#User involvement
Projects

Hello entrepreneurs.
I am looking for partners to generate brainstorm. And create a global new business project.

Interested to know more, send an email to
motivaco@gmail.com

Te wicked? Niet voor ons.

Wij werken allemaal aan urgente, complexe, maatschappelijke uitdagingen. Issues die schier onoplosbaar lijken, van dilemma’s en paradoxen omgeven, nog niet duidelijk hoe het moet. Wel is duidelijk dát het moet, dat we elkaar nodig
hebben en dat we er NU aan moeten beginnen. Om met de woorden van Jan Rotmans te spreken; we leven niet in een tijdperk van verandering maar in een verandering van tijdperk. En hier hoort een nieuwe gereedschapskist bij.

En of je nou aan energietransitie werkt, andere mobiliteitssystemen, creëren van waterstofhubs, peer to peer autodeelsystemen, het maakt niet uit, we zien dat al deze opgaven op enig moment tegen gelijksoortige barrières aanlopen. Op samenwerking, financiering, privacy, onvoldoende aansluiting op de maatschappij, om maar een paar voorbeelden te noemen.

Unieke samenwerking
Als Amsterdam Smart City netwerk willen en kunnen we deze opgaven niet laten liggen. Door het bundelen van onze kennis en expertise kunnen we als netwerk iets unieks bieden en de wil en durf tonen om deze barrières te doorbreken. De betrokken partners die dit uitdenken en begeleiden zijn RHDHV, Kennisland, Drift, NEMO, Arcadis, Alliander, HvA en Metabolic. Zij bundelen hun expertise en ervaring om de echte vragen boven tafel te krijgen, tot nieuwe manieren van samenwerken te komen en barrières te doorbreken. We richten ons met name op de start van de samenwerking. Gezamenlijk ontwikkelen we een ‘wicked problem aanpak’. Op een nieuwe manier, lerend door te doen, exploratief.

Waar moet je aan denken?
Wat is eigenlijk het echte probleem? Wiens probleem is dit? Hoe kijken anderen er tegenaan? Welke andere partijen lijken nodig? Hoe vind je ze? Hoe ga je om met eigenaarschap en botsende frames? Hoe zorg je dat je al in
een vroeg stadium de maatschappij (bewoners, ondernemers, werknemers, etc) betrekt en hun ervaringen in het project trekt? Het wicked problem team zet nieuwe methoden in voor het beantwoorden van deze vragen. En het creëren van de benodigde commitment om het vraagstuk aan te pakken. Niets staat van te voren vast, want we passen ons aan aan wat we tegenkomen. Met elkaar ontwikkelen we een nieuwe aanpak om de barrières te doorbreken.

The primary objective of this research project is to enhance an understanding of the concept of inclusion and its criteria in Smart city discourse. The research ambition is applying the result as a tool for benchmarking inclusive smart cities, which can assess and improve them. To apply the result, we aim to work with cities like Amsterdam, The Hauge, and Rotterdam.

Personal protection products made with high plastic recycling content (all green parts) Other parts still work in progress

Product made with 100% recycled plastics from the maritime industry (obsolete fishing gear and ropes)

Ever since the 20th century most of the countries across the globe are still using the traditional way of farming and it’s still going on for the demand and supply of people. As we all know that by the year 2050, the 80 % estimation of the world population will have been living in urban areas which can lead the total population of the world to increase by 3 billion people. With this large amount of increase in population, scientists and researchers are quite worried about the farmland which will be required to generate such a huge demand for food supply to fulfill the necessity to survive. Noticing this fact in mind as what would be the future source of alternative solutions to solve such a type of problem a concept was proposed named “In-House Farming”.

Like cities worldwide, Marineterrein Amsterdam faces major challenges. For example in mobility, circularity, and (ethical) digization. To come up with innovative solutions, there is a need for physical location, knowledge and collaboration. Marinetterein Amsterdam Living Lab (MALL) is a place where this happens.

The Marineterrein uses the terrain as experimental environment for its own development. The partners work together to stimulate collaboration between companies, scientists, students and government agencies. This creates (scalable) experiments that are tested on the grounds, and ultimately applied in urban environments.

MALL is a place to research, experiment and test in a real-life setting. To achieve this MALL partners bring together their expertise, network, and communities in the field of research, innovation, urban development and experimentation at this unique location in Amsterdam.

Everyone is welcome to test at the Marineterrein. Given the special location, high demands are made on parties who come to develop and test on the Marineterrein. In addition to thematic alignment with the themes of the parties, careful consideration is given to whether the applications are innovative, whether they ensure connection between people and knowledge and to opt for a clear focus within a relevant issue.

Current Experiments
• CINDERELA | CINDERELA is a demonstration plant that transforms urine into nutrient-rich fertilizer. The plant consists of a refurbished shipping container – containing a laboratory and two urine-diverting toilets – and an adjacent greenhouse which also serves as a meeting space.
• Roboat | autonomous floating vessels that create a more dynamic urban infrastructure, and provide new ways of transporting people and goods.
• Space for Food | the European Space Agency (ESA) explores the potential and scalability of applying space technology for applications in urban contexts.
• Smart Roof 2.0 | an innovative, lightweight, blue-green roof equipped with a Permavoid drainage layer that stores rainwater and provides plants with water during dry spells.
Curious to see what else is being tested? Click here for a full list!

Open Calls
• Amsterdam Drone Lab | drone flight testing facility at the heart of the Amsterdam city centre.

Want to start testing in the heart of Amsterdam?
MALL provides a publicly accessible but privately governed site in the heart of Amsterdam. This ensures you to test and implement solutions in the public space under credible circumstances with less restrictions. From quay walls, to buildings and roofs. The infrastructure of the site has been set up in such a way that experiments can be easily set up.
Submit your experiment!

Collaboration
MALL is a collaboration between Marineterrein Amsterdam and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, with partners Amsterdam Smart City and NEMO Science Museum.

Our children are growing on paved, 2 dimentional and disconnected school environments. We are here to change that. With our passion Permaculture concept, we designed and created a new style of school garden, which doesn't exist in Amsterdam and if we are not wrong in the Netherlands. It was not the first of our school design/implementation. Laterna Magica School in IJburg Amsterdam is also another example.

You can find further info, photos, videos on our website. We need help from all aware people to inform schools about our services that we can have more impact on our environment and children's connection with nature

How might we automate access to a public digital ecosystem for citizens and machines in order to grow a conscious city? How might we incentivize all citizens and companies to interact with the public digital ecosystem of the city in order to improve livability, democratic representation and societal engagement?

Read our ecosystem document

Join our online ecosystem platform

The Kaskantine will implement together with the neighboorhood its design for closing local resource loops: a kitchen with closed water cycle, preventing local food waste, introduce neighbourhood composting, and organise repair cafe's, sport and musique workshops, etc. Data will be gathered to monitor the resource cycling and methods will be tested to make it more socially and culturally inclusive.

User-created nature-based solutions in an urban environment;

The case of the KasKantine (Greenhouse Cantina), Amsterdam

Historically landscape architecture and infrastructural planning have assigned physical separated functions to landscape in order to upscale and manage resource flows cost efficiently. Rather than monosectoral and large scale linear production systems we can now see a shift to decentralized and locally integrated solutions to close resource loops. In these solutions also citizens can play a more (pro)active role. After being more prominent in rural areas, landscape architecture is now also more active as a lead design principle in urban neighbourhoods. Local integrated solutions for resource cycling efficiency give rise to multiple value production rather than to an increase of local financial income. Either way it increases citizen driven (semi)professional activities in resource management in urban neighbourhoods, as well in its creation and in management.

We see enormous potential in this approach: it can reconnect citizens to nature, it can facilitate in changing lifestyles AND produce the right technology to face our climate and resource crisis. But before it can become mainstream, we see the following challenges and questions, mainly to do with creating sufficient local political support and accessibility to these technological and economic opportunities.

• How can actors on local level on one side and central sectoral level at the other side co-create and redesign effectively the landscape, necessary to close resource loops locally with sufficient democratic legitimacy?
• How could citizen-driven services in resource management be held accountable to a broader public and the public sector?
• How can these nature-based solutions be culturally and socially inclusive?
• How can socio-economically marginal(ized|) groups profit from this increased multiple-values production?

We can try to answer those questions for one specific case to see how it could work out in practice. The Kaskantine is a not-for-profit volunteer driven garden- restaurant - food coop which has as its main objective to show that more autonomous, off the grid nature based solutions for climate adaptive working and living in urban areas are possible and can be at the same time a new lifestyle. It is a small village of refurbished shipping containers, recycled greenhouses and (roof top)gardens. The Kaskantine is currently being built on its fourth location and is negotiating a 7 years ground lease with the municipality of Amsterdam.

The Kaskantine managed to grow from only one container and a one-man company, 5 years ago, to a cooperative with over 30 volunteers with 13 containers. A second village is being planned of 7 containers in the east of Amsterdam. This has been realised without any external capital investment or subsidies. The strategy has always been: find a solution with the least possible financial costs and turn untapped local resources into value.

In doing so the Kaskantine discovered that although real estate prices in Amsterdam skyrocket, there is still a lot of underutilised land and water, that is without use for people and for nature. Lots of plots are “waiting” to be developed, or are underdeveloped: for one function while there could be double or triple functionalities. We could call this “real estate waste”. The Kaskantine could use land for free because there was no direct market value of that land. And the same counts for other important resources: (rain)water, (solar)energy, food (waste and own production), labour (volunteers) and (natural and waste) materials. The Kaskantine is able to operate with zero fixed costs and therefore able to survive.

Furthermore, with its installations it is trying to integrate all received good and services in local loops. Maximum in, minimum out. This is optimized by integrating different resource loops in one management system.

An abundance of one flow of resources can be absorbed by other resource cycles: Peak solar energy can be used in extra ventilation, aeration and irrigation. Sudden food surpluses are redistributed for free and create network solidarity. The Kaskantine is also able to use resources in all phases of their life cycle, like wood: from construction to fire wood. Or being able by using rest heat in storing it in mass or other spaces, or filtering waste water for irrigation. We call this adaptive capacity: the capacity to buffer abundance and use it later or in an alternative way.

Finally, an alternative lifestyle is embraced, one that is appreciating the value of abundance of local resources, rather than the value of market choice.

We could argue that the Kaskantine is thriving in an alternative economy, that can exist thanks to and despite of the mainstream economy that they are trying to transform. We call this abundance or give economy, in contrast with economy based on consumption and the organisation of scarcity.

Abundance economy as being a sum of relatively autonomous integrated projects in mainstream economy.

Because of its ability to expand autonomously within mainstream economy, and because its abundance economy is not a zero-sum game as long as local resources and waste are underutilised, the Kaskantine is very open for participation. There is no economic argument against including more neighborhood activities, on the contrary. More participation seems therefore to depend more on the capability of cultural inclusiveness: if people feel comfortable within the network of the Kaskantine, or if people feel comfortable to start a sort of “kaskantine” on their own.

First, the opportunity to integrate has been ”built in” into the design of the Kaskantine by a step-in approach. From experience as a guest (exchange, tasting, get inspired, etc) to participation in the design, creation and operation of the Kaskantine and Kaskantine related projects.

Secondly, the Kaskantine is also active in the neighbourhood centre and within a network of community organisations, with a step-out approach. In this case the Kaskantine offers through free workshops a learning curve to adopt small scale installations, like vertical gardens and worm composting, and participate in food saving and storage at home in order to take a step back from mainstream economy into the abundance economy.

An important ambition of the Kaskantine is to negotiate with the municipality a land lease contract in which the landuser takes responsibility for its development and environmental control of the land. This cheaper land rent will hopefully give other “kaskantines” the opportunity to arise.

The Kaskantine has free energy to spend on helping other groups in joining this movement because it can operate autonomously and with low fixed costs. This creates hopeful opportunities for inclusiveness of the proposed solutions. Whether this is done in some kind of co-creation with more central institutions depends more on their own capability to work with local small scale initiatives and on their willingness to change or compensate the negative effects of their lineair production models and on their willingness and capability to change sectoral into integrated policies.

Navigating from A to B is an essential part of our daily lives.
Unknown routes, busy places and unexpected obstacles are a big challenge for everyone, regardless of what your eyesight is. For people with a visual impairment, this process is primarily a task because they have limited use of spatial orientation and directions in the environment. The EyeBeacons project investigated how new technologies can support people with a visual impairment when navigating through the city.

For more information you can get in contact with Joey van der Bie, researcher at the Digital Life Centre of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Follow this link for further details.

Sharing is caring, as the young folks say.
BuurtBuik is all about sharing food with your neighbors. We cook meals from food that would be wasted otherwise. Thereby, bringing people together around a free three course meal and build their social network. It impacts both environmental and social goals, thus, bridging the gap to a circular social economy. Come around a see it in action, we feed 500 people three course meals every week!

StreetSense is an IoT street sensor designed to take every street online. This nifty device not only counts passing vehicles, but also tells you if the street surface is dry, wet, overheating, frozen or gritted. Because StreetSense is self-powered and easy to install it is very economic to operate. Every street online with StreetSense!

Interested? Reach out to us to learn more about StreetSense and our other exciting smart city products.

The EU-UIA funded the programme RESILIO, a project that aims to realize 10.000 square meters of blue-green roofs in four city districts in Amsterdam. The consortium of both public and private partners aims to build an interconnected network of smart roofs, in which sensors and state-of-the-art equipment enable micro-water management on rooftops. This contributes to urban climate adaption and resilience, and can potentially evolve into a scalable solution for water management on rooftops.

This project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Urban Innovative Actions Initiative.

<https://www.uia-initiative.eu/en/uia-cities/amsterdam>

The project aims to demonstrate and accelerate the empowerment of citizens to become active energy citizens - and to create local energy communities via existing civil society structures - through development of new solutions (e.g. organisational) and adoption of new, emerging and existing solutions for energy ownership.

Biochar is a soil amendment made typically from bio-mass through a process called pyrolysis with low-oxygen. By using a low-cost, easy-to-make biochar stove, communities can arrange to turn common waste products into biochar.
The vision behind this project is for healthy and resilient communities. This means that I prefer methods that promote local, DIY and community approach, so that it can quickly scale and adapt to different towns/cities.

Most importantly, carbon being the element behind Life has tremendous versatility. It can be used to filter water and then used as a soil amendment. Or it can be mixed to make better concrete composites for roads (asphalt) and concrete. It can improve manufacturing by making carbon fiber alloys.
Last but not least, it is done through a circular model of using waste such as wood sticks, bio-mass, paper, saw dust mills, anything with carbon, even plastics. The output heat can be captured for heating buildings and cooking stoves. The opportunities are endless.
Sizes of stove vary in function of available supply/demand dynamics. For more information, check the biochar-international.org or Ithaka International.
Thank you.

PS: Stockholm, Sweden has achieved this recently. If the Swedes can do it, we can learn from them and improve together!
http://www.nordregio.org/sustainable_cities/stockholm-biochar-project/

Some guidelines for background and context
https://www.biochar-international.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/IBI_Pyrolysis_Plant_Guidelines.pdf

A global network of shared equity rent-to-own properties, offering liquid equity transferring to other properties globally. This will be as if the tenant is co-investing into a 'green REIT' fund along with CSR programs and NGOs, which we will use the crowdfund purchasing new properties, or reinvesting into sustainable urban development, and social entrepreneurs. The vision is to make a new type of bank persay, that offers an AirBnB+WeWork but connected with more community initiatives, like co-living spaces do, however we want to focus on spurring economic development and sustainability for low-medium income communities.

Looking for collaborators to work together and spread this vision.

Add me on LinkedIn and let's chat:

linkedin.com/in/alanjgreenspan

The municipality of Renkum wants to switch to smart public lighting throughout the municipality and at the same time build an infrastructure for future Smart City applications, preferably with as few investments as possible. In response to this wish, Luminext (smart lighting), CityTec (service partner) and Primevest Capital Partners (financing) started a partnership to make this project possible.

Kevin Groen, project leader for the municipality of Renkum: “We have been busy in recent years for the tender for new public lighting. We are in need of replacement; our area is outdated and some lampposts are about to fall over. So we cannot wait until the first lampposts are replaced. We are looking forward to a great collaboration in a unique tender form!”

More information:

Please contact Mirjam Endendijk, Manager Marketing & Communications Luminext: <a>mirjamendendijk@luminext.eu</a>

An accessible, liveable and less polluted city: this is what we’d like to achieve for residents, visitors and businesses in Amsterdam today and for future generations. Smarter and cleaner mobility can help us realise these aims. As a city, we want to offer Amsterdammers, commuters and visitors alternatives to the present forms of mobility, providing a door-to-door solution and contributing to our aims. This includes shared electric transport, from cars to bikes, in ‘Neighbourhood eHubs’ (eBuurthubs) established in cooperation with local residents. That way, we can use clean modes of transport and create more space in the city by sharing. We can then use this extra space to improve liveability.
More info and link to the program via www.amsterdam.nl/smartmobility

Check the report:

https://www.amsterdam.nl/wonen-leefomgeving/innovatie/smart-mobility

Actions

To achieve the ambitions, we will start working with two program lines:

1. Data and digitization
This program line helps the municipal organization digital tools and skills to ensure sufficient control in the future be able to rely on mobility in the city and around
improve quality in public spaces. We are working towards a mobility center of the
future. For this we will use the take the following steps:
• A shared basis: building a strong one data position
• A level playing field: frameworks
• Learning by doing: from traffic management to mobility management
• Ready for the future: aware of the consequences of digitization of mobility

2. Innovative mobility solutions

In this program we work together on concrete smart and clean alternatives to transport, so that Amsterdammers and visitors to the city are less dependent on their own car. We do this by setting up projects in certain urban areas and for specific target groups. We also focus on smart city logistics and we explore the possibilities of transport by water and air. Special attention is given to vulnerable groups and Amsterdam residents with a small grant. We improve the range of new affordable mobility concepts and increase demand, we grow into smart mobility city number 1 with a better and accessible mobility system for everyone. For this we will include the following in this program:

• Smart organization of mobility in the city: travelers are working on alternatives to possessing cars and initiating behavioral change.
• Smart fitting and efficient deployment of new mobility solutions: creating space for new concepts in the city and scaling up
• Anticipate on technological innovations: insights into new opportunities and collaborations. The report contains an overview of the various projects started in the previous program that are still running and newly started activities.

Civic Space helps local authorities make more informed decisions. We constantly collect and analyze the comments, ideas and suggestions of each citizen of the platform. Our software for civic participation enables local governments to take advantage of the collective minds of citizens and better understand the needs of their citizens.
We believe that with the Civic Space platform, we will give the public the opportunity to influence socially-minded decisions, to engage in joint policy-making with the municipal authorities.

Civic Space - is online citizen participation platform for adding citizens to city governance

The platform facilitates a bilateral dialogue between the municipal government of the city and its inhabitants. Citizens publish ideas, take part in competitions, public consultations, debates, implement joint projects in a convenient and accessible form.

The municipal authorities of the city consult with their citizens by conducting online debates, public consultations, polls or holding a contest of creative solutions for the existing problem. The platform helps cities turn to the collective intelligence of citizens. Understand, hear citizens. Become more sensitive to the needs of the public.

Civic Space, it helps local governments become more citizen-oriented.

Civic Space, it helps citizens participate in the process of managing a city, making decisions, and developing local policies.

Thanks to our user-friendly cloud solution, we significantly simplify the process of communication, and the attraction and cooperation of the most vulnerable segments of the population. Like any similar Internet solution, the platform allows you to join the process of participation of all segments of the population despite religion, gender, political preferences, nationality, skin color and participate in the discussion on equal terms with all other participants.

The platform allows everyone to express their opinion, suggestion, comment on equal terms, and so receive an answer, comment, recommendations from other participants of the platform.

Also, the cloud service platform, due to the absence of the need for administration, moderation, support and maintenance of the platform, allows residents of small towns to join the process of participation. The availability of Internet access is all that is necessary for city residents in order to join the platform.

We make attracting citizens to participate affordable, easy, understandable and convenient!