoc, 4 research questions will be answered using literature search, experimentation and modelling: 1) What membrane methods are currently (commercially) available to enhance the results of current projects in research group BRE? 2) What are the essential technical parameters for membrane separation and how can these be optimized? 3) What is the economic impact of using membrane technology in recovery of valuable building blocks from residual streams? 4) What are the effects of using membranes instead of or complementary to currently used methods on the sustainability of valorisation of residual streams? Cooperation The postdoc and the research group BRE want to extend the contact and research cooperation with (regional) businesses and (applied) universities and support and facilitate the introduction and further development of membrane technologies in the curriculum of different Avans study programmes. This will be done via internships, minor projects (together with businesses) and development of study material for courses and trainings.
