Mobility is also a social and economic need. The availability of transport options and the way they are offered may pose various challenges for the mobility of citizens. The biggest challenge is to avoid social and spatial inequalities in urban and also rural areas, which include preventing discrimination against vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. These barriers are not only financial or technical, but also come from political, social and institutional factors. How can mobility management improve access to mobility? How to improve transport links to contribute to combating social exclusion?
This open access book states that the endemic societal faultlines of our times are deeply intertwined and that they confront us with challenges affecting the security and sustainability of our societies. It states that new ways of inhabiting and cultivating our planet are needed to keep it healthy for future generations. This requires a fundamental shift from the current anthropocentric and economic growth-oriented social contract to a more ecocentric and regenerative natural social contract. The author posits that in a natural social contract, society cannot rely on the market or state alone for solutions to grand societal challenges, nor leave them to individual responsibility. Rather, these problems need to be solved through transformative social-ecological innovation (TSEI), which involves systemic changes that affect sustainability, health and justice. The TSEI framework presented in this book helps to diagnose and advance innovation and change across sectors and disciplines, and at different levels of governance. It identifies intervention points and helps formulate sustainable solutions for policymakers, administrators, concerned citizens and professionals in moving towards a more just and equitable society.
MULTIFILE
The ELSA AI lab Northern Netherlands (ELSA-NN) is committed to the promotion of healthy living, working and ageing. By investigating cultural, ethical, legal, socio-political, and psychological aspects of the use of AI in different decision-makingcontexts and integrating this knowledge into an online ELSA tool, ELSA-NN aims to contribute to knowledge about trustworthy human-centric AI and development and implementation of health technology innovations, including AI, in theNorthern region.The research in ELSA-NN will focus on developing and mapping ELSA knowledge around three general concepts of importance for the development, monitoring and implementation of trustworthy and human-centric AI: availability, use,and performance. These concepts will be explored in two lines of research: 1) use case research investigating the use of different AI applications with different types of data in different decision-making contexts at different time periods duringthe life course, and 2) an exploration among stakeholders in the Northern region of needs, knowledge, (digital) health literacy, attitudes and values concerning the use of AI in decision-making for healthy living, working and ageing. Specificfocus will be on investigating low social economic status (SES) perspectives, since health disparities between high and low SES groups are growing world-wide, including in the Northern region and existing health inequalities may increase with theintroduction and use of innovative health technologies such as AI.ELSA-NN will be integrated within the AI hub Northern-Netherlands, the Health Technology Research & Innovation Cluster (HTRIC) and the Data Science Center in Health (DASH). They offer a solid base and infrastructure for the ELSA-NNconsortium, which will be extended with additional partners, especially patient/citizens, private, governmental and researchrepresentatives, to have a quadruple-helix consortium. ELSA-NN will be set-up as a learning health system in which much attention will be paid to dialogue, communication and education.
The increasing concentration of people in urban environments in an era of globalisation means that social, economic, and environmental resources for living and working are under pressure. Urban communities experience increased stress levels due to inadequate and overburdened infrastructure and services, challenges due to ethnic and cultural diversity, socio-economic inequalities as well as the impact of environmental degradation. For these communities to build resilience under these circumstances therefore requires a multipronged approach. The underlying question this project will answer is: “What are the key characteristics of experiencescapes that contribute to resilience-building in communities?” The project will dive into the identification of building blocks of experiencescapes and roles of relevant actors that can support communities in building resilience. Within the context of a multidisciplinary approach, this project applies a range of qualitative research methods, such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, participant observation, storytelling techniques, life stories, as well as various biometric quantitative methods, available through the experience lab of BUas. The outcome of the project will enable practitioners and researchers alike in various sectors to understand what and how they can contribute to creating an environment in which people can meaningfully interact in a way that builds resilience in communities. This outcome is communicated not only through academic publications and conference contributions, but also through public reports and a handbook for practitioners and students. These reports and handbooks support identification and application of building blocks of experiencescapes that support building resilience in communities. Finally, the knowledge generated in the project will contribute to the development of curricula of various educational programmes at Breda University of Applied Sciences by expanding the scope of experience design into the area of people-to-people relationships.
It is VHL’s mission to train high-quality, committed and innovative professionals who con-tribute to a more sustainable world , and who are able to organize and manage multi-stakeholder processes for sustainable change: graduates with transdisciplinary competences. Secondly, VHL aims to contribute to the SDG-agenda by linking its education and applied research to eight particular SDGs of which Resilient Communities is one. However, to operationalize SDGs in practice, and aligning targets and strategies of different stakeholders is difficult: ‘resilience’ and ‘sustainability’ refer to ‘wicked problems’ for which no definitive problem formulation, nor clear-cut solutions exist. Addressing wicked problems like ‘resilience’ and ‘sustainability’ requires transdisciplinary collaboration to manage and transform divergent values and conflicting interests, and to co-create sustainable innovations. This HBO postdoc views the 17 SDGs as a compass to align targets and strategies of citizens, government, civil society organizations, private sector and knowledge institutes who collaborate in Living Labs of VHL focusing on resilient communities/regions. Through spiraling action-reflection cycles, stakeholders will use the SDG compass to make success mechanisms, obstacles and trade-offs visible, assuming they stay engaged to overcome difficulties to improve interventions and innovations; this is expected to result in adapted sustainability practices and lessons learned on reaching community resilience. The postdoc’s aim is two-fold highlighting the link between research and education: (1) Design a methodology to integrate SDGs effectively in VHL’s applied research: using the SDGs as compass to improve performance and outcomes of transdisciplinary collaborations. (2) Develop a Roadmap for transdisciplinary education at course, curriculum, and institutional level with SDGs as compass. Future graduates require the competence to work together with others outside one own’s discipline, institute, culture or context. Living Labs offer a suitable learning environment to develop this competence
