A broad agenda with societal urgency — From improving children's learning performances to delaying the onset of Alzheimer's disease. From productive employees to playing football to counteract radicalisation. From including the disabled to economic export product. Sport can make a positive contribution to dealing with social, cultural and healthcare issues more effectively and can stimulate both personal and economic growth. Two conditions must be satisfied if these contributions are to be realised in a structural, sustainable and successful manner. One: all parties involved must collaborate to realise the evidence-based added value of sport in practice. Two: politicians, industry, healthcare and health insurers must recognise that it is in everybody's interest that sport acquires this key role.
The objective of the study described in this paper is to define safety metrics that are based on the effectiveness of risk controls. Service providers define and implement such risk controls in order to prevent hazards developing into an accident. The background of this research is a specific need of the aviation industry where small and medium-sized enterprises lack large amounts of safety-related data to measure and demonstrate their safety performance proactively. The research department of the Aviation Academy has initiated a 4-year study, which will test the possibility to develop new safety indicators that will be able to represent safety levels proactively without the benefit of large data sets. As part of the development of alternative safety metrics, safety performance indicators were defined that are based on the effectiveness of risk controls. ICAO (2013) defines a risk control as “a defence with specific mitigation actions, preventive controls or recovery measures put in place to prevent the realization of a hazard or its escalation into an undesirable consequence”. Examples of risk controls are procedures, education and training, a piece of equipment etc. It is crucial for service providers to determine whether the introduced risk controls are indeed effective in reducing the targeted risk. ICAO (2013) describes the effectiveness of risk control as "the extent to which the risk control reduces or eliminates the safety risks”, but does not provide guidance on how to measure the effectiveness of risk control. In this study, a generic metrics for the effectiveness of risk controls based on their effectiveness was developed. The definition of the indicators allows, for each risk control, derivation of specific indicators based on the generic metrics. The suitability of the metrics will subsequently be tested in pilot studies within the aviation industry.
Cross-Re-Tour supports European tourism SME while implementing digital and circular economy innovations. The three year project promotes uptake and replication by tourism SMEs of tools and solutions developed in other sectors, to mainstream green and circular tourism business operations.At the start of the project existing knowledge-gaps of tourism SMEs will be researched through online dialogues. This will be followed by a market scan, an overview of existing state of the art solutions to digital and green constraints in other economic sectors, which may be applied to tourism SME business operations: water, energy, food, plastic, transport and furniture /equipment. The scan identifies best practices from other sectors related to nudging of clients towards sustainable behaviour and nudging of staff on how to best engage with new tourism market segments.The next stage of the project relates to two design processes: an online diagnostic tool that allows for measuring and assessing (160) SME’s potential to adapt existing solutions in digital and green challenges, developed in other economic sectors. Next to this, a knowledge hub, addresses knowledge constraints and proposes solutions, business advisory services, training activities to SMEs participating. The hub acts as a matchmaker, bringing together 160 tourism SMEs searching for solutions, with suppliers of existing solutions developed in other sectors. The next key activity is a cross-domain open innovation programme, that will provide 80 tourism SMEs with financial support (up to EUR 30K). Examples of partnerships could be: a hotel and a supplier of refurbished matrasses for hospitals; a restaurant and a supplier of food rejected by supermarkets, a dance event organiser and a supplier of refurbished water bottles operating in the cruise industry, etc.The 80 cross-domain partnerships will be supported through the knowledge hub and their business innovation advisors. The goal is to develop a variety of innovative partnerships to assure that examples in all operational levels of tourism SMEs.The innovation projects shall be presented during a show-and-share event, combined with an investors’ pitch. The diagnostic tool, market scan, knowledge hub, as well as the show and share offer excellent opportunities to communicate results and possible impact of open innovation processes to a wider international audience of destination stakeholders and non-tourism partners. Societal issueSupporting the implementation of digital and circular economy solutions in tourism SMEs is key for its transition towards sustainable low-impact industry and society. Benefit for societySolutions are already developed in other sectors but the cross-over towards tourism is not happening. The project bridges this gap.
The Dutch hospitality industry, reflecting the wider Dutch society, is increasingly facing social sustainability challenges for a greying population, such as increasing burnout, lifelong learning, and inclusion for those distanced from the job market. Yet, while the past decades have seen notable progress regarding environmental sustainability and good governance, more attention should be paid to social sustainability. This concern is reflected by the top-sector healthcare struggles caused by mounting social welfare pressure, leading to calls by the Dutch government for organizational improvement in social earning capacity. Furthermore, the upcoming EU legislation on CSRD requires greater transparency regarding financial and non-financial reporting this year. Yet, while the existing sustainability accreditation frameworks offer guidance on environmental sustainability and good governance reporting, there must be more guidance on auditing social sustainability. The hospitality industry, as a prominent employer in the Netherlands, thus has a societal and legislative urgency to transition its social earning capacity. Dormben Hotel The Hague OpCo BV (Dormben) has thus sought support in transitioning its social sustainability standards to meet this call. Hotelschool, the Hague leads the consortium, including Green Key Nederland and Dormben, by employing participatory design to present a social sustainability accreditation framework. Initially, Dr. David Brannon and Dr. Melinda Ratkai from Hotelschool The Hague will draft a social sustainability accreditation framework informed by EFRAG. Subsequently, Erik van Wijk, from Green Key Nederland, the hospitality benchmark for sustainability accreditation, and Sander de Jong, from Dormben, will pilot the framework through four participatory workshops involving hospitality operators. Later, during a cross-industry conference, Dr. David Brannon and Dr. Melinda Ratkai will disseminate a social sustainability toolkit across their academic and industry networks. Finally, conference and workshop participants will be invited to form a social sustainability learning community, discussing their social earning capacity based on the revised sustainability accreditation.
The growing use of digital media has led to a society with plenty of new opportunities for knowledge exchange, communication and entertainment, but also less desirable effects like fake news or cybercrime. Several studies, however, have shown that children are less digital literate than expected. Digital literacy has consequently become a key part within the new national educational policy plans titled Curriculum.nu and the Dutch research and policy agendas. This research project is focused on the role the game sector can play in the development of digital literacy skills of children. In concrete, we want to understand the value of the use of digital literacy related educational games in the context of primary education. Taking into consideration that the childhood process of learning takes place through playing, several studies claim that the introduction of the use of technology at a young age should be done through play. Digital games seem a good fit but are themselves also part of digital media we want young people to be literate about. Furthermore, it needs to be taken into account that digital literacy of teachers can be limited as well. The interactive, structured nature of digital games offers potential here as they are less dependent on the support and guidance of an adult, but at the same time this puts even more emphasis on sensible game design to ensure the desired outcome. The question is, then, if and how digital games are best designed to foster the development of digital literacy skills. By harnessing the potential of educational games, a consortium of knowledge and practice partners aim to show how creating theoretical and practical insights about digital literacy and game design can aid the serious games industry to contribute to the societal challenges concerning contemporary literacy demands.
