The Basilica of Sacré Coeur de Montmartre as a historical monument

Contested heritage has become a topic of significant importance in recent years, particularly in preserving historical monuments. This thesis examines the challenges of contested heritage through the case study of the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre, a religious monument recently recognised as a historical building despite its...

Rethinking the Role of AI with Physicians in Oncology: Revealing Perspectives from Clinical and Research Workflows

Significant and rapid advancements in cancer research have been attributed to Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, AI’s role and impact on the clinical side has been limited. This discrepancy manifests due to the overlooked, yet profound, differences in the clinical and research practices in oncology. Our contribution seeks to scrutinize...

Fairness by Discussion: An Alternative View on the Fairness of Protocols in Automated Negotiation

The field of automated negotiation promises to improve negotiations, thus, a fair outcome and process should also be considered when building these systems. However, issues exist with computational approaches to fairness with which the field of computer science is mainly concerned. To this end, we propose a new approach to fairness based on that...

Rejuvenating the Core of Umm Al-Fahem: Highlighting the importance of the core of Umm Al-Fahem, and how to make it socially integrated and spatially accessible

Umm Al-Fahem is an Arab city in Israel, a city of social, geographic, historic, and political importance. Once a small village, Umm Al Fahem developed to be the third-largest Arab city in the state of Israel. It endured several hegemony stages of occupation and mandates, which shaped its socio-spatial systems through the years. The social and...

Contestable AI by Design: Towards a Framework

As the use of AI systems continues to increase, so do concerns over their lack of fairness, legitimacy and accountability. Such harmful automated decision-making can be guarded against by ensuring AI systems are contestable by design: responsive to human intervention throughout the system lifecycle. Contestable AI by design is a small but...

Eurovision Song Contest 2020 as a catalyst for urban renewal: A research about short-term cultural events to increase positive impacts for the city and local communities

Cities coop with the problem of increasing demand for housing due to urbanisation, while trying to maintain and improve its attractiveness and city image. Improving attractiveness and the city image can be achieved by urban renewal. In Rotterdam, The National Programme Rotterdam-Zuid (NPRZ) was initiated to tackle the disadvantages and improve...

(Re)Levant: Former railway networks in the Levant as a backbone for regional cooperation and social inclusion

Island(s) of Exception: Investigating spatial planning as an instrument advocating cooperation within contested territories in Cyprus

The scope of this graduation project is the study of two domains, (1) territorialism and territoriality, (2) contested and conflicted environments. These domains are discussed in relation to spatial planning. The project examines the ongoing conflict in Cyprus as the main case study. Particularly, it studies the manifestations of territorialism...

[UN]WAR: Spatial Planning and Strategies for Social Cohesion in the Kashmir Valley, India

Planning in a conflict region is considered as one of the challenging discourses of urbanism due to extreme geopolitical and societal conditions. This research-design project addresses spatial planning, policies, and design in the contested areas, through the case of Kashmir which is a disputed geopolitical region between India and Pakistan. Due...

Seismic assessment of a lab-tested two-storey unreinforced masonry Dutch terraced house

The exploitation of geo-resources in the northern part of the Netherlands (Groningen region) is triggering shallow earthquakes, rising the need of assessing the current building stock. Being the region not prone to tectonic earthquakes, buildings are designed as wind-resistant systems and have specific characteristics that can limit their...

Contested heritage, memory and metamorphoses: Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana

The Italian fashion brand Fendi moved their headquarters to the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in the end of 2015. This iconic building, also known as the square Colosseum, is not only famous for its frequent appearance in movies, but also as one of the most important examples of architecture during the Italian fascist regime. The building was...

35°6′54″N 33°56′33″E Terra Incognita: Towards common imaginaries for a Shared Cyprus

Focusing on the case of Cyprus, the thesis explores the relationship between urban space and group conflict and the relevance of spatial planning and urban design practices in conflict resolution. –Urban– space is suggested as a prism through which to understand and address the challenges of the contested city. Famagusta, a city on the eastern...

Shear or bending? Experimental results on large t-shaped prestressed conrete beams

Experimental results of four shear tests on two large prestressed concrete beams are compared to nonlinear analysis and design code calculations. The beams have a length of 12 m and a depth of 1.3 m and are reinforced with stirrups and pre-tensioning. The four tests consist of a single point load at a distance of 2.7d from the support. A priori...

Contested issues game structuring approach - CIGAS workshop Houston report, results and reflection: Exploring stakeholder-based joint commitment to action for flood protection decision-making in the Houston Galveston Bay Area

CIGAS stands for Contested Issues Game Structuring Approach. CIGAS is a practice developed specifically for contested environments, which strives to enhance participant’s insight by means of game structuring and system modeling techniques. Within this practice participants are understood to have different interests and values. The purpose is...

Architectural Contestation

This dissertation addresses the reductive reading of Georges Bataille's work done within the field of architectural criticism and theory which tends to set aside the fundamental ‘broken’ totality of Bataille's oeuvre and also to narrowly interpret it as a mere critique of architectural form, consequently presenting it either as the negation of...

Analyzing and applying agent oriented programming methods for teaching purposes

In this thesis we discuss ways to improve teaching methods for agent oriented programming. The research approach consists of several steps. First data is gathered from groups of students participating in a first year agent programming project that uses the Unreal Tournament 2004 environment. The stronger and weaker groups are analyzed in a...