AMS Institute

The city of Amsterdam envisions a future where fleets of autonomous boats cruise its many canals to transport goods and people, collect trash, or self-assemble into floating stages and bridges.

In the course of 2020, we will pilot the first full-scale hashtag#autonomous boats on the #Amsterdam canals. Do you have the technical skills and would you like to work on this high-impact project, then continue reading!

You can apply for this position until December 23rd 2019

https://www.ams-institute.org/about-ams/job-opportunities/vacancy-roboat-science-technician/

What Monitoring & Sensoring technologies could gather information about the status of Amsterdam's Quay walls and Bridges? And how can these best be applied?

Innovation is key in answering these questions. Currently, at AMS Institute there are two research projects in place that can provide outcomes on how to manage a large area of quay walls and bridges in Amsterdam in a smart way. In short, these projects focus on:

- Ground imaging techniques to detect subsurface objects, changes in material properties, soil composition, and voids and cracks
- “Proven Strength” as a methodology and relevance of updating reliability during service life or urban quay walls

Furthermore, a knowledge exchange session was organized by the City of Amsterdam and AMS Institute; a successful step towards the process of building a Living Lab Monitoring & Sensoring – possibly at the Marineterrein – aimed at testing, assessing and whenever possible upscaling new innovative techniques. Ultimately, to significantly contribute to tackling the aforementioned questions.

During the meeting, valuable insights were gathered; required to speed up the City of Amsterdam’s Bridges and Quay walls program. Read the full article here: https://www.ams-institute.org/news/innovation-collabs-future-proof-bridges-and-quay-walls-amsterdam/

We don’t need to look that far in the future to see the mobility challenges of Amsterdam. The number of people visiting, living and working in Amsterdam continues to rise and big events such as EURO2020 and SAIL2020 will have a significant impact.

According to the most recent population forecast, the city of Amsterdam will have more than 1 million inhabitants in 2040 and tourism is expected to grow from 18 million people per year in 2018 to 23 million people per year in 2023. Inevitably, issues such as congestion, the misalignment of the supply and demand for public transport and air pollution are placing growing pressure on the city.

Given these competing demands for the use of public space, Amsterdam is urgently seeking innovative solutions for sustainable, reliable and inclusive mobility. The overall goal is to keep the city liveable and accessible and its citizens healthy and mobile.

Celebrating the 5-year anniversary of AMS Institute, we are launching a series of long-reads. In these long-reads, we attempt to untangle the urban challenges, celebrate successes, collaborations, steps forward, solutions we worked on and the impact we've created over the past 5 years - together with our partners.

Continue reading here: https://www.ams-institute.org/news/innovative-quest-smart-mobility-solutions-long-read/

Happy #worldcitiesday! Although today the weather in Amsterdam is already getting a bit frosty, we'd like to take you back to last summer's heatwave and share the results of our weather balloon research.

World Cities Day recognizes the importance of exchanging knowledge and innovations between cities around the world in order to improve the lives of future generations in the city. The results of this research will contribute to form a new #blueprint to help design #climateresilient cities.

The measurements show that the heat of the city - the so-called #urbandome – still reaches a height of 120 meters at 10 PM. And will be even higher for many cities worldwide.
Launching weather balloons in the city is unique. The last time vertical weather profiles were collected was more than 50 years ago in New York. Back then a helicopter was used for this purpose. The results of this research will contribute to forming a new blueprint to help design #climateresilient cities.

With: Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen Environmental Research and Clever°Franke

It's unlikely that our current energy system will be able to continue to guarantee reliability in the future as different factors cause a massive impact on our energy supply.

Although electricity use in Amsterdam is relatively stable today, this will change in the near future. Due to expected population growth, increasing use of electric vehicles and the shift from gas boilers to electric heat pumps, we will start consuming more and more electricity.

On the other hand, and at the same time, the supply of solar and wind energy is growing rapidly. This sustainable energy will replace non-renewable energy increasingly into the system. Unfortunately, this is not without complications.

With all these changes ahead: how can we transition to a reliable, affordable and sustainable energy system? In the below long-read we explain how we work on the future of urban energy.

On September 11th, ten teams of young bright minds will present their cleantech ideas, all with the aim to create a climate-proof and sustainable urban environment.

With ideas ranging from sustainable energy to circular fashion, our ten teams will pitch for a chance to get to the International Finals' stage where they will battle it out with the finalists from over 55+ countries around the globe. Together with this great opportunity, AMS ClimateLaunchpad offers the top finalists a series of other prizes, as for example, a financial consultation from the Positive Venture group, entrepreneurship workshops by Startup in Residence, and financial guidance by ING. The International Finals are on November 14&15 and will also take place in the city of Amsterdam.

But who is going to be our big winner? That is for our panel of experts to decide:

Ger Baron, CTO Amsterdam
Carolien Gehrels, European Cities Director Arcadis
Sebastiaan Berendse, WUR Director Value Creations
Joachim Blazer, Founder Venture Value & coach EIT Climate-KIC
Doors open at 2.45, with the event starting at 3 PM. In the end, we celebrate the successful journey of our teams with some drinks & bites at 5.45 PM.

So come and support these young startuppers on their first steps in the entrepreneurial world.

Feel free to forward this email to other interested parties but since we have limited seating, registration is much appreciated. Please register here.

Are you looking for an internship in the field of communication, social media & community building, in an environment where you can immerse yourself in topics related to urban innovation, sustainability, and livability for the city of Amsterdam?

We are looking for a curious, entrepreneurial and energetic communications intern for a period of 4 - 6 months, starting September 2019. AMS Institute is a network organization that strives to be adaptive to the challenges of the city. We are therefore looking for creative talents that share our mission and want to strengthen our team during an internship.

Read more here: https://www.ams-institute.org/about-ams/job-opportunities/communications-internship/

Would you like to dive into our wealth of content, to create a unique corporate story? Do you know what ingredients you’ll need to make great content and sticky headlines, and know how to build and maintain relationships with our key media outlets?

We are currently looking for a highly motivated and creative (near) native English PR and Content Officer, to help us further develop the positioning and outreach of Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS institute).

PR, corporate storytelling and content marketing, will play a crucial role in the next phase of development of the institute. Can you translate even the most difficult topics to appealing and accessible content, do you have a creative approach and would you like to work from an environment where innovation takes shape?

More info via link: