Barriers and Enablers for the Implementation of Design for Sustainability in Flemish Design Agencies

To address today’s sustainability challenges a shift is needed in the way products are designed. The behavior of design practitioners plays an important role in this as 80% of a product’s environmental impact is determined during the design phase. The Fogg Behavior Model (FBM) shows that three elements (Motivation, Ability and Trigger) are needed for behavioral change. When applying this to Design for Sustainability (D4S), the consideration and harmonization of ecological, economic and social aspects in the design process, which includes Product Lifetime Extension, multiple barriers and enablers that influence FBM, could be identified. This study aims at mapping these in the context of Flemish design agencies. The goal is thus to identify the barriers and enablers designers in Flemish design agencies face when applying D4S and how these affect the behavior of these practitioners. For this, multiple (n=9) semi-structured interviews have been performed and analyzed using an adapted approach, this to challenge the preconceived hypotheses. Results show that multiple aspects influence the designer’s behavior. These aspects can be subdivided into four main external categories, Design agency, Client requests and constraints, Government and Non-customized tools. It is unclear what the personal motivation of design practitioners is to apply D4S, but limited knowledge on this subject hinders them in doing so. The researchers hope to contribute to the D4S research field and make its application standard practice.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Methodological Integration of Sustainability in the Design Process of Medical Devices: A Case Study on EEG Electrodes

info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

Impact of DC grid contingencies on AC system stability

In order to reliably and safely operate future multi-terminal HVDC grids, different protection strategies are currently being developed and presented in the literature. Especially for large DC grids, it is important to investigate how the choice of the protection strategy influences AC system stability during DC fault clearance and system restoration. This paper contributes to the understanding of these issues by giving an overview of the different protection strategies and their influence on frequency and transient stability. DC grid protection requirements are defined, based on the AC system constraints related to the level and duration of power transfer loss.status: publishe

The Future Floodplains project: ecosystem services of floodplains under socio-ecological change

status: publishe

The Future Floodplains project: ecosystem services of floodplains under socio-ecological change

P-1242 Humans and Biosphere - Geoscience for sustainable futuresstatus: publishe

Development of an Open-Source Smart Energy House for K-12 Education

Energy consumption in buildings represents about one-third of the worldwide energy consumption. Consumers often are not fully aware of energy-conserving measures they could take. Intelligent control of the heating and lighting systems in buildings is one way to increase energy-efficiency. Children and young adults influence domestic energy consumption, by using appliances such as TV and lighting. Often, they are not aware of the costs incurred. The goal of this research is to develop a educational platform for energy efficiency education aimed towards the full age range of K-12 education. A scaled model of a house is used, to explain the energy flows in the residential setting, well-known by the target audience. A model house is designed, with actual loads, using an Arduino Uno electronics platform as an interface to a PC. A reference program in the integrated development environment S4A allows visualizing the energy consumption in a simple manner. The children control a number of scaled household appliances interactively. A survey with the first 25 children (aged 10-12) suggests higher awareness of energy consumption.status: publishe

Developing Engineering-oriented Educational Workshops Within a Student Branch

The development of two educational workshops, one on energy efficiency and one on human-machine interfaces, is detailed and discussed. Attraction to engineering is not created as much as lost at early ages through current education methods. Through positive, hands-on experiences with engineering in K-12 education, this trend can be turned. IEEE student branches have as part of their mission the education and creation of quality educational resources for the public. After searching in vain for suitable inexpensive material, the IEEE student branch Leuven decided to design and create two workshops on engineering topics for an audience of 10-12 year olds. Handling this as a repeatable project, the student branch found partners to create a low budget project for the attendees. Using the skillset of the specific partners and organizers optimally on the subtasks, a successful repeatable cooperation is realized. This paper discusses the environment in which the project is realized, the steps to it, and how it (indirectly) benefits the organizing student branch.status: publishe

Development of open-source interactive smart energy house for K12 engineering education on residential energy efficiency

status: publishe