Centre of expertise Mission Zero

Living labs are complex multi-stakeholder collaborations that often employ a usercentred and design-driven methodology to foster innovation. Conventional management tools fall short in evaluating them. However, some methods and tools dedicated to living labs' special characteristics and goals have already been developed. Most of them are still in their testing phase. Those tools are not easily accessible and can only be found in extensive research reports, which are difficult to dissect. Therefore, this paper reviews seven evaluation methods and tools specially developed for living labs.

Evaluating Living Labs? Methods and tools

Today more than ever, higher education is finding itself at a crossroad. While the internet is filled with qualitative sources of knowledge, universities can often not provide their students with the skillset they actually need for their professional life. Traditional education will get less and less relevant, if it doesn't transform itself into a learning experience the internet can't offer.

An example of such transformation has been 'Mission Impact', a minor taught for the first time in the fall semester of 2020 at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. 17 students of nine nationalities and 12 different bachelor programmes came together to work on wicked problems and apply their respective knowledge, through transgressive, place-based learning.

Connecting to a place in the middle of a pandemic has not been the easiest task. While all learning contexts had to be translated to the new online reality, students were scattered across Europe, preventing some, from meeting their group members or the place they were trying to impact. That it is still possible, is proven through this magazine. After the end of the minor half of the group decided to spend their time and work on this artefact, to create a visualisation of their learning experience over the past couple of months. The change of narrative at Mission Impact and the focus on a more ecological and relational practices has allowed these students to learn and thrive in a safe environment.

This magazine is an open invitation for all sorts of learners. We hope this magazine will inspire our readers. To connect, to transform, to learn. And most of all, we hope you'll enjoy reading it.

IMPACT Magazine Issue 1, February 2021 (pdf)

Teaching formats for both BA/MA students and MBA/PhD students in sustainable entrepreneurship and strategic management are offered in the teaching notes. This case juxtaposes the company’s core values of gender equality, sustainability and inclusivity, with the financial pressures of expanding global operations in COVID-19 times.

Read more

Key Insights and Policy Recommendations 

Our predominantly linear economy based on a take-make-dispose model of consumption is incompatible with the finite resources available to us on Earth. Major organisations such as corporations and governments make a large proportion of purchases that prompt immense material demands which negatively harm the planet. The government of the Netherlands, for example, made up 12% of total spendings on products and services within the country in 2019.  

While circularity is a promising model to close loops and put an end to the take-make-dispose mentality, such issues should be tackled at the root; material inputs. Procurement thereby becomes a promising area to study and reform. 

While many barriers exist that slow the adoption of circular procurement practices, there are plenty of opportunities in this area that can help to pave the way for a circular future. 

This policy brief concludes with four policy recommendations:  

(1) a new hierarchy of R strategies 

(2) true pricing 

(3) implementing material flow passports and  

(4) improved contract management 

Download the whitepaper 

How can we design circular business models? How can we organize the transition from a linear to a circular economy? And how can we imagine circular futures that help us transform current realities? This book aims to provide answers to these questions while addressing the challenges and opportunities of the circular economy.

Read more

The International Academic Forum provides new perspectives to the thought-leaders and decision-makers of today and tomorrow by offering constructive environments for dialogue and interchange at the intersections of nation, culture, and discipline. Headquartered in Nagoya, Japan, and registered as a Non-Profit Organization, IAFOR is an independent think tank committed to the deeper understanding of contemporary geo-political transformation, particularly in the Asia Pacific Region.

Read more

The total amount of renewable energy produced by a net zero energy building is equal or greater to the total amount of energy used on an annual basis. Net zero energy buildings rely on the energy grid to overcome the mismatch between energy production and energy use load patterns. In the Netherlands, this mismatch has currently no negative economic consequences, as there is a net metering agreement. However, this agreement has a close end date, end of 2022, what could make residential energy production and net zero energy buildings less attractive. The addition of a battery storage system to net zero energy buildings could allow to increase the percentage of renewable energy production self-consumption and therefore reduce the possible future energy costs. The aim of this research is to compare three possible future scenarios: (1) with a decreasing net metering agreement, (2) with no net metering agreement and (3) with no net metering agreement and variable wholesale energy market prices.

Read more

Completeness of data is vital for the decision making and forecasting on Building Management Systems (BMS) as missing data can result in biased decision making down the line. This study creates a guideline for imputing the gaps in BMS datasets by comparing four methods: K Nearest Neighbour algorithm (KNN), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), Hot Deck (HD) and Last Observation Carried Forward (LOCF). The guideline contains the best method per gap size and scales of measurement. The four selected methods are from various backgrounds and are tested on a real BMS and meteorological dataset. The focus of this paper is not to impute every cell as accurately as possible but to impute trends back into the missing data.

Read more

In practice, faults in building installations are seldom noticed because automated systems to diagnose such faults are not common use, despite many proposed methods: they are cumbersome to apply and not matching the way of thinking of HVAC engineers. Additionally, fault diagnosis and energy performance diagnosis are seldom combined, while energy wastage is mostly a consequence of component, sensors or control faults. In this paper new advances on the 4S3F diagnose framework for automated diagnostic of energy waste in HVAC systems are presented.

Read more

The application of DC grids is gaining more attention in office applications. Especially since powering an office desk would not require a high power connection to the main AC grid but could be made sustainable using solar power and battery storage. This would result in fewer converters and further advanced grid utilization. In this paper, a sustainable desk power application is described that can be used for powering typical office appliances such as computers, lighting, and telephones.

Read more

Renewable energy sources have an intermittent character that does not necessarily match energy demand. Such imbalances tend to increase system cost as they require mitigation measures and this is undesirable when available resources should be focused on increasing renewable energy supply. Matching supply and demand should therefore be inherent to early stages of system design, to avoid mismatch costs to the greatest extent possible and we need guidelines for that.

Read more

A Digital Twin comprises three key aspects, i.e. data management, integration of expert models, and simulation-based decision-making. This paper focuses on the research challenges regarding data management where the lack of interoperability is acknowledged as a key constraint for the wider uptake of Digital Twins.

Read more

This paper describes the IBM One-Click Learning (OCL) platform, an ongoing internal effort in IBM Research aimed at providing end-to-end support for the full data science process. The design decisions behind the platform are presented, specifically with regard to promoting adoption and applicability within application domains where the potential of machine learning (ML) is recognized but still not fully harnessed

Read more

This paper reports about preparatory work for future standardization that is carried out through an EU coordination and support action titled IM-SAFE. It focuses on applied digital technologies for monitoring and safety, including predictive maintenance of bridges and tunnels.

Read more

This report has been written as a part of the The Hague University of Applied Science (THUAS) minor ‘BE SMART. Strategies for smart sustainable cities’. The report is focussing on an important element of the heat transition by which the built environment of The Netherlands should become fossil-free in 2030.

Download report (PDF)

Governments, private companies, citizens, and researchers with students who work towards creating space for multi-stakeholder collaboration and learning. Authors present their motivations and challenges in working with labs. They also deliver five founding principles and three tools which help any sort of lab to be successful.

The book is expected to be released in January 2023. For more info will follow soon.

In collaboration with Future-Proof Labs, researchers have developed three tools that provide support for multi-stakeholders that are dealing with challenges like miscommunication, differences in values and uncertainty about tasks and goals when collaborating.

Cooperating with people is always difficult since miscommunications and different views of tasks and concepts can get in the way. This is exponentially so in spaces for creative collaboration towards sustainability transitions, when stakeholders come from different backgrounds and institutions with their own way of working.

These three tools will help users to reflect on their own values and goals, listen to and understand other stakeholders’ point of view and vocalize the participation and expectations one has regarding a common lab project.

The complexity related to co-creating in labs tends to come from a lack of understanding of one’s own biases, other partners’ perspectives and the expectations each 'new teammate’ has regarding their own and other people’s roles and participation levels during the project. The three tools in this chapter aim to tackle three different aspects of these issues by allowing participants to gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their partners, as well as the dynamics in a lab.

Even though they were initially developed for a lab environment, the tools can also be used to facilitate stakeholder collaboration within any field. They also encourage the consideration of the natural environment as a stakeholder. Therefore, these tools are most useful for coordinators and facilitators of dialogue among varied groups of people that might struggle to see eye to eye.

Download here the three tools:
Tool 1. Stories from Watertown
Tool 2. Lab Conversation Cards 
Tool 3. Mountain Sight planning game

Living labs are complex multi-stakeholder collaborations that often employ a usercentred and design-driven methodology to foster innovation. Conventional management tools fall short in evaluating them. However, some methods and tools dedicated to living labs' special characteristics and goals have already been developed.

Download the whitepaper
 

The problem of single-use personal protective equipment (PPE) made from non-renewable resources polluting the environment encouraged the creation of a circular face mask. The main factors that influence the design of a face mask that protects the user from COVID-19 were investigated. According to the findings, these are filtration, fit-performance, and comfortability. Therefore, the two following goals were set for this project, to design a face mask (1) produced in the Netherlands using 50% local circular materials and 50% recyclable materials and (2) that perfectly fits men's and women's faces.

Read more

The book “Innovating with labs. That’s how you do it!” gives you the practical tools you need to set up a successful living lab together with all stakeholders in your context. Find out how you can collaborate with them and students from your region to work on innovative solutions for complex issues. With the aim of creating a vital and future-proof environment.

This publication can be purchased internationally as ebook or printed book via this link.