Multiple challenges affect the effectiveness of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures, such as accountability, intergenerational justice and developing countries’ increased participation in greenhouse gas emissions. The high complexity of information surrounding models’ assumptions, results, and scenarios related to climate change also presents a challenge, especially when communicating with policymakers. In this context, support tools such as policy platforms can help bridge the science-policy gap by allowing policymakers to understand scenarios and available policy levers, enabling a better understanding of relevant concepts and models or serving as hubs for disseminating best practices and success stories. Available literature often evaluates support tools within the context of use by regular citizens, making it unclear how policymakers perceive support tools and how well they meet their needs, pointing to an important knowledge gap. This thesis explores policymakers’ and policy advisors’ perceptions of the usefulness of climate change mitigation and adaptation (CCMA) policy platforms and the characteristics of such policy platforms they prefer in order to use them as support tools. A collective case study was conducted with ten CCMA policy platforms within the context of the EU-funded Horizon 2020 programme. In addition, interviews (11) and surveys (9) with policymakers and policymakers’ advisors in the Netherlands and seven other countries within and beyond the EU were conducted. Nine characteristics of CCMA policy platforms were identified: Transparency & Credibility of information, Ease of use, Flexibility of use, Accessibility & Portability, Education & Awareness, Communication of complex information, Data visualisation & interactivity, Actively maintained and supported, and Security & privacy. Interviews and surveys show that accessibility, relevance, applicability, and credibility were identified as the primary factors driving the perception of policymakers about the usefulness of CCMA policy platforms and four groups of characteristics were identified with decreasing levels of priority for policymakers: mandatory or must-have (formed by communication of complex information, free and open access to the tool, transparency regarding data sources and limitations, and high level of detail for spatial and temporal data); highly desirable or should-have (formed by availability of training and learning functionalities, availability of detailed documentation on concepts and models, interactive and easy-to-navigate elements, and availability of a web-based platform); ‘nice to have’ or could-have (user stories from policymakers or communities, availability of very recent data, ability to import user data/export results, and ability to modify parameters and run custom analyses), and indifferent (availability of languages beyond English and the ability to use the tool in mobile phones or tablets). Four main recommendations are made to improve the design and use of CCMA policy platforms: Incorporating systematic reviews of existing CCMA policy platforms as part of projects developing such platforms, involving boundary organisations in the development and use of CCMA policy platforms, developing CCMA policy platforms with longer life expectancies and developing CCMA policy platforms flexible for different needs and preferences of policymakers. With these results, new CCMA policy platforms can be developed with a better understanding of how useful policymakers perceive them and what they want from these support tools.

This research lays forward a framework where supplier segmentation, supplier collaboration models, and supplier development strategies are integrated, specifically for remanufacturing. As remanufacturing is gaining popularity this pioneering research may serve as a first step towards more research for companies that are willing to drive remanufacturing across the whole supply chain. This research compares two proven supplier segmentation methods and links it with supplier new collaboration and existing supplier development strategies. As a result of this study, an integrated framework is proposed. For future research, the framework can be applied to other cases or the framework could be extended.

This thesis researches how actors of government, industry and academia in an international context should collaborate in order to successfully carry out knowledge/technology transfer. The case study is about Dutch-Moroccan international Triple Helix collaboration in horticulture.

Over the years, the marine contracting sector has faced many challenges surrounding safety, the economic fluctuations because of the oil crisis and now tackling the sustainability challenge. Years of experience in the offshore industry, a heavy industry that contributes significantly to the climate crisis through its environmental impact, is deemed to change its strategy and way of working. However, this challenge is relatively new and asks for a new approach to move along with the fast-changing requirements of clients and external regulations that can have financial consequences if one is not acting now. Engineering solutions to reduce and prevent impact are already aligned, thinking of shore power, carbon capture and storage techniques, and alternative fuels on the vessels. Nevertheless, the total environmental impact goes beyond the implementation of these technologies. Making a change on the total impact of a marine contractor asks for a behavioural change within the organization, towards decision-making taking care of the environment. Finding a balance in actions that lead to investing in sustainable technologies and setting every employee to actions that flourish within to contribute to the company's sustainability ambitions will help improve their environmental performance. This research explores how to stimulate and support sustainable behaviour within project scope in a marine contracting organization through designing a suitable intervention. This intervention combines the design principles discovered with theories from gamification. From creative thinking and exploring the different means of gamification in a sustainability context, gamification was chosen as a suitable format for the intervention. The objective of the intervention is to stimulate people to think of sustainable solutions in their work by making them aware of environmental impact and actions. More important, it is a fun and interactive introduction to highlight the contribution one has to the total environmental footprint of the company. The game is designed to be played by project teams that start with the project's conceptual design phase within a marine contractor organization. The game's purpose is to become aware of the environmental impact indicators and actions and to share individual values by deciding what investments to make in reducing the impact of the fictitious project. Players are challenged during the game to make strategic decisions to design their fictitious wind project that will have an as low as possible environmental impact. This is to make sustainability and environmental impact more tangible for the project team and ensure that employees can start discussions on sustainability within the marine contracting industry from a common ground and experience on sustainability.

Impact investors can play a major role in fighting inequalities regarding gender and increasing Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) for women. This is important as societies that value women and men as equal are safer, healthier and have better economic prosperity. Nonetheless, impact investors face many challenges to be effective and research into the topic is still lacking. To assess how impact investors can be effective in increasing EDI, this thesis will perform a case study in the form of a system analysis of which the subject will be the Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance Project (AAWDCP). This methodology in combination with in-depth interviews led to the identification of a preferred policy for this particular project. Additionally, the findings led to more general recommendations for impact investors: if they want to enhance EDI in their projects, they must consistently work with local organizations and put the needs of the impacted community ahead of their own KPIs. Furthermore, in order to be able to achieve increased EDI in the projects they finance, impact investors must first increase EDI within their own investment teams.