May
Co-creating Public Lighting Technology and Policy for Informal Settlements
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".
Assessing Impacts on the Natural Resource Soil in Life Cycle Assessment: Methods for Compaction and Water Erosion
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.
Congratulations to Sergio Guidon for successfully defending his PhD Thesis
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!
Utilization-focused scientific policy advice: a six-point checklist
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.
Governing complex societal problems: The impact of private on public regulation through technological change
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.
Escaping the Fly Room
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)