ISTP News

New methodology to project future costs of novel technologies suggests that cost of direct air carbon capture will decrease less than previously hoped. The novel method proposed by ETH researchers combines technology-inherent characteristics with component-based experience curves.

Swiss citizens express strong preferences for a sustainable, circular economy. But do their actions align with their intentions? Sarah Gomm and Clara Brügge shed light on the underlying motivations and barriers.

Doctoral Student Jakob Pruess Explores Complexities of EPR Design, Implementation, and Transfer Dynamics in the European Union  

A recent study conducted as part of the ISTP research project Co-Creating Mobility Hubs has shed new light on resident preferences in the transformation of railway stations. The findings, published in the journal European Planning Studies, highlight the significance of railway stations as integral components of local communities.  

The Swiss Minerals Observatory has released a synthesis report that explores the global impacts of mining for minerals and metals. The research, which was conducted from 2017 to 2022 and incorporates perspectives from natural sciences, social sciences, and engineering, identifies policy implications for reducing the environmental and health effects of the industry.

The Swiss Minerals Observatory has released a new report that explores the global impacts of mining for minerals and metals. The research, which was conducted from 2017 to 2022 and incorporates perspectives from natural sciences, social sciences, and engineering, identifies policy implications for reducing the environmental and health effects of the industry.

Densification is fundamental to urban planning and development but often encounters local resistance. A group of ETH researchers, including ISTP member Prof. David Kaufmann, have investigated factors that might influence public acceptance of densification.

The future of rail transport is being revamped to include more than just trains. Researchers from the ISTP have completed a research project on the potential transformation of railway stations into what they call "mobility hubs". The first results from their survey are now out.

Often research can be difficult to understand or inaccessible. The Urban Research Incubator’s new interactive 3D website allows a broad audience to learn about segregation in cities and how infrastructure can affect sociospatial mobility with visual renderings.

Mining can have serious consequences for nature and the health of the population. Especially in countries of the Global South, where environmental laws are often only inconsistently implemented. In Zimbabwe, people have been fighting water pollution from coal mining for years. But they were powerless against the operators – until doctoral student Désirée Ruppen launched a citizen science project in 2018. [text is inspired by an original Eawag - Aquatic Research report]

In his interview with ETH Corporate Communications, the ISTP Director Tobias Schmidt talked about decarbonisation, the role of technological transformation and his personal journey from engineer to policy researcher. 

Watch this eye-opening video with Antoinette van der Merwe, PhD candidate at the ISTP and NADEL. It deals with artisanal gold mining which on the one hand alleviates poverty, on the other, though, is associated with detrimental health, social and environmental issues.

"Overall, it can be seen that a large proportion of the study participants perceive environmental and climate protection as a key problem in Switzerland."

How does urban design become consciously mobilized as a technology of security politics, and how does a reflexive perspective on this use offers productive research avenues? Focusing on the two case studies of Bogotá and Zürich, former ISTP researcher Jonas Hagmann and ISTP PhD candidate David Kostenwein provide new insights into these topics.

ISTP members Michael Brander, Thomas Bernauer, Matthias Huss present the first experimental evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa that low-cost, hermetic storage bags can reduce the prevalence of severe food insecurity by 38% in the lean season.

Taking Bogotá with its 3,500 gated communities as his case study, ISTP PhD Candidate David Kostenwein created a novel typology focusing on the gated community’s spatial dimension. He portrays it as an integral part of the urban realm as opposed to an isolated island.

ISTP PhD Candidate Michael Walczak assessed Switzerland's spatial policy which rejects the use of new land in favour of promoting densification. Using the agglomeration of Lausanne as a case study, he applied an automated spatial policy model to assess building reserves that are still available within the current building regulatory framework.

Antoinette van der Merwe and Yael Borofsky wrote an op-ed for the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian on the lockdown in the country.

The seventh and last video of our "ISTP4Public" series has been released and sheds light on sustainability issues in forest-focused supply chain policies. ETH Zurich Prof. Rachael Garrett discusses the global developments that provoked her scientific interest in this topic, and she talks about supply chain policies' effectiveness. She also highlights the need for local governments' involvement and the key role of importing regions to drive greater uptake of sustainability policies. 

In our final colloquium talk of this semester, Prof. Konstantinos Boulouchos from ETH Zurich's Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering will talk about a "net-zero" mobility future, and he will illustrate the synergetic contributions of technology innovation and policy design. He will also focus on the energy supply and climate change mitigation options for the worldwide and national transportation systems.

The global COVID-19 pandemic is manifesting differently in every country. The new video of our "ISTP4Public" series sheds light on how the urban poor mitigated their risk of infection in Accra and Johannesburg at the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak. Researchers Antoinette van der Merwe from the Swiss Minerals Observatory and Kathrin Durizzo from the Development Economics Group talk about their research's main findings and the policy implications.

Under the theme Bridging science and policy to foster systemic resilience, the Geneva Science-Policy Interface (GSPI) calls for projects for its Impact Collaboration Programme 2021. The deadline for the pre-proposals is January 17, 2021.

In our upcoming colloquium talk, ISTP Director Prof. Thomas Bernauer, Dr. Lukas Rudolph & Franziska Quoss from the CIS present the first results from the fifth wave of the Swiss Environmental Panel focusing on 5G, the fifth generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks. They also shed light on whether consumer/citizen concern or acceptance of 5G is contingent on the location of 5G antennas and on what policies citizens prefer with respect to 5G.

In our upcoming colloquium talk, Prof. Lars-Erik Cederman, from the Center for Comparative and International Studies, investigates the influence of war on European states' territorial expansion. The starting point of his research is Charles Tilly's classical claim that "war made states." Prof. Cederman elaborates on state expansion's logic after testing the "bellicist" thesis by aligning historical data on European state borders with conflict data.

Informational self-​determination is defined as the authority of an individual to determine disclosure and use of personal data. In our upcoming colloquium talk, ETH Zurich Prof. Ulrik Brandes elaborates on the meaning and scope of this concept as well as its implications for privacy regulations. He emphasizes that the presence of social regularities may enable the inference of information about an individual without that individual disclosing any of it.

The Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) recently reported on MOBIS: COVID-​19 research project, an initiative of ETH Zurich and the University of Basel with the aim of getting a picture of how the pandemic crisis is affecting mobility in Switzerland. The main findings indicate that the population has shifted away from space-efficient large vehicles, such as busses, in light of COVID-19 restrictions. However, car travel and walking have fully recovered in the post-lockdown era.

Can old mobile phones serve as a potential gold mine? ISTP doctoral candidate from the Swiss Minerals Observatory Antoinette van der Merwe and ETH Zurich Prof. Isabel Günther dug deeper into Swiss drawers to find approximately 6.5 million unused phones. In a policy brief, they emphasize that return rates of old devices for recycling remain significantly low despite most people saying they know where to recycle their old phones.

In our upcoming colloquium talk, ETH Prof. Robert Finger from the Agricultural Economics and Policy Group names key challenges for the reduction of environmental and health risks from agricultural pesticide use and presents a framework developed in collaboration with Dr. Niklas Möhring for improving current policies. He also provides insights into economics and policies on pesticide risk reduction in Swiss agriculture using selected case studies.

(Re-​post from ETH News) Ten years ago, ETH took the bold step of establishing a presence abroad in the form of its very own research centre. This year, the Singapore-​ETH Centre launched its third research programme – and new insights are already making their way back to Switzerland.

An insightful study with the aim of evaluating the application of Virtual Environments in lighting planning and policy-making by ISTP researchers from the Urban Research Incubator David Kretzer & Michael Walczak was recently published in the Athens Journal of Architecture. Watch the latest video of our "ISTP4Public" series and gain deep insights into their research and main findings.

Adequate responses to city-​making and the production of inclusive environments are needed to tackle the segregated landscape and structural challenges in South Africa's young democracy that cannot be generated by one theoretical framework alone. In our upcoming colloquium, Anne Graupner, co-founder of 26´10 south Architects, talks about a unique mode of thinking that led to intertwining theory and practice, the co-production of knowledge and capacity building.

Can blockchain be used to source from responsible artisanal miners on a large scale? ISTP doctoral candidate of the Swiss Minerals Observatory Antoinette van der Merwe, spoke to experts and explains in a policy paper the possibilities and challenges of using blockchain for a more transparent gold supply chain.

The ISTP invites applications for a Post-doctoral / senior researcher position in an interdisciplinary project on sustainability issues in global supply chains. The project links several ongoing, but hitherto separate research activities on sustainable trade and supply chain policies from several ETH departments, with a focus on commodities in the food, minerals, and energy sector.

Moving towards a greener economy requires detailed information on the environmental impacts of global value chains. ISTP researchers Livia Cabernard and Stephan Pfister present a novel approach to improve the use of an existing input-output database. Their results demonstrate that far more action is needed to move towards a greener economy globally, especially through supply chain management. Their research was published in Science of The Total Environment.

Our next colloquium talk will take place online on Tuesday, 13th October 2020, at 5pm. The invited guest speaker, Dr. Bjarne Steffen will talk about the role of finance in climate policy. Mitigating dangerous climate change requires a rapid transition of economies towards low-carbon technologies. Bjarne Steffen will elaborate on the interplay between interest rates and the politics of emissions trading.

Our next colloquium talk of the semester will take place online on Tuesday, 6th October 2020, at 5pm. The invited guest speaker, Prof. David Kaufmann from the ETH Zurich Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development, will give a conceptual overview over different urban policies in support of irregular migrants and he will present empirical insights from a policy survey of the biggest 95 European cities and of two case studies (Geneva: Operation Papyrus and Zürich: Züri City Card).

COVID-19 has already challenged many countries, causing concern about what will happen in African countries. To understand how the urban poor mitigate their risk of infection, ISTP PhD student Antoinette van der Merwe together with researchers from the University of Ghana and the University of Pretoria conducted a survey with 1,400 poor households in Accra and Johannesburg. They concluded that a costly shutdown of public life is only effective with a well-informed population.

Our first colloquium talk for the Autumn Semester 2020 will take place online on Tuesday, 29th September 2020, at 17:15 - 18:30. The invited guest speaker, Prof. Marco Mazzotti from the ETH Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, will elaborate on several aspects related to the deployment of Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCU and CCS) systems, which play a central role in political debates, technological efforts and scientific developments around climate change.

Why does so little of the vast knowledge about fighting climate change make it into policy? In the new video of our "ISTP4Public" series, ISTP Member ETH Prof. David Kaufmann highlights the need for policy advice that includes considerations of implementability and acceptance of the proposed policy. To help climate scientists provide such utilization-focused policy advice, Prof. Kaufmann worked together with various researchers and formulated a six-point checklist.

Whether voluntary environmental action pays off for both business and the environment has been a subject of academic and policy debate for many decades. A recent study by CIS & ISTP PhD Student Dennis Kolcava, ETH Prof. Thomas Bernauer, and NMBU & UZH Prof. Joachim Scholderer reveals that citizens are more willing to reward firms with public procurement contracts, tax breaks and lenient regulatory enforcement when these firms engage in ambitious voluntary environmental action.

The night-time condition in informal settlements is often characterised by a lack of light on pedestrian path networks. A common technological approach in some countries to address these needs is to provide high-mast luminaires. In his paper, ISTP researcher David M. Kretzer shows that the application of high-mast luminaires has several limitations, as it fails to create adequate consistent lighting conditions in common forms of informal settlements.

The Department of Architecture (D-ARCH) of the ETHZ and VELUX STIFTUNG are launching two postdoctoral positions for 18 months in researching daylight perspectives in sustainable urban and architectural Design. The first DAYLIGHT Fellow will start by January 2021 and the second Fellow by February 2022.

During the lockdown, doctoral candidate at the ISTP, Antoinette van der Merwe, was stuck in South Africa. While she was there, she started a new research project to find out how poor families are coping with the current corona crisis. In her interview, Antoinette describes her own experience and provides us with insights into the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on poor urban neighbourhoods. (Re-post from ETH Zurich Services & resources News)

Nourishing a growing world population in ecologically sustainable ways is one of the main goals of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The new video of our "ISTP4Public" series is out and it provides fresh insights into the impacts of improved on-farm storage as a means for reducing seasonal food insecurity. Michael Brander, researcher at the ISTP, gives an insight into his and Matthias Huss’ research project focused on Sub-​Saharan Africa.

The legal mechanism that people have been counting on to stop climate change has been politically unpopular for years. Amazingly, climate policy experts are now becoming confident that we can end CO2 emissions. An insightful study by the ISTP member Prof. Anthony Patt advocates that there are policy instruments that do fit climate change and are politically feasible. It suggests a roadmap for solving climate change that focuses first on supporting new technologies, and then on bringing down emissions.

In 2015 the global community agreed on a set of Sustainable Development Goals to put our planet on an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable trajectory. While the SDGs are an impressive testament to international cooperation, they were not accompanied by a clear plan of how to finance them. A recent study by ETH researchers focuses on multilateral development banks (MDBs), a leading group of finance institutions to channel resources to development goals.

Climate change mitigation has been politicized in many countries, potentially blocking the introduction of climate policies. Publicly funded green investment banks are one policy instrument that mobilizes private finance into national opportunities. ETH researchers incl. ISTP member Prof. Tobias Schmidt analysed the parliamentary discourse behind the design of two cases of green investment banks. Their results produce observations allowing to develop four propositions for further investigation.

The Clarence Stone Scholar Award recognizes young scholars who are making a significant contribution to the study of urban politics. ISTP Member David Kaufmann has been selected to receive the 2020 award as a result of his strong publication record and his applied work in real world policy and governance. (Re-post from Spatial Development and Urban Policy – SPUR News)

The MOBIS: COVID-19 research project, an initiative of ETH Zurich and the University of Basel, is a continuation of the original MOBIS study. The aim of the project is to get a picture of how the crisis is affecting mobility and everyday life in Switzerland. The latest weekly report presenting post-lockdown results as of July 13^th is now available and the analysis will be extended in the coming weeks.

The call for ETH4D Research Challenges is now open. Proposals need to address a clearly defined research question that has the objective of creating a positive impact for communities in a low-​ or lower middle-​income country. All proposals will be evaluated by an ETH4D selection committee and the application deadline is September 30^th.

Automated driving technology along with electric propulsion are widely expected to fundamentally change transport systems. In their study, ISTP member Prof. Kay W. Axhausen in collaboration with various colleagues analysed the production costs of various transport modes both today and in an automated-electric future. Their results indicate that transportation costs will become more similar across different countries and the highest impact of automation is to be expected in high-income countries.

Solar photovoltaics and batteries are key technologies to enable a rapid decarbonization of electricity systems. ETH Energy Politics Group´s researchers including ISTP Member Prof. Tobias Schmidt developed a model for photovoltaics and battery projects, which returns a profit-maximizing storage dispatch and system design, and investigated South-East Asian countries. Their results indicate that profitable investment opportunities in photovoltaics and battery projects exist already today.

As urban populations boom, homelessness is rising. While governments and property developers struggle to provide answers, some residents are taking matters into their own hands, by constructing buildings that are rising higher into skylines. And now, some leading architects are redefining their own role from designing buildings to offering guidance for eclectic self-build projects. ETH Prof. Hubert Klumpner believes that city  "relics" should be seen as opportunities for resettlement.

Radio SRF 1, the Swiss national radio station, reported about an ISTP research project, which shows that not only urban residents in poorer regions of the world suffer from the Corona crisis.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, how do you define a beautiful landscape? Machine learning algorithms can be helpful here, says Adrienne Grêt-​Regamey. (Re-​post from ETH Zukunftsblog)

The second video of our video statement series "ISTP4Public" is out and it provides fresh insights into the public support and the political feasibility of policy options for promoting EV adoption. ISTP PhD student Gracia Brückmann shares the key findings of her and Prof. Thomas Bernauer’s recently published study in Environmental Research Letters.

The Swiss Environmental Panel explores public opinion in Switzerland in relation to environmental preferences and behaviour, and changes therein. It constitutes a panel survey which ETH conducts in cooperation with the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). The full report of the Wave 2 focusing on climate, climate change and climate policy is now available.

Architects and urban designers are currently developing new concepts and tools to comply with the participatory design approach emerging. Urban Research Incubator researchers Michael Walczak & David M. Kretzer are investigating innovative lighting approaches and their performance in Bogotá, co-created with informal settlement dwellers and tested with Colombian policy-makers. Their work is hosted by the Network City and Landscape Newsletter addressing the topic of "Participation".

Soil systems are important environmental assets as they are the basis for food production and of great importance for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. A recent paper by Thomas Sonderegger, in collaboration with ISTP Researchers Stephan Pfister and Prof. Stefanie Hellweg, deals with the limited available life cycle impact assessment methods for the natural resource soil. Their results indicate that a scenario without any conservation measures leads to substantial productivity losses.

We are delighted to announce that ISTP PhD Candidate Sergio Guidon successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on Tuesday, 19 May 2020. We would like to congratulate him warmly and wish him all the best for his future career!

A number of conditions must be met in order for utilization-focused policy advice to become a reality on a wider scale. Researchers from various institutes, including ISTP Member Prof. David Kaufmann, propose a six-point checklist for developing effective policy advice. They argue that in addition to invest in science communication for the general public and politicians, a specific form of policy advice, that is, policy-prescriptive evidence-based information, should become available. 

Societies face increasingly complex and dynamic problems, with climate change being one of the most notable examples. Researchers from the ETH Energy Politics Group, including ISTP member Prof. Tobias Schmidt, investigated the interaction between regulatory instruments to address such problems. Based on a case study on energy efficiency in buildings in Switzerland, they found a symbiotic interaction between public and private regulation that leads to ratcheting-up of regulatory stringency.

In shaking our society to its core Covid-​19 shows that we must adopt a far broader perspective to tackle the complex socio-​ecological problems humanity faces, says Jaboury Ghazoul, associate members of ISTP. (Re-​post from ETH Zukunftsblog)

The transportation sector is one of the largest contributors to global CO₂. In a study published in Environmental Research Letters, Gracia Brückmann and Prof. Thomas Bernauer examined public support for, and the political feasibility of policy options for promoting EV adoption. Based on a choice experiment, they find that pull measures, such as subsidies for electric cars, attract more public support, and support levels do not decrease much when funding options are revealed.

What does the COVID-19 crisis imply for the energy transition required to keep global warming at bay? A commentary written by Bjarne Steffen, Florian Egli, Michael Pahle and ETH Prof. Tobias Schmidt aims to help energy policymakers navigate through the crisis. In their view, structuring the challenges that arise in different time horizons and offering guiding principles for responses are most useful at this stage.

The execution of test runs with autonomous vehicles offers a good opportunity to assess public opinion. To examine public acceptance with objective criteria, the ISTP conducted a panel study with residents from the canton of Schaffhausen, Switzerland. The data collection and the results are presented in a report by Dr. Michael Wicki and Prof. Thomas Bernauer.

ISTP PhD Student David Kretzer will give an online lecture on lighting and crime ("Beleuchtung und Kriminalität"), as part of the "10. Straßenbeleuchtungstage" Symposium, on Thursday, 07. May 2020, at 10.15.

Dennis Kolcava, Lukas Rudolph and Prof. Thomas Bernauer examined public preferences on extraterritorial social and environmental regulation, corporate self-regulation, and the interplay between them. Their analysis, based on a vignette survey experiment in Switzerland, was published in Journal of European Public Policy.

An insightful study on the impact of on-farm storage by Dr. Michael Brander, ETH Prof. Thomas Bernauer and Dr. Matthias Huss highlights the need for greater consideration of improved on-farm storage as a means for reducing severe food insecurity. The results of their study, which is based on a randomized control trial in Tanzania, and data collected through SMS-based mobile phone surveys, were published in Food Policy.

The International Resource Panel (IRP) recently published a compilation of factsheets on Natural Resource Use. The data analysis and the text were prepared by the Swiss Minerals Observatory researchers Livia Cabernard, Stephan Pfister and Prof. Stefanie Hellweg, in collaboration with researchers from the United Nations Environment Programme and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

ETH4D Research Challenges aim to develop effective solutions for poverty reduction combining technologies, policies and a profound understanding of human behaviour. The research questions for this special call focus on mitigating the negative impact of a pandemic/epidemic on people’s health or livelihoods living on the African continent.

ETH researchers analysed various possibilities for reducing the net CO₂ emissions of the chemical industry to zero. Their conclusion? The chemical industry can in fact have a carbon-​neutral future. (Re-​post from ETH News)

To slow down the spread of the Coronavirus, the population has been instructed to stay at home. This measure consequently has a major impact on our daily mobility behaviour. But who is being affected, and how? The MOBIS : COVID-19 research project is a continuation of the original MOBIS study. The aim of the project is to get a picture of how the crisis is affecting mobility and everyday life in Switzerland. The first results are now available, and the analysis will be extended in the coming weeks.

We are delighted to announce the release of our new video statement series “ISTP4Public” focusing on ISTP-related research with high public relevance. The first video of this series sheds light on the recent study by Lukas Fesenfeld, Michael Wicki, Yixian Sun & Prof. Thomas Bernauer on food system transformation.

A new article on political populism and public support for climate mitigation by Dr. Robert A. Huber from University of Salzburg, PhD Candidate at ETH Zurich Lukas Paul Fesenfeld and ETH Prof. Thomas Bernauer was published in Climate Policy. Their study assesses whether populism could affect citizen support for climate mitigation policies. It also investigates to what extent frames about elite responsiveness are important heuristics for individuals´ preferences concerning climate policies.

A new study on response preparedness to influenza epidemic by Marcello Marini & Dr. Ndaona Chokani from ETH Zurich, PhD Student at the ETH Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Sciences Cyril Brunner and ETH Prof. Reza S. Abhari was recently published in Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory. Their work is highly relevant to the current situation in light of latest developments in the Coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak.

A new article on food system transformation by PhD Candidate at ETH Zurich Lukas Paul Fesenfeld, Postdoctoral Researcher at ETH Zurich Michael Wicki, Dr Yixian Sun from the University of Bath, and ETH Prof. Thomas Bernauer was published in Nature Food. This study examines how potentially effective policy instruments may be designed and combined so as to reduce public backlash and ensure political feasibility of transforming the food system.

An insightful article on the provision of humanitarian protection by Philipp Lutz, ETH Zurich Prof. David Kaufmann & Anna Stünzi was recently published in the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS).

A recent article on shared autonomous vehicles (AVs) by Postdoctoral Researcher at ETH Zurich Michael Wicki, ISTP PhD Student Sergio Guidon, PhD Candidate at the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems Felix Becker, ETH Zurich Prof. Dr. Thomas Bernauer and Prof. Dr. Kay Axhausen was published in Research in Transportation Business & Management.

A new review article by ETH Zurich Prof. Dr. Thomas Bernauer and Prof. Dr. Tobias Böhmelt from University of Essex on conflict and cooperation over transboundary freshwater resources was published in Nature Sustainability. This study documents the progress in understanding the drivers of water-related cooperation and conflict and indicates that, thus far, the prevailing response is cooperation, albeit non-violent conflict is quite frequent, too.

We are happy to have Megan Seipp per February 1^st as Ph.D. student at our Institute – a warm welcome to Megan! She started a Ph.D. - project as part of Minerals Research Group’s team and she will be sharing room UNO C 14.

Désirée Ruppen, PhD candidate at the Institute of Science, Technology and Policy at ETH Zurich, is currently working on a project called “Community-​based water quality monitoring of Deka River in Zimbabwe”. The term “Community-based” means that scientists are working in close collaboration with community members who live along Deka River and are impacted by water pollution. Local communities have already initiated a mediation process in order to improve the environmental conditions.

The Geneva Science-Policy Interface (GSPI) works at the intersection of science and policy, leveraging the synergy between actors of international Geneva and an extensive network of researchers to promote the development of effective practices. In 2020, the Impact Collaboration Programme (ICP) will give particular attention to projects that develop or apply methodologies with the aim to foster data-driven decision-making.

The Swiss Daily Newspaper Tages-Anzeiger recently published an insightful article about the preliminary results of an ETH Zurich Mobility research project. According to these, electric mobility is not suitable for mass use yet. “Charging stations close to apartment facilities should change that,” says ETH Prof. Thomas Bernauer, who gave a talk together with various experts in the field of Electric Mobility on Tuesday, January 14, 2020.

A recent publication on PS: Political Science & Politics by ETH Prof. David Kaufmann and Prof. Mara Sidney from Rutgers University-Newark on urban policy-making. This symposium suggests that to understand contemporary societal transformation — and political and policy processes more generally — the policies that cities create and implement are essential objects of study.

A recent publication on Global Environmental Politics by Prof. Dr. Thomas Bernauer and several colleagues from various institutions on reviewing the evolution of international environmental law.

A session on Urban Borderlands at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2020 is organized by Dr Deljana Iossifova from the University of Manchester and ISTP PhD student David Kostenwein.

Dr. Lukas Rudolph published an article in the Journal of European Public Policy analysing the role of turnout in the United Kingdom European Union membership (“Brexit”) referendum.

ISTP PhD student Gracia Brückmann investigated the impact of user experience and information on car holders’ perceptions of EV attributes, and preferences regarding policies to promote energy-efficient cars. The results were presented at the 4^th AIEE Energy Symposium in Rome on Wednesday, December 11, 2019.

We are delighted to announce that ISTP PhD student Michael Wicki successfully defended his thesis on Wednesday, 18 December 2019. We would like to congratulate him warmly and wish him all the best for his future career!

Call for a graphics design/report writing job under student research assistant terms in the project Swiss Environmental Panel of ETH Zurich.

As part of Swiss Mobility Lab’s work at ISTP, the Lab hosted an interactive workshop on Monday, 9 December 2019 to share its research results and exchange ideas with invited policy-​​makers and planners.

The Swiss Environmental Panel explores public opinion in Switzerland in relation to environmental preferences and behavior, changes therein, and linkages to preferences and behavior in other policy realms.

The world is not on track with regard to its CO₂ emissions. In order to achieve the Paris climate targets, we all need to show courage and commitment, says Nicolas Gruber - Professor of Environmental Physics at the Department of Environmental Systems Science and Associate Member of ISTP. (Re-​post from ETH Zukunftsblog)

Stephan Pfister, scientific collaborator at the Institute of Environmental Engineering of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering and senior researcher at the Insitute of Science, Technology and Policy, is listed as "Highly Cited Researcher 2019" in the analysis of the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Group. (Re-​post from D-BAUG News)

News and information platform SWI swissinfo.ch recently published an article about the retreat of glaciers and the potential water conflicts arise. Paolo Burlando, Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources Management at ETH Zurich, highlights that conflicts over water resources are going to be significantly increased in the near future.

A recent publication on the Environmental Research Letters by Michael Wicki, Lukas Fesenfeld, and Prof. Dr. Thomas Bernauer on identifying politically feasible and effective policy-packages aimed at greening the transportation sector. They do so, using choice experiments with representative samples of citizens from China, Germany, and the USA.

ETH researchers have shown that we can use the structure of urban road networks to predict their traffic capacity. This information enables urban and transportation planners to quantify how changes will influence traffic volumes. (Re-​post from ETH News)

A new publication on the Journal of Transport Geography by Sergio Guidon, Michael Wicki, Prof. Dr. Thomas Bernauer and Prof. Dr. Kay Axhausen on the importance of social networks in explaining residential location decisions.

In the context of increasingly complex policy challenges and eroding trust in science and public institutions, how can we support effective, evidence-based policies to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Aiming at achieving the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, the World Meteorological Organization hosts a two-day closed event in Geneva from Wednesday, December 11 to Friday, December 13.