Hogeschool van Amsterdam (NL)
Partner Description
The Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) educates the professionals of tomorrow in a practice-based research environment. AUAS research addresses real-life challenges, and it is always conducted in close collaboration between academics and professionals and together with regional and international partners. In this context, connection is key: connection between theory and practice, between learning and working, between students and society, and between the local communities and the world. Research at AUAS concerns six core themes: urban vitality, urban management, urban technology, urban education, creative industries and entrepreneurship.
Two AUAS research groups are involved in the EMPOWER2.0 project: Visual Methodologies and Urban Analytics.
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The Visual Methodologies research group and its Citizen Data Lab are based at the Centre for Applied Research in Digital Media and Creative Industries. The Citizen Data Lab specialises in participatory data practices for citizen involvement in local issues. Partners of the lab include the Amsterdam Municipality, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, and the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam.
- The Urban Analytics research group is a collaboration between the Faculty of Technology, the Digital Media and Creative Industry and the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science. Practical-oriented data research is linked to fundamental research in this group. The various projects range from image recognition of taxis, analysing green spaces in the city, forecasting of full waste containers to helping social entrepreneurs with measuring their impact at a neighbourhood scale. Urban Analytics is the founder of the DataStudio, an environment that brings researchers and students, companies and governments together.
Role in EMPOWER2.0
AUAS leads the building of a toolkit for empowering citizens to become active energy prosumers. The specific objective is to design and develop a transnational toolbox that encompasses a roadmap to support local/regional authorities, citizen communities and other parties in taking a role in empowering citizens to participate in the energy transition.
The toolbox will have the form of an online digital platform to:
- Build a resource that makes clear the opportunities for local energy transition projects
- Understand and deal with the barriers that hinder energy transition initiatives
- Evaluate the current state of the energy transition in the local environment for the toolkit user
- Find collaborating parties to set up new showcases
Local solutions ask for local tailoring, therefore, the toolbox will be partly the result of the project living labs experimentation. However, models and lessons learned can be transferred beyond the local boundaries; the toolbox will also showcase the lessons learned and it will be in itself a mean to involve several target groups in the energy transition process. The toolbox will be co-designed with the project partners and stakeholders.
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