Urban Living Lab RoadMapping Toolkit
BACKGROUND/HISTORY AND CONTEXT OF THE WORKSHOP
This workshop will be convened as a part of UNaLab (www.unalab.eu) a Horizon 2020 project. The UNaLab project aims to develop smarter, more inclusive, more resilient and increasingly sustainable societies through innovative nature-based solutions (NBS). The UNaLab partners (including 10 municipalities, research, business and industry) commit to address the challenges that cities around the world are facing today, by focusing on climate and water related issues, within an innovative and citizen-driven paradigm. Within UNaLab project, we have developed a scientific framework for Urban Living Labs and this framework is contniusly developing by the help of feedback that we are collecting from the UNaLaB partners as well as other Living Lab experts.
MAIN AIM / OBJECTIVE
The ULL RoadMapping Toolkit workshop aims to bring together participants from the three front-runner cities, seven follower cities, as well as other Living Lab experts and participants of Open Living Lab Days conference who are interested in this field in order to further our knowledge on ULL framework and its key components; and at the same time to discover influential factors on setting up and running an ULL that we are not yet aware of them. The ULL framework has initially been developed according to the previous literature in the topic, and then has been iteratively refined based on the feedback received from the UNaLab cities in two workshops followed by an open ended questionnaire.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES
The participants will gain an in-depth knowledge of the ULL framework and its key components. This understanding can serve as a basis for the participants (including experts and city representatives) to know how to setup, govern, and manage their urban living labs and the factors influencing their innovations and development processes. The Urban Living Lab RoadMapping Toolkit will also enable the participants to answer questions such as who should be engaged and how, what methods should be applied to engage citizens, who starts the process, who is responsible to run the experimentation process, and how the governance model of an urban living lab should be structured.
BRIEF OUTLINE / METHODOLOGY
In this workshop, we will follow an interactive knowledge sharing approach across mixed groups of participants (City representatives, Living Lab experts, etc) that enables us to have creative conversations around different tables, by means of seven sets of cards to develop the road map, plan and timeline for an ULL.
The session begins by introducing ULL framework and its key components, followed by a discussion around different tables (4-8 persons per table) to develop the road map for their own ULL by using sets of cards representing the key components of an ULL (i.e., governance and management structure, financing models, urban context, nature-based solutions, partners and citizens, methods and finally ICT-infrastructure). Empty cards will also be available in all categories when necessary. The workshop ends by sharing insights of the different tables with the rest of the participants and reflecting on the results from all tables.
Workshop Facilitators
Abdolrasoul Habibipour
PhD In Information Systems
Abdolrasoul Habibipour
PhD In Information SystemsAbdolrasoul Habibipour (Ph.D.) is a postdoctoral researcher in Information Systems at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden and managing director of Botnia Living Lab, Sweden. His research focuses on participatory design and user engagement in living lab context, with a particular emphasis on users’ motivations and needs. Abdolrasoul has experience teaching and supervising students at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and has published several journal and conference articles in his research topic. He has been involved in different international innovation and research projects such as Privacy Flag, USEMP and U4IoT projects and is currently working on UNaLab, LiLaCC and ACCLab projects, all of which are financed by the European Commission.