Agile and adaptive governance in crisis response: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

Countries around the world have had to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak with limited information and confronting many uncertainties. Their ability to be agile and adaptive has been stressed, particularly in regard to the timing of policy measures, the level of decision centralization, the autonomy of decisions and the balance between change...

Pandemic programming: How COVID-19 affects software developers and how their organizations can help

Context: As a novel coronavirus swept the world in early 2020, thousands of software developers began working from home. Many did so on short notice, under difficult and stressful conditions.<br/><br/>Objective: This study investigates the effects of the pandemic on developers’ wellbeing and productivity.<br/><br/>Method: A questionnaire survey...

Responsible innovation in synthetic biology in response to COVID-19: the role of data positionality

Synthetic biology, as an engineering approach to biological systems, has the potential to disruptively innovate the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. Data accessibility and differences in data-usage capabilities are important factors in shaping this innovation landscape. In this paper, the data that underpin synthetic...

Domestication Will Shape Future Public Spaces: A Report from Rotterdam

This commentary aims to provide a window on the future by studying actions, taken to control the spreading of the corona virus, while obviously affecting public space over a year. What has been the effects on public space directly linked to these actions during the pandemic; what values play a role, and what can we expect for the future? We have...

Shared Mobility to Compensate for Public Transport Demand under the impacts of a pandemic crisis: The Case of Bike Sharing System in Milan during COVID–19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented challenge for the public transport system. The capacity of the transport system has been significantly reduced due to the imposition of social distancing measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. People remain skeptical about the use of public transport and prefer alternatives for their...

How Culture Influences Individual Behavior During a Pandemic: A Social Simulation of the COVID-19 Crisis

Since its first appearance in Wuhan (China), countries have been employing, to varying degrees of success, a series of non-pharmaceutical interventions aimed at limiting the spread of SARS-CoV-2 within their populations. In this article, we build on scientific work that demonstrates that culture is part of the explanation for the observed...

Working from home: Should we stimulate it for transport reasons?: Analysis of travel behaviour during COVID-19 in the Netherlands

The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management is committed to enhancing the accessibility and sustainability of the Dutch mobility system. Working from home (WFH) has been discussed as a policy lever to decrease commute travel and, thereby, congestion for decades. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this discussion regained momentum. WFH...