Internal report cluster 1: Urban freight innovations and solutions for sustainable deliveries (3/4)

Technical report about sustainable urban freight solutions, part 3 of

Re-articulating the creative hub concept as a model for business support in the local creative economy: the case of Mare Street in Hackney

This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant Number AH/J005142/1].This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant Number AH/J005142/1].This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant Number AH/J005142/1].The literature on ‘creative hubs’ is scarce. Although the term is currently in wide use in policy circles, its actual meaning is not always clear. Accordingly, this paper aims to clarify what is meant by the ‘creative hub’ through the use of ethnographic work as well as a consolidation of the available literature. The findings suggest that although different creative hubs take on a number of different physical, spatial, organisational and operational manifestations they nonetheless can be understood as having four primary characteristics: first, they provide ‘creative’ services to creative SMEs, including micro-businesses; second, they are aimed specifically at early stage creative SMEs and micro-businesses; third, they are facilitated by trusted individuals who retain a number of important positions and conduct a number of important activities; and fourth, they have become important to the health of the local creative economy. This paper argues that the notion of the creative hub can be understood as a putative model for providing mainly business support in a local context for specifically the creative sector

Internal report cluster 1: Urban freight innovations and solutions for sustainable deliveries (2/4)

Technical report about sustainable urban freight solutions, part 2 of

Building the Big Society

Papers are a contribution to the debate and set out the authors ’ views only Localism and the Big Societ

Panel discussion: U.S. EPA using modeling and ecosystem services to enhance coastal decision making

This panel will discuss the research being conducted, and the models being used in three current coastal EPA studies being conducted on ecosystem services in Tampa Bay, the Chesapeake Bay and the Coastal Carolinas. These studies are intended to provide a broader and more comprehensive approach to policy and decision-making affecting coastal ecosystems as well as provide an account of valued services that have heretofore been largely unrecognized. Interim research products, including updated and integrated spatial data, models and model frameworks, and interactive decision support systems will be demonstrated to engage potential users and to elicit feedback. It is anticipated that the near-term impact of the projects will be to increase the awareness by coastal communities and coastal managers of the implications of their actions and to foster partnerships for ecosystem services research and applications. (PDF contains 4 pages

Online participation: the Woodberry Down experiment

The internet and world wide web are generating radical changes in the way we are able tocommunicate. Our ability to engage communities and individuals in designing theirenvironment is also beginning to change as new digital media provide ways in whichindividuals and groups can interact with planners and politicians in exploring their future.This paper tells the story of how the residents of one of the most disadvantagedcommunities in Britain ? the Woodberry Down Estate in the London borough ofHackney ? have begun to use an online system which delivers everything from routineservices about their housing to ideas about options for their future. Woodberry Down isone of the biggest regeneration projects in Western Europe. It will take at least 10 years,probably much longer, to complete, at a cost of over £150 million. Online participation isone of the many ways in which this community is being engaged but as we will show, itis beginning to act as a catalyst. The kinds of networks which are evolving aroundsystems like these will change the nature of participation itself, the ways we need to thinkabout it, and the ways we need to respond. Before the experiment is described, we set thecontext by describing the wide range of digital media for communicating plans andplanning which suggests a new typology for web participation consistent with this fastemerging network culture

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms