From Smart Cities To Playable Cities. Towards Playful Intelligence In The Urban Environment

In the last decade, we have seen the rise of urban play as a tool for community building, and city-making and Western society is actively focusing on play/playfulness and intelligent systems as a way to approach complex challenges and emergent situations. In this paper, we aim to initiate a dialogue between game scholars and architects. Like many creative professions, we believe that the architectural practice may benefit significantly from having more design methodologies at hand, thus improving lateral thinking. We aim at providing new conceptual and operative tools to discuss and reflect on how games and smart systems facilitate long-term the shift from the Smart Cities to the Playable one, where citizens/players have the opportunity to hack the city and use the smart city’s data and digital technology for their purposes to reactivate the urban environment

Analysis of Barriers in the Transition toward Sustainable Mobility in the Netherlands

The transition toward a sustainable transportation system in the Netherlands takes place in the context of the Dutch “Transition management policy framework”. We study four tech¬nological routes that the “Platform Sustainable Mobility” has selected for this goal: (1) hybridization of vehicles, (2) liquid biofuels, (3) natural gas as a transportation fuel and (4) hydrogen as a transportation fuel. These technological routes all envision large-scale changes in vehicle propulsion technology and fuel infrastructure. Furthermore, they compete for the scarce resources available to invest in new (fuel) infrastructures, which implicates that these ‘transition paths’ are also interdependent at the level of the mobility system. The main outcome of the analysis is the identification of barriers that are currently blocking the transition toward sustainable mobility. Barriers are classified as being related to (1) technology and vehicle development, (2) the availability of (fuel) infrastructures, and (3) elements of the institutional infrastructure. The transition management framework currently misses guidelines for coping with (competing) technologies that each requires large infrastructural investments. We further argue that avoiding undesired lock-ins and creating a beneficial institutional context for sustainable mobility cannot be pursued at the transition path level. Therefore, we recommend that a more systemic approach should be taken to the tran¬si¬tion to sustainable mobility, in which the inter¬dependencies between the transition paths are critically assessed and in which the possibilities to legitimize sustainable mobility as a whole should be used.Innovation, Transition management, Sustainable Mobility, Barriers

Fostering implementation of health services research findings into practice: a consolidated framework for advancing implementation science

Abstract Background Many interventions found to be effective in health services research studies fail to translate into meaningful patient care outcomes across multiple contexts. Health services researchers recognize the need to evaluate not only summative outcomes but also formative outcomes to assess the extent to which implementation is effective in a specific setting, prolongs sustainability, and promotes dissemination into other settings. Many implementation theories have been published to help promote effective implementation. However, they overlap considerably in the constructs included in individual theories, and a comparison of theories reveals that each is missing important constructs included in other theories. In addition, terminology and definitions are not consistent across theories. We describe the Consolidated Framework For Implementation Research (CFIR) that offers an overarching typology to promote implementation theory development and verification about what works where and why across multiple contexts. Methods We used a snowball sampling approach to identify published theories that were evaluated to identify constructs based on strength of conceptual or empirical support for influence on implementation, consistency in definitions, alignment with our own findings, and potential for measurement. We combined constructs across published theories that had different labels but were redundant or overlapping in definition, and we parsed apart constructs that conflated underlying concepts. Results The CFIR is composed of five major domains: intervention characteristics, outer setting, inner setting, characteristics of the individuals involved, and the process of implementation. Eight constructs were identified related to the intervention (e.g., evidence strength and quality), four constructs were identified related to outer setting (e.g., patient needs and resources), 12 constructs were identified related to inner setting (e.g., culture, leadership engagement), five constructs were identified related to individual characteristics, and eight constructs were identified related to process (e.g., plan, evaluate, and reflect). We present explicit definitions for each construct. Conclusion The CFIR provides a pragmatic structure for approaching complex, interacting, multi-level, and transient states of constructs in the real world by embracing, consolidating, and unifying key constructs from published implementation theories. It can be used to guide formative evaluations and build the implementation knowledge base across multiple studies and settings.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78272/1/1748-5908-4-50.xmlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78272/2/1748-5908-4-50-S1.PDFhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78272/3/1748-5908-4-50-S3.PDFhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78272/4/1748-5908-4-50-S4.PDFhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78272/5/1748-5908-4-50.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78272/6/1748-5908-4-50-S2.PDFPeer Reviewe

Demand Drivers in the Emerging Market for Low Emission Vehicles in Scotland

Non peer reviewedPostprin

A Framework for Justice-Centering Relationships and Understanding Impact in Higher Education Community Engagement

Community engagement in higher education has been promoted as critical to fulfilling higher education’s responsibility to the public good through teaching, learning, and knowledge generation. Reciprocity and mutual benefit are key principles of community engagement that connote a two-way exchange of knowledge and shared power and decision making. However, it is not clear, from existing literature, whether community engagement impacts communities in meaningful or positive ways. The problem addressed through this study was how campus-community partnership stakeholders define impact. This was a study of how impact was determined; it was not an assessment of whether identified outcomes were achieved. Using grounded theory, the ways community and campus partners defined, measured, and understood community impact in a diverse set of campus-community partnership initiatives at two U.S. Jesuit universities were explored, placing priority on community voice and knowledges. Relationships as facilitators of impact and as impacts in and of themselves emerged as central themes. The ideal impact described by many community partners was a transformed relationship between higher education and the community, such that colleges and universities recognized their place, roles, and responsibilities as part of the community rather than apart from it. Themes from the data led to the development of the Justice-Centering Relationships Framework. The framework includes two distinct paradigms for understanding community impact in higher education community engagement – Plug-and-Play and Justice-Centering Relationships – that are bridged by a Reframing process. A critical difference between the paradigms is the relationship between campus and community. In the Plug-and-Play paradigm, campus-community partnerships function as individual units/phenomena. Impact is focused on, defined as, and limited by individual behaviors and commitments and short-term, quantifiable outputs. Within this paradigm, the university acts as separate from the community. In the Justice-Centering Relationships paradigm, campus-community partnerships are understood as part of a broader institutional commitment and collective effort. Impacts are longer-term and defined as ever evolving relationships that contribute to institutional and social change. Within this paradigm, the university recognizes its position as part of the community. Through the Reframing process, community-engagement stakeholders dismantle institutional structures and policies that perpetuate injustice to create the conditions for justice-centering relationships

A Critique and Reframing of Personality in Labour Market Theory: Locus of Control and Labour Market Outcomes

This article critically examines the theoretical arguments that underlie the literature linking personality traits to economic outcomes and provides empirical evidence indicating that labour market outcomes influence personality outcomes. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigated the extent to which gender differences occur in the processes by which highly positive and negative labour market outcomes are determined and in the processes underlying the development of one particular aspect of personality, locus of control. Gender differences were more pronounced in the results for years in managerial/ leadership positions than for locus of control. Negative labour market states were also marked by gender differences. We conclude by arguing that an explicitly value-laden analysis of the rewards associated with personality within the labour market could expose areas where the gendered nature of rewards by personality serves to perpetuate power relationships within the labour market.

A Critique and Reframing of Personality in Labour Market Theory: Locus of Control and Labour Market Outcomes

This article critically examines the theoretical arguments that underlie the literature linking personality traits to economic outcomes and provides empirical evidence indicating that labour market outcomes influence personality outcomes. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigated the extent to which gender differences occur in the processes by which highly positive and negative labour market outcomes are determined and in the processes underlying the development of one particular aspect of personality, locus of control. Gender differences were more pronounced in the results for years in managerial/ leadership positions than for locus of control. Negative labour market states were also marked by gender differences. We conclude by arguing that an explicitly value-laden analysis of the rewards associated with personality within the labour market could expose areas where the gendered nature of rewards by personality serves to perpetuate power relationships within the labour market.

The development of a rich multimedia training environment for crisis management: using emotional affect to enhance learning

PANDORA is an EU FP7-funded project developing a novel training and learning environment for Gold Commanders, individuals who carry executive responsibility for the services and facilities identified as strategically critical e.g. Police, Fire, in crisis management strategic planning situations. A key part of the work for this project is considering the emotional and behavioural state of the trainees, and the creation of more realistic, and thereby stressful, representations of multimedia information to impact on the decision-making of those trainees. Existing training models are predominantly paper-based, table-top exercises, which require an exercise of imagination on the part of the trainees to consider not only the various aspects of a crisis situation but also the impacts of interventions, and remediating actions in the event of the failure of an intervention. However, existing computing models and tools are focused on supporting tactical and operational activities in crisis management, not strategic. Therefore, the PANDORA system will provide a rich multimedia information environment, to provide trainees with the detailed information they require to develop strategic plans to deal with a crisis scenario, and will then provide information on the impacts of the implementation of those plans and provide the opportunity for the trainees to revise and remediate those plans. Since this activity is invariably multi-agency, the training environment must support group-based strategic planning activities and trainees will occupy specific roles within the crisis scenario. The system will also provide a range of non-playing characters (NPC) representing domain experts, high-level controllers (e.g. politicians, ministers), low-level controllers (tactical and operational commanders), and missing trainee roles, to ensure a fully populated scenario can be realised in each instantiation. Within the environment, the emotional and behavioural state of the trainees will be monitored, and interventions, in the form of environmental information controls and mechanisms impacting on the stress levels and decisionmaking capabilities of the trainees, will be used to personalise the training environment. This approach enables a richer and more realistic representation of the crisis scenario to be enacted, leading to better strategic plans and providing trainees with structured feedback on their performance under stress