Not Just Algorithms: Strategically Addressing Consumer Impacts in Information Retrieval

Information Retrieval (IR) systems have a wide range of impacts on consumers. We offer maps to help identify goals IR systems could—or should—strive for, and guide the process of scoping how to gauge a wide range of consumer-side impacts and the possible interventions needed to address these effects. Grounded in prior work on scoping...

Mitigation strategies to achieve sustainable development: Insights from the Carbon Footprint of Manufactured Capital

In the spirit of equity, all humans should be entitled to a life congruous with a very high level of well-being. The development needed to achieve this would however heavily rely on manufactured assets, the production of which negatively impacts the climate system. Both efficiency- and sufficiency-based strategies have been put forward as...

Including equity considerations in resilient transport network planning and analysis: A flood impact perspective

Transportation plays a pivotal role in society in the accessibility of socio-economic functions, such as education and health services. At the same time these transport networks are put under pressure due to increasing demands and the often-increasing occurrence of climate-induced events. To increase resilience of the transportation network...

Disadvantaged communities have lower access to urban infrastructure

Disparity in spatial accessibility is strongly associated with growing inequalities among urban communities. Since improving levels of accessibility for certain communities can provide them with upward social mobility and address social exclusion and inequalities in cities, it is important to understand the nature and distribution of spatial...

Resource Allocation Equity in the China’s Rural Three-Tier Healthcare System

The rural three-tier healthcare system is an essential part of the Chinese healthcare service system. To ensure rural residents’ equal access to such healthcare services, it is necessary to examine the current status of the healthcare system in rural China and formulate corresponding improvement suggestions. This study therefore collects the...

Mapping key features and dimensions of the inclusive city: A systematic bibliometric analysis and literature study

Many local governments engaging in sustainable urban development also have a growing interest in becoming inclusive too, brand themselves as such and develop policies to become inclusive cities. However, knowing what exactly this entails and how it can be achieved is not always quite straightforward and requires thorough theoretical and...

Accounting for Multisectoral Dynamics in Supporting Equitable Adaptation Planning: A Case Study on the Rice Agriculture in the Vietnam Mekong Delta

The need for explicitly considering equity in climate change adaptation planning is increasingly being recognized. However, evaluations of adaptation often adopt an aggregated perspective, while disaggregation of results is important to learn about who benefits when and where. A typical example is adaptation of rice agriculture in the Vietnam...

Implementing social sustainability in area development projects in the Netherlands

During recent decades, urbanization processes and changing population compositions in European cities have underlined the relevance of social sustainability for urban development. Despite a growing amount of research on the social sphere of sustainability, the actual implementation of social sustainability in area development projects remains...

Power Literacy: Towards a Socially Just, Decolonial and Democratic Design Process

This report outlines the design process, research activities and results of a graduation thesis on power and privilege in multi-stakeholder public and social sector design processes. Due to a perceived gap in the design field, both in education and practice, the aim of this project is to support designers in becoming more aware of power dynamics...

The Future Retail Experience: Engaging shoppers through experiential retail concepts

The aim of this project was to propose several explorative experiential retail concepts which could strengthen and/or induce the value of the physical retail environment for millennials within developing omnichannel strategies. Additionally, such experiences desirably enhanced the bond between consumer, brand, and product through immersive...

'Evaluating the implementation of transit signal priority on a bus route, with a focus on equity

This study evaluates the implementation of a Transit Signal Priority (TSP) system on a bus network and proposes a new transport appraisal method that focuses on equity to determine its feasibility. The main research question to be answered is ‘What are the equity and efficiency impacts of introducing transit signal priority on a city bus network...

Sustainability, Ethics and Nuclear Energy: Escaping the Dichotomy

In this paper we suggest considering sustainability as a moral framework based on social justice, which can be used to evaluate technological choices. In order to make sustainability applicable to discussions of nuclear energy production and waste management, we focus on three key ethical questions, namely: (i) what should be sustained; (ii) why...

Assessing the accessibility and equity of the urban public transport services

So far, the fair distribution (equity) of public transport service has barely/not been considered when appraising new PT lines, although a more equitable system could lead to higher (socio-economic) benefits. The reason is that there is little guidance in the measurement of accessibility and the measurement and assessment of the equity of it....

Policies lost in translation? Unravelling water reform processes in African waterscapes

Since the 1980s a major change took place in public policies for water resources management. The role of governments shifted under this reform process from an emphasis on investment in the development, operation and maintenance of water infrastructure to a focus on managing water resources systems by stipulating general frameworks and defining...

A method to evaluate equitable accessibility: Combining ethical theories and accessibility-based approaches

In this paper, we present the case that traditional transport appraisal methods do not sufficiently capture the social dimensions of mobility and accessibility. However, understanding this is highly relevant for policymakers to understand the impacts of their transport decisions. These dimensions include the distribution of mobility and...

Congestion pricing schemes controlled by the gMFD: A comprehensive design and appraisal to bridge the engineering and economic perspective

Charging drivers for the congestion they cause is a well-known concept among economists, traffic engineers and transport professionals. Many studies have been performed to explore and better address this issue during the history of transport economics and in recent years the first congestion pricing schemes have been finally implemented in some...

Equity and the Ethics of Water Governance

Water is recognized to pose some very urgent questions in the near future. A significant number of people are deprived of clean drinking water and sanitation services, with an accordingly high percentage of people dying from water borne diseases. At the same time, an increasing percentage of the global population lives in areas that are at risk...

Building regulatory enforcement regimes: Comparative analysis of private sector involvement in the enforcement of public building regulations

It is often assumed that traditional regulatory regimes centered on governmental action will benefit from greater private sector involvement. And, under the catchy phrase "from government to governance" globally a wide variety of hybrid forms of governance has emerged. However, little empirical insight exists in the actual effects of such...