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Beyond the urgency of rethinking XX-century urbanization characterized by endless structural expansion strategy, we need to engage urban systems by means of emerging concepts of adaptability and systemic transitions due to climate change effects. Emission reduction and spatial compactness, reuse and recycle, flexibility and complex balances have a profound impact on the spatial dimension and the quality of the urban environment, therefore architectural and urban design are deeply involved in facing ecological transitions and envisioning new strategies to implement the quality of the cities we live in. How to face these emergent challenges? What are the ongoing design strategies for climate change effects? what will be the role of design in transitional systems? Do we recognize it as an opportunity to improve the public space? Design Actions for Shifting Condition is a collaborative effort, and aims to present, from an architectural and urban design point of view, methodologies, practices, and approaches to overcome existing and new fragilities for Cities in Times of Transition. Theory, Territories & Transitions Projects

During their lifespan, products can cause severe environmental and social impacts in all stages of their lifecycle. The circular economy with its focus on closing and slowing material and energy loops is a means to reduce these broad impacts. Circular economy forms the basis of the EU’s ambitions to reconcile present economic activities within the planetary boundaries while meeting its aim for climate neutrality by 2050. Electronic and electronics equipment is a key product focus area for the European Commission, during the waste stage. Similar to other EU Directives, current electronics waste legislation will be updated in the coming years. The transition to a circular economy will require new and modified roles and responsibilities for actors, e.g. government, businesses and citizens. This report provides a detailed exploration of the governance issues within the current electronics waste policy, focusing on the instrument of extended producer responsibility. Through three detailed case studies of Italy, France and the Netherlands, the key organisational and policy features are explained, and the strengths and weaknesses are outlined. Based on the analysis of the case studies, we argue the subsequent developments for extended producer responsibility for waste electrical and electronic equipment to include the four followings aspects in its development: 1. Introducing the modulation of fees at the European level: the fee paid by producers for the collection and recycling of their products should be modulated based on the circularity and sustainability of the product in question. Fee modulation is allowed under the current EU WEEE law. However, it is not applied systematically. This is already done in France for EEE based on the standardisation of components, weight and specific materials. Fee modulation guidelines have been developed by the OECD. However, the key aspect to the ability of the fees to affect product design is the size of the fee. Studies have illustrated that current fees are between 0.2 and 2% of the product price. Higher levels of fees, e.g. more than the 2% product price, combined with a visible fee are recommended to be implemented at the EU level; 2. Broadening the scope of which actors are included in national EPR systems while promoting high R-strategies: the types of actors and responsibilities within the extended producer responsibility schemes need to be broadened. This is possible under EU law and has partly been done in France, where civic actors are now included in the functioning and directing of the schemes. However, the transition to a circular economy requires the promotion of more than just recycling of EEE to the other R-strategies. This requires systematically integrating the other economic actors in the design and functioning of the system, e.g. Repair, Remanufacturing etc.; 3. Measures to promote the highest value recycling of collected WEEE: products that reach their end-of-life they need to be effectively collected and treated to the best standard. The current targets and quality measures promote the collection and recycling of electronics based on mass, not on a specific material or quality criteria. A standard for the treatment of WEEE EN 45558 is available, although it is not mandatory. We recommend this standard be made mandatory across the EU. In addition, we call for a systematic pan-EU assessment of available and future recycling technologies, possibilities for urban mining from WEEE, and funding options needed to direct this, specifically in the area of critical raw materials recovery from electronics; 4. Expanding the scope of EPR beyond national borders: the scope of extended producer responsibility schemes needs to be expanded to account for the multiple uses of the product and the responsibility when products move internationally. While EPR has shown great ability to shift WEEE away from landfilling. The complexity of systems, rules and their enforcement between member states and beyond has led to varying national rules and issues of transparency between jurisdictions. The quantity of producers, importers, distributors and second-hand sellers makes the tracking and monitoring of WEEE within and between national jurisdictions challenging, especially for the export of collected and secondary products. In particular, this relates to the need for a solid understanding of the quantities of WEEE moving between jurisdictions and suitable mechanisms in place to finance the appropriate disposal. The highly international nature of WEEE supply chains and global trade and flows of WEEE have led some to call for a ‘global EPR’ or ‘ultimate producer responsibility’ system.

Following its mission and vision, eScience Center develops research software in collaboration with researchers. Availability of research software is the crucial first step, but uptake by the research community is required to make it alive and sustainable. An efficient way to facilitate the uptake is to bring together the developers and potential users through hands-on training workshops, which allow researchers to learn the software directly from its developers. Likewise, the developers can get direct feedback from the domain experts, which can help them to improve their software. This project aims such a workshop series on environment and sustainability-related eScience Center research software for the researchers of the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), which is a world-renown education and research institution in the field. Besides enabling the growth of the user communities by involving highly skilled researchers, the events will also support better collaboration between the institutions. This proposal is funded by the Netherlands eScience Center's Fellowship Programme 2022-2023.

The main goal of the AGROinLOG project is the demonstration of Integrated Biomass Logistic Centres (IBLCs) for food and non-food products, evaluating their technical, environmental and economic feasibility. Applying IBLCs in existing agro-industries can have a positive impact on the final product price, giving a clear competitive strength to these agro-industries in comparison with a new biomass supply business that is built from scratch. The main challenges are being able to integrate logistics, harvesting and equipment in food and non-food applications, and ensuring the marketability of the final bio-commodities. The first task of the AGROinLOG project was to provide a conceptual description of the features and characteristics of an IBLC. With this IBLC description the researchers intend to provide a theoretical framework that builds further on results from previous projects (such as SUCELLOGucellog), describing the current thoughts on Agro-Industry Logistics Centres (ALCs). Proceedings of the 25th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 12-15 June 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 200-203

Transport and Logistics

The wood pellet use in the heating and electricity sector has recorded a steady growth in the last years. IEA bioenergy task 40 carried out an update of the situation on the national pellet markets in the most relevant pellet producing countries and the global development as well. Various country specific data is collected and compiled for more than 30 countries, containing updated information about regulatory framework, production, consumption, price trends, quality standards and trade aspects. The analysis confirmed the positive development in terms of production and consumption of wood pellets in almost all countries. In 2015, more than26Mt of wood pellets have been produced and consumed worldwide. Technologies and markets become more mature. Increased international pellet trade needs to be supported by adequate frame condition not only for commerce, but also with regard to sustainability issues. Proceedings of the 25th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 12-15 June 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 1909-1912

Basic infrastructure services – water and sanitation, waste collection and management, transport, energy, and housing – form the foundation upon which cities are built. Sustainable and equitable provision of services is key to combating climate change, eradicating poverty and meeting targets set out in international sustainability agendas. However, even as the language of the sustainability transitions literature is being appropriated by governments, social movements and practitioners, the concepts of sustainability and sustainability transitions remain ill-defined and often narrowly applied. We conduct a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of the sustainability transitions literature on urban basic infrastructure services to tap into prevailing representations and conceptions. Findings show that the delivery of sustainable urban services is discursively framed as a predominantly institutional and economic challenge, favouring a top-down techno-managerial approach to transitions that applies technical fixes to environmental problems at the expense of social dimensions of sustainability. While some studies, such as those with a focus on the Global South and/or water and sanitation services, engage to a greater degree with issues such as justice and equality, they still tend towards technical and economic solutions. An integrated approach encompassing all dimensions of sustainability and a broader understanding of infrastructure services not as separate, single-purpose technologies but as part of interconnected systems with multiple social, economic and environmental objectives is needed if we are to transition to a more sustainable urban future. Management in the Built Environment Urban Development Management

This paper deals with developing an indicator system for monitoring, analyzing, and assessing sustainability of airports. The sustainability implies simultaneous increasing of the overall socialeconomic benefits and increasing at a slower rate, stagnating, and/or diminishing of the negative impacts of these airports during the specified medium- to long-term period of time. The indicator system consists of the indicators and their measures reflecting the airport operational, economic, social, and environmental dimension of performances. These include effects-benefits and impacts-externalities of the airport operations. The effects-benefits include mainly the airport contribution to local employment, regional (local) economy, and consequently GDP (Gross Domestic Product). The impacts-externalities embrace local noise, air pollution, congestion and delays, land use (take), and waste. The particular indicators and their measures are specified respecting interests and attitudes of particular actors involved such as users and providers of air transport services, private and public investors, governmental organizations, local community members, lobbies and pressure groups, and general public. An application of the proposed indicator system has shown that it could be considered as an initial step in developing a “tool” for assessing the current and prospective level of the airport sustainable development.