There has probably never been such an intense debate about the layout of the countryside as the one that is currently raging. There are serious concerns about the landscape, which is being rapidly transformed by urbanization and everything associated with this process, and not only in the Netherlands but also far beyond its borders. Everyone has something to say in this society-wide debate, from local to national governments, from environmental factions to the road-user's lobby, and from those who are professionally involved to concerned private parties. In many cases it is a battle between idealized images and economic models, between agricultural reality and urban park landscapes, between ecological concerns and mobility. This issue of OASE explores the potential significance of architectonic design for transformation processes on the regional scale. Besides considering the instruments that are available to the designer to fulfil this task, the authors also consider how the design can exercise a 'positive' influence on such processes. The various contributions shed light on the potential significance of territory in contemporary design practice and offer critical reflection on the topical discourse that has evolved over recent years.
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Reflections: Systemic (Co) Design is still relatively unknow to practitioners As well as to academics in the economic domain Dialogue requires active involvement and experiencing diverse perspectives through a variety of methods/tools Artifacts contribute to the continuity of the dialogues Gathering data (and interpreting data) remains complex The insights generated by the workshops connect practice and research guiding both learning and research Designers play an essential role in reflexivity and thus promote learning
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This paper presents an innovative approach that combines optimization and simulation techniques for solving scheduling problems under uncertainty. We introduce an Opt–Sim closed-loop feedback framework (Opt–Sim) based on a sliding-window method, where a simulation model is used for evaluating the optimized solution with inherent uncertainties for scheduling activities. The specific problem tackled in this paper, refers to the airport capacity management under uncertainty, and the Opt–Sim framework is applied to a real case study (Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, France). Different implementations of the Opt–Sim framework were tested based on: parameters for driving the Opt–Sim algorithmic framework and parameters for riving the optimization search algorithm. Results show that, by applying the Opt–Sim framework, potential aircraft conflicts could be reduced up to 57% over the non-optimized scenario. The proposed optimization framework is general enough so that different optimization resolution methods and simulation paradigms can be implemented for solving scheduling problems in several other fields.
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Renewable energy, particularly offshore wind turbines, plays a crucial role in the Netherlands' and EU energy-transition-strategies under the EU Green Deal. The Dutch government aims to establish 75GW offshore wind capacity by 2050. However, the sector faces human and technological challenges, including a shortage of maintenance personnel, limited operational windows due to weather, and complex, costly logistics with minimal error tolerance. Cutting-edge robotic technologies, especially intelligent drones, offer solutions to these challenges. Smaller drones have gained prominence through applications identifying, detecting, or applying tools to various issues. Interest is growing in collaborative drones with high adaptability, safety, and cost-effectiveness. The central practical question from network partners and other stakeholders is: “How can we deploy multiple cooperative drones for maintenance of wind turbines, enhancing productivity and supporting a viable business model for related services?” This is reflected in the main research question: "Which drone technologies need to be developed to enable collaborative maintenance of offshore wind turbines using multiple smaller drones, and how can an innovative business model be established for these services? In collaboration with public and private partners, Saxion, Hanze, and RUG will research the development of these collaborative drones and investigate the technology’s potential. The research follows a Design Science Research methodology, emphasizing solution-oriented applied research, iterative development, and rigorous evaluation. Key technological building blocks to be developed: • Morphing drones, • Intelligent mechatronic tools, • Learning-based adaptive interaction controllers and collaborations. To facilitate the sustainable industrial uptake of the developed technologies, appropriate sustainable business models for these technologies and services will be explored. The project will benefit partners by enhancing their operations and business. It will contribute to renewing higher professional education and may lead to the creation of spin-offs/spinouts which bring this innovative technology to the society, reinforcing the Netherlands' position as a leading knowledge economy.
This project develops a European network for transdisciplinary innovation in artistic engagement as a catalyst for societal transformation, focusing on immersive art. It responds to the professionals in the field’s call for research into immersive art’s unique capacity to ‘move’ people through its multisensory, technosocial qualities towards collective change. The project brings together experts leading state-of-the-art research and practice in related fields with an aim to develop trajectories for artistic, methodological, and conceptual innovation for societal transformation. The nascent field of immersive art, including its potential impact on society, has been identified as a priority research area on all local-to-EU levels, but often suffers from the common (mis)perception as being technological spectacle prioritising entertainment values. Many practitioners create immersive art to enable novel forms of creative engagement to address societal issues and enact change, but have difficulty gaining recognition and support for this endeavour. A critical challenge is the lack of knowledge about how their predominantly sensuous and aesthetic experience actually lead to collective change, which remains unrecognised in the current systems of impact evaluation predicated on quantitative analysis. Recent psychological insights on awe as a profoundly transformative emotion signals a possibility to address this challenge, offering a new way to make sense of the transformational effect of directly interacting with such affective qualities of immersive art. In parallel, there is a renewed interest in the practice of cultural mediation, which brings together different stakeholders to facilitate negotiation towards collective change in diverse domains of civic life, often through creative engagements. Our project forms strategic grounds for transdisciplinary research at the intersection between these two developments. We bring together experts in immersive art, psychology, cultural mediation, digital humanities, and design across Europe to explore: How can awe-experiences be enacted in immersive art and be extended towards societal transformation?
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.
Centre of Expertise, onderdeel van Hanze
