Course Notes: Engineering Entrepreneurship

This special-topic class will focus on starting and managing a successful business. Topics will include: marketing, finance, human resources, operations, legal issues, initial public offering, and succession and estate planning. Due to the engineering background of the students, special emphasis will be on exploring the legal issues involved in the process of applying for a patent. The course will enable a student to evaluate his or her own desires and prospects for a career as an entrepreneur. In so doing, it will provide the aspiring entrepreneur with a framework for selecting, funding, and starting his or her own business. While this might not seem relevant to some students, there is a lot of commonality in starting a business to that of managing a large department, developing a new product in a company, and/or being a division manager. At a minimum, students will come out of the course with a more complete understanding of the complexities and issues involved in being an engineering manager

Designing Data Spaces

This open access book provides a comprehensive view on data ecosystems and platform economics from methodical and technological foundations up to reports from practical implementations and applications in various industries. To this end, the book is structured in four parts: Part I “Foundations and Contexts” provides a general overview about building, running, and governing data spaces and an introduction to the IDS and GAIA-X projects. Part II “Data Space Technologies” subsequently details various implementation aspects of IDS and GAIA-X, including eg data usage control, the usage of blockchain technologies, or semantic data integration and interoperability. Next, Part III describes various “Use Cases and Data Ecosystems” from various application areas such as agriculture, healthcare, industry, energy, and mobility. Part IV eventually offers an overview of several “Solutions and Applications”, eg including products and experiences from companies like Google, SAP, Huawei, T-Systems, Innopay and many more. Overall, the book provides professionals in industry with an encompassing overview of the technological and economic aspects of data spaces, based on the International Data Spaces and Gaia-X initiatives. It presents implementations and business cases and gives an outlook to future developments. In doing so, it aims at proliferating the vision of a social data market economy based on data spaces which embrace trust and data sovereignty

Transforming our World through Universal Design for Human Development

An environment, or any building product or service in it, should ideally be designed to meet the needs of all those who wish to use it. Universal Design is the design and composition of environments, products, and services so that they can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. It creates products, services and environments that meet people’s needs. In short, Universal Design is good design. This book presents the proceedings of UD2022, the 6th International Conference on Universal Design, held from 7 - 9 September 2022 in Brescia, Italy.The conference is targeted at professionals and academics interested in the theme of universal design as related to the built environment and the wellbeing of users, but also covers mobility and urban environments, knowledge, and information transfer, bringing together research knowledge and best practice from all over the world. The book contains 72 papers from 13 countries, grouped into 8 sections and covering topics including the design of inclusive natural environments and urban spaces, communities, neighborhoods and cities; housing; healthcare; mobility and transport systems; and universally- designed learning environments, work places, cultural and recreational spaces. One section is devoted to universal design and cultural heritage, which had a particular focus at this edition of the conference. The book reflects the professional and disciplinary diversity represented in the UD movement, and will be of interest to all those whose work involves inclusive design

A human factors perspective on volunteered geographic information

This thesis takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the unique abilities of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) to enhance the utility of online mashups in ways not achievable with Professional Geographic Information (PGI). The key issues currently limiting the use of successful of VGI are the concern for quality, accuracy and value of the information, as well as the polarisation and bias of views within the user community. This thesis reviews different theoretical approaches in Human Factors, Geography, Information Science and Computer Science to help understand the notion of user judgements relative to VGI within an online environment (Chapter 2). Research methods relevant to a human factors investigation are also discussed (Chapter 3). (Chapter 5) The scoping study established the fundamental insights into the terminology and nature of VGI and PGI, a range of users were engaged through a series of qualitative interviews. This led the development of a framework on VGI (Chapter 4), and comparative description of users in relation to one another through a value framework (Chapter 5). Study Two produced qualitative multi-methods investigation into how users perceive VGI and PGI in use (Chapter 6), demonstrating similarities and the unique ability for VGI to provide utility to consumers. Chapter Seven and Study Three brought insight into the specific abilities for VGI to enhance the user judgement of online information within an information relevance context (Chapter 7 and 8). In understanding the outcomes of these studies, this thesis discusses how users perceive VGI as different from PGI in terms of its benefit to consumers from a user centred design perspective (Chapter 9). In particular, the degree to which user concerns are valid, the limitation of VGI in application and its potential strengths in enriching the user experiences of consumers engaged within an information search. In conclusion, specific contributions and avenues for further work are highlighted (Chapter 10)

Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

The motivations, possibilities and constrains of flexible housing practices in the UK and Turkey

Housing has, in different contexts, become a volatile issue under the pressure of different forces of change such as social, economic and cultural pressures that influence households’ needs in their dwellings, and if it is not able to respond to these changes this would actually reduce the useful life of the buildings. This research seeks to highlight the concept of “flexible housing” to reveal its importance in producing creative options that can accommodate households’ changing needs in their dwellings over time. This is a particularly important consideration with regard to developing countries such as Syria, that are witnessing a widespread transformation of their housing stock, given the rapid process of change, economic, social, cultural, etc., which has marked the last decade. The research is concerned with flexible housing practices in two different countries: the UK as a developed country that has different flexible housing practices and a policy and regulatory environment that is more relevant to flexible housing provision, and Turkey as a developing country in the Middle East region with some flexible housing experience, but with a policy context relating less to flexible housing. This research aims to discover the motivations, possibilities and constraints of different flexible housing design approaches and how the policy and regulatory environment may affect practice, which could provide lessons on policy and practice for further application of flexible housing indifferent contexts, including Syria. The research first examined the national planning policy in both UK contexts, England and Scotland, to discover how the policy context at strategic level could potentially underpin the provision of flexible housing; second, it examined the national housing standards to assess the extent to which the regulatory environment promotes flexible design solutions for housing in this context. Little evidence was found to indicate that planning policy promotes flexibility in housing design at strategic level in either context. Moreover, in terms of guidance or regulation, there was little relating to what the research identifies as flexible design criteria. As a focus for the exploration of the motivations, possibilities and constraints of flexible design approaches, the research identified four flexible housing projects, two in each of the selected countries, all of which represent a particular cultural and design context, and policy and regulatory environment. The research evaluated the flexible design of these projects through assessing physical aspects including the plan, construction and services, and social aspects relating to use and the user, and also investigated the cost implications of incorporating and delivering flexibility. The empirical work indicated that the demand of households for housing that can accept change and the developer’s desire to build in best practice are the key motivations for implementing flexibility initiatives in housing design. Policy can play a role in driving flexible housing practices, but this is insufficient if the requirements are not mandatory. The potential to increase the size of the plan can lead to best practice for flexibility in the plan and in use. The construction methods need to support flexibility by providing separation between the main structure and the infill elements, allowing clear space between structural elements and using light materials and non- specialist forms of construction for infill parts. It is concluded that the incorporation of flexibility is likely to increase building costs, which may impact on the providers’ willingness to build with flexibility. Finally, raising market awareness in regard to building performance is important in making flexible housing deliverable on the market