ABSTRACT
Apart from the numerous social, economic, and environmental impacts of car dependence, the time people spend sitting in motorised vehicles has been identified as a sedentary behaviour that can negatively impact people's physical and psychological health. The climate breakdown and the COVID-19 pandemic have continued to expose the fragility and vulnerability of the urban environment and the imminent need for response, management, and radical re-thinking through innovation, especially within the transport sector. The incidence of the COVID-19 pandemic has also reiterated the need for urban centres to re-establish a sense of community, extend the benefits reaped from reduced motorised transport usage and boost small/medium-size businesses through the provision of active travel spaces. This paper investigates the role of pedestrian-focused intervention to encourage walking rather than car use for short-distance trips, within the context of the car-dependent small island state of Malta. The research includes the use of semi-structured interviews with a broad range of stakeholders to develop a virtual platform for citizen participation. The platform is an interactive space for participants to identify barriers that discourage walking and explore and evaluate options that encourage walking as a mode of transport. A discussion of preliminary findings sheds light on the impact of pedestrian interventions that encourage active travel and contribute policy-relevant outcomes based on the perceptions and direct feedback from citizens and stakeholders alike. © 2023 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V.
ABSTRACT
Apart from the numerous social, economic, and environmental impacts of car dependence, the time people spend sitting in motorised vehicles has been identified as a sedentary behaviour that can negatively impact people's physical and psychological health. The climate breakdown and the COVID-19 pandemic have continued to expose the fragility and vulnerability of the urban environment and the imminent need for response, management, and radical re-thinking through innovation, especially within the transport sector. The incidence of the COVID-19 pandemic has also reiterated the need for urban centres to re-establish a sense of community, extend the benefits reaped from reduced motorised transport usage and boost small/medium-size businesses through the provision of active travel spaces. This paper investigates the role of pedestrian-focused intervention to encourage walking rather than car use for short-distance trips, within the context of the car-dependent small island state of Malta. The research includes the use of semi-structured interviews with a broad range of stakeholders to develop a virtual platform for citizen participation. The platform is an interactive space for participants to identify barriers that discourage walking and explore and evaluate options that encourage walking as a mode of transport. A discussion of preliminary findings sheds light on the impact of pedestrian interventions that encourage active travel and contribute policy-relevant outcomes based on the perceptions and direct feedback from citizens and stakeholders alike. © 2023 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V.
ABSTRACT
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of current food systems to feed populations around the world. Particularly in urban centers, consumers have been confronted with this vulnerability, highlighting reliance on just-in-time logistics, imports and distant primary production. Urban food demand, regional food supply, land use change, and transport strategies are considered key factors for reestablishing resilient landscapes as part of a sustainable food system. Improving the sustainability of food systems in such circumstances entails working on the interrelations between food supply and demand, rural and urban food commodity production sites, and groups of involved actors and consumers. Of special significance is the agricultural land in close proximity to urban centers. Calling for more holistic approaches in the sense of inclusiveness, food security, citizen involvement and ecological principles, this article describes the use of a new decision support tool, the Metropolitan Foodscape Planner (MFP). The MFP features up-to-date European datasets to assess the potential of current agricultural land use to provide food resources (with special attention to both plant- and animal-based products) and meet the demand of city dwellers, and help to empower citizens, innovators, companies, public authorities and other stakeholders of regional food systems to build a more regionalized food supply network. The tool was tested in the context of the food system of the Copenhagen City Region in two collaborative workshops, namely one workshop with stakeholders of the Copenhagen City Region representing food consultancies, local planning authorities and researchers, and one in-person workshop masterclass with MSc students from the University of Copenhagen. Workshop participants used the tool to learn about the impacts of the current food system at the regional and international level with regard to the demand-supply paradigm of city-regions. The ultimate goal was to develop a participatory mapping exercise and test three food system scenarios for a more regionalized and sustainable food system and, therefore, with increased resilience to crises. Results from this implementation also demonstrated the potential of the tool to identify food production sites at local level that are potentially able to feed the city region in a more sustainable, nutritious and way.
ABSTRACT
Between 2018 and 2021, in Pays de la Loire region (north-west of France), a network of regional partners from different plant sectors worked together within the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) "Plant Health” project, with the support of the Pays de la Loire Region Council and the European Commission. In total, nine thematic operational groups, associating producers, economic actors and R&D actors have worked, based on case studies, to identify new measures to improve plant health and validate their feasibility. Main themes addressed alternatives to plant protection products, with a focus on bridges between sectors (Is a solution or technique available in one sector easily transferable to another?), soil cover for weed management (Are mulching and direct seeding in a cover crop new practices to be mobilized?), and diversification of crop rotation and structuring of supply chains, with both technical questions (mastering a new crop, sorting out associations) and structural questions (which organizations, relationships between actors, etc.). After 4 years of work and despite the COVID-19 sanitary crisis, which slowed down some parts of the project, each operational group has been able to draw conclusions from the results obtained. © 2022 International Society for Horticultural Science. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Worldwide, vulnerabilities and weak security strategies are exploited everyday by adversaries in healthcare organizations. Healthcare is targeted because these crimes are high-reward and low-risk. The attacks differ every time, from hacking medical devices, such as sensors, to stealing patients’ data from electronic health records databases. The effects of these attacks are both short and long term lived, depending on the incidence handling process that each sector is adopting. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed, in full, that healthcare systems are vulnerable and vastly unprotected while representing a threat to global public health. An important part of the healthcare ecosystem, for the development and validation of innovative tools and methodologies, is the Living Labs which are community-based and adopt co-creation as their primary approach. Because of the many stakeholders involved in the processes of the Living Labs, cybersecurity ought to be in their center. Besides the proven great importance of the Living Labs as part of healthcare, there is no research on security and privacy issues around them. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the supply chain of a Living Lab and identify its security and privacy challenges alongside with its vulnerabilities. The SecTro tool has been used to provide a thorough analysis which follows the Privacy-by-Design approach. The originality and novelty of our work are shown from: (i) moving one step further from desk studies by including requirements from citizens and professionals;(ii) being integrated into an effort from various researchers to supply a holistic approach to Data Privacy Governance;(iii) the first time which a paper is considering and analysing the supply chain of the Living Labs. © 2022, Innovative Information Science and Technology Research Group. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Staying mobile is the key to ensuring high quality of life for older adults. With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to live and move around independently becomes more critical for the most aging society. While several efforts have been made to invest in mobility solutions to help improve older adults’ mobility, there is still a lack of good practice and guidelines for developing such a niche Information Technology (IT) solution. In this paper, we report our experience of using Living Lab, a design science approach, to assess and capture the needs of mobility solutions for older adults. A semi-structured interview involving 25 older adults was conducted. We identified interesting and practical requirements/functionalities from the participants that might be otherwise overlooked if we followed the traditional software development process. The participants provided valuable feedback to help improve our mobility solution in two main areas, mainly the design and functionality of the application. The findings from this case study can potentially be applied for future work that attempts to address similar problems in the same domain. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Digitally enabled neighbourhood telecommuting centres (NTCs) in residential areas may have the potential to reduce the environmental burdens of transport by shortening work trips and enabling modal shifts. This paper presents the results of a Living Lab where 67 participants were given access to an NTC. Through this Living Lab, this study identifies several conditions required for an NTC to substantially reduce commuting and overall have a positive impact on sustainable travel. The results indicate that while a small group of participants who lived very close to the NTC made significant lifestyle changes and adopted more sustainable travel practices, the overall changes in the sustainability aspects of travel for most participants were minimal. The majority of the participants merely exchanged a day spent working from home for a day at the NTC, as they were only allowed to be absent from the employer’s office one day per week. Further, some participants found it difficult to work remotely due to organisational roles and workplace norms. Another factor that limited the sustainability effect of the NTC was that most participants normally commuted by train, but in a few cases travelled to the NTC by car. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, most participants were required to work exclusively from home, which proved to have both positive and negative effects on the participants’ everyday lives and well-being. The participants reported a radical shift in attitudes towards remote working during this period, which they believed could lead to remote working becoming more common after the pandemic. In this case, NTCs could possibly play an important role in enabling this shift, by remedying some of the identified drawbacks of working from home. This could in turn enable a larger reduction in commuting. In areas where more people commute by car, sustainability effects would likely be greater.
ABSTRACT
The international associated laboratory eCAMPUS has developed an electro-mobility Living Lab, one of whose first actions is the realisation of consultation workshops. The aim of these workshops is to assess the level of social acceptability of the electric vehicle and the progressive electrification of mobility on the campuses studied. Social acceptability is a major variable in the adoption of electric mobility. The consultation workshops were conducted by videoconference in order to respect the sanitary measures related to the COVID 19 pandemic. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The establishment and implementation of a healthy lifestyle is fundamental to public health and is an important issue for working-aged people, as it affects not only them but also the future generations. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated behavioural restrictions, lifestyles have altered, and, in certain environments, significantly worsened. In the present study, we conducted a project to improve the intestinal environment by focussing on the dietary habits of participants, utilising the living laboratory as a social technology to explore how to adapt to this drastic environmental change. We held eight workshops for voluntary participants and implemented a self-monitoring process of recording dietary behaviours (n = 78) and testing the intestinal environment (n = 14). Through this initiative, we developed a personalised wellness enhancement programme based on collaboration with multiple stakeholders and a framework for using personal data for research and practical purposes. These results provide an approach for promoting voluntary participation and behavioural changes among people, especially under the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a practical basis for the government, academia, and industry to intervene effectively in raising people's awareness of health and wellness.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Aged , Diet, Healthy , Humans , Laboratories , Pandemics/prevention & control , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
Maintaining indoor environmental (IEQ) quality is a key priority in educational buildings. However, most studies rely on outdoor measurements or evaluate limited spatial coverage and time periods that focus on standard occupancy and environmental conditions which makes it hard to establish causality and resilience limits. To address this, a fine-grained, low-cost, multi-parameter IOT sensor network was deployed to fully depict the spatial heterogeneity and temporal variability of environmental quality in an educational building in Sydney. The building was particularly selected as it represents a multi-use university facility that relies on passive ventilation strategies, and therefore suitable for establishing a living lab for integrating innovative IoT sensing technologies. IEQ analyses focused on 15 months of measurements, spanning standard occupancy of the building as well as the Black Summer bushfires in 2019, and the COVID-19 lockdown. The role of room characteristics, room use, season, weather extremes, and occupancy levels were disclosed via statistical analysis including mutual information analysis of linear and non-linear correlations and used to generate site-specific re-design guidelines. Overall, we found that 1) passive ventilation systems based on manual interventions are most likely associated with sub-optimum environmental quality and extreme variability linked to occupancy patterns, 2) normally closed environments tend to get very unhealthy under periods of extreme pollution and intermittent/protracted disuse, 3) the elevation and floor level in addition to room use were found to be significant conditional variables in determining heat and pollutants accumulation, presumably due to the synergy between local sources and vertical transport mechanisms. Most IEQ inefficiencies and health threats could be likely mitigated by implementing automated controls and smart logics to maintain adequate cross ventilation, prioritizing building airtightness improvement, and appropriate filtration techniques. This study supports the need for continuous and capillary monitoring of different occupied spaces in educational buildings to compensate for less perceivable threats, identify the room for improvement, and move towards healthy and future-proof learning environments. Copyright © 2021 Ulpiani, Nazarian, Zhang and Pettit.
ABSTRACT
Urban Living Labs (ULLs) are widely believed to provide a safe environment for experimentation, co-creation and evaluation of innovations in real-life settings. A growing number of cities have been adopting ULLs to co-create and test Nature-Based Solutions (NBS). However, many of these cities have been facing major barriers in trying to adopt the ULL approach for implementing NBS. In this study, we seek to identify these barriers and provide a systemic understanding. Barriers are identified by means of workshops and interviews. Subsequently, interpretive structural modelling serves to identify the interdependencies among the barriers, resulting in a structural model of barriers in adopting ULLs for NBS. Our results show that political and institutional barriers are significantly limiting the adoption of ULLs. Moreover, knowledge brokers and other intermediaries, as well as cross-sectoral collaboration, play a key role in getting ULLs adopted. The findings from this study can help cities to develop strategies that overcome the main barriers for ULL adoption in the context of nature-based solutions.