The office architecture of the 1970s and 1980s makes up a large part of Dutch office building stock, at about 30%. Most buildings are now in need of major renovation and often no longer correspond to today's aesthetic perception. In addition, the function of the buildings must be adapted to today's needs and technological standards. This is not least due to the rapidly changing world of work, especially after the climax of the Corona pandemic. In order to prevent the possible destruction of buildings or building parts with a potential to become protected heritage, this master project offers a first approach to collecting characteristics of this period for heritage and sustainability reasons. A focus is placed on those that lend themselves to a particularly sustainable strategy, as the study shows that the early sustainability movement of the 1970s also left its mark on the construction methods of the time. The results together with the results of a value assessment are applied to the adaptive re-design of the police building in the Mathildelaan in Eindhoven. Further, aspects with a particular sustainability perspective are incorporated in an extension. In this way, the existing building is integrated into a modern urban context.

After a large reorganisation within the police organisation, due to the formation of the Dutch National Police, the demand for real estate for the police is greatly reduced. Additionally, the requirements for the buildings are also changing. Therefore, in the upcoming years, about 700.000 square meters of police real estate will lose its function. During this graduation process, the possibilities for adaptive reuse for one of these police buildings, Huis ‘t Velde in Warnsveld, have been researched.

In order to work with Huis ‘t Velde, it was necessary to have a look at another group of buildings as well, besides the police buildings, namely country houses. A lot of country houses have lost their function as a private home during the course of the 20th century, among others because of the rising costs of maintenance of these relatively large buildings, and the surrounding estates. This makes the research and design for the adaptive reuse of Huis ‘t Velde even more relevant, since the findings might also be helpful for other country houses.
Most of the country houses have shown a strong development over time. They have different time layers, and each time layer has it’s own story. But nowadays most users aren’t aware of this. This led to the following research and design question: How can the architect integrate the stories behind the layers of time in Huis ‘t Velde in the adaptive redesign process in order to make these stories experienceable for future users?

In the research, 3 cases studies were researched, among others via a analysis matrix. From this, 3 main strategy’s of dealing with these time layers in the adaptive redesign process were found. But, an additional conclusion was that these 3 strategies were never used on their own, but in combination.

Therefore, in the design, different combinations were tested until a fitting combination was found for Huis ‘t Velde. An addition has been designed to the building as a new time layer. In the existing building parts, the most important, characteristic time layers were either conserved or reconstructed.

In this master thesis project is the topic sustainability in relation to the repurposing of Dutch (rural) estates investigated. Making an estate more sustainable has been researched on the basis of two redesign theories and several case studies. The research question was: ‘how can design approaches help in a contemporary reuse and redesign of a Dutch estate where both building, and nature, contribute to a sustainable design, and in particular for Huis ‘t Velde in Warnsveld?’. This research was conducted in response to the design assignment for the reuse of an estate in Warnsveld, Gelderland. This is done in collaboration with the Dutch Atelier Politie Bouwmeester, who is the current user of the building. The history and values of the existing building are relevant for a redesign. That is why also the history and typology of Dutch estates and in particular Huis 't Velde are examined.

The redesign focused on a repurpose of the monumental buildings and the surrounding area. There is a multifunctional design made with a museum, restaurant, memorial garden and residences. The redesign of the estate is done with an integral approach combining the qualities of the land and the buildings together with the aim to integrate green energy resources to make the estate sustainable for the future.

In Nederland en in de stad Delft wordt geluidhinder door autowegen ervaren door bewoners. Dit kan leiden tot een verminderde gezondheid. Het doel van dit onderzoek is uitvinden waar de geluidsnorm wordt overschreden en hoe dit verminderd zou kunnen worden. Hiervoor is de volgende onderzoeksvraag opgesteld: Waar in Delft wordt de geluidsnorm voor verkeersgeluid overschreden, welke fysische factoren van de wegen hebben effect op de geluidsoverschrijding en welke maatregelen zouden genomen kunnen worden? Om deze vraag te beantwoorden is een literatuurstudie gedaan en een geodata-analyse uitgevoerd. De verkregen geodata is omgezet in kaarten, vervolgens zijn hier ruimtelijke analyses op uitgevoerd. De conclusie is dat het overgrote deel van de wegen een te hoge geluidsbelasting heeft. De maximale snelheid of het wegdek zou hiervoor kunnen worden aangepast.

Huis ‘t Velde is an estate first mentioned in 1326 and located in Warnsveld, in the east of the Netherlands. During the analysis of the building and site it became clear that it fell under a particular typology. Huis ‘t Velde was known as ‘havezate’, a specific type of castle which provided privileges and political rights. It was an ensemble of estate and buildings that evolved over time and was used as fortified house. Many similar buildings are seen across the region and seemed to have various similarities. Often, those havezaten were not publicly accessible, resulting in nescience of the typology among many people. The term ‘havezate’ was often even replaced by ‘kasteel’ or ‘landhuis’, while the definition was not identical. These analysis resulted in the following research- and design question:
How can fourteenth-century havezaten from Het Kwartier van Zutphen be characterized to formulate a building typology and how can this be made experienceable to the public in the re-design of Huis ‘t Velde?

Since the current use of Huis ‘t Velde does not make the typology experienceable, the whole estate and buildings will be re-designed to be publicly accessible. By attracting people and allowing them on the estate and inside the buildings they can become acquainted with the characteristics of the typology and take in the atmosphere that makes it so special. Huis ‘t Velde will host a hotel, with restaurant and wine tasting area, combined with some rental rooms, a shop and various outside spaces like a flower-, vegetable- and monumental garden. The majority of the (spatial) interventions are based on the conducted individual research into havezaten in the area around Zutphen. The results are combined into a design toolbox with interventions to use to make the characteristics of a havezate (more) experienceable to the public. These design tools are implemented and testing in the re-design of Huis ‘t Velde.

In modern-day spatial planning, the implementation of public participation has increased to find a balance between two major actors: the government as the powerholder and citizens as the individual affected by planning decisions. Cities are required to redefine their public participation strategies by adopting modern tools to increase their citizen’s satisfaction regarding the spatial planning process. This challenge has made geographic information system (GIS) technologies invaluable to enhance the place-making process by allowing citizens to express their needs and preferences. On the other hand, developing GIS technology with design or hierarchy left unchecked, could cause usability problem to the user. GIS technology would end up running into an unnavigable ocean of buttons and maps, resulting in users can easily get lost and become frustrated. Therefore, User Experience (UX) can become integral for engaging users with spatial planning products and effectively meeting their aspirations. This thesis aims to develop a User Experience (UX) design guideline together with a mockup design and apply it as a web-based GIS prototype. The focus of the study will be on spatial planning practice in Indonesia. The User Experience (UX) design guideline named ’4PHASE toolkit’ was made with several design phases: Phase 1: Define, Phase 2: Design, Phase 3: Build, Phase 4: Test. The first phase is related to top-down studies about participation in spatial planning process both in general and case study, resulting with the Actor-Network (ANT) diagram for conceptualizing user roles, participation tasks, and space-time setting during the participation. The second phase is related to the design process of the UX starting from building persona, creating user flow, sketching wireframes, and designing interfaces - resulting with the proposed mockup of 4D Musrenbang. The third phase is the development of the prototype based on the mockup design using HTML, CSS, and Javascript to add functionalities to the web. At last, Phase 4 is testing the prototype with real actors who share similar traits with the Persona. Based on the user tests, the prototype itself is considered as good, with usability score of 71%. Overall, this thesis project has successfully created three main products: The 4PHASE toolkit, a mockup, and a geo-web prototype.

Nowadays, lots of geo-information (GI) is openly available. The value of this information lies in its use. Geoportals play an important part in allowing users to discover and access suitable data for their use cases. However, the user-friendliness of these geoportals is not as it should be. As the communicational layer between a system and its users, a more user-friendly UI can result in a more user-friendly geoportal. In an explorative research methodology involving a literature study into UIs and geoportals, assessing existing geoportals, and a user requirements session, I developed a guideline for user-friendly geoportal UIs: the Geoportal User-Interface Design Evaluator (GUIDE). The elements captured in the GUIDE cover the different parts of the UI: the content presentation, the interaction with available services (system interaction, navigation, search mechanisms, access mechanisms, and communication mechanisms) and the enabling information (metadata and help mechanisms). Concrete implementation examples of these design elements are provided by implementing a mock-up in accordance to the GUIDE. To assess whether or not the elements of the GUIDE result in an increase in user-friendliness, the results of a benchmark usability session are compared to the results achieved during a follow-up usability session with the mock-up. The tasks participants perform during these sessions are all related to the most important reasons why users would visit a geoportal: discovering data, assessing whether the discovered data is suitable for a specific use case, and accessing the data. The comparison of the results of the two usability studies suggests that the elements listed in the GUIDE as implemented in the mock-up indeed result in a more user-friendly geoportal UI. In the adopted usability metric that covered 128 fields related to performance and self-reported metrics, the mock-up outperformed the benchmark in 95 fields. This improvement is confirmed by qualitative comments of the six participants of the usability sessions and by experts of the Dutch geo-platform PDOK. Especially the increase in efficiency is appreciated. Based on the foundation the GUIDE and the corresponding mock-up provide, there is room for more in-depth research to further improve the user-friendliness of the UIs of geoportals. This, for example, involves looking into what communication mechanisms and help mechanisms, icons, terminology, or controls users prefer. Furthermore, additional research into the possibilities of adaptive UIs for geoportals can be valuable to suit possible differences in the needs and preferences of the different individual users.

Due to the urbanization, it is expected the world’s population will increasingly live in urban areas. Therefore, there is a growing concern about diverse urban problems, such as climate change, emissions, congestion and the quality of life in cities. Hereby, urban mobility systems can be an important factor to solve these problems. Besides, new developments in ICT, the adaptation of smartphones, the increasing availability of data and are changing current mobility systems in cities by creating new possibilities for the application of smart solutions. An example of these new smart solutions is new shared mobility services. New shared mobility services (.e.g. car sharing, ride-hailing and bike-sharing, etc) are technology-based, on-demand and provide alternatives to traditional transport models. These services are seen as an opportunity for more sustainable transport in the city and to address equity in transportation. But without thoughtful planning, there is no guarantee this will happen. Moreover, giving the fact that virtual mobility is growing by the enhancement of ICT and will potentially be a replacement for physical mobility these shared mobility services can bring new equity barriers and opportunities for disadvantaged neighbourhoods. This research will focus on shared mobility services in the context of Rotterdam-South. The area of Rotterdam-South is an urban renewal area, which is struggling with large concentration socio-economic problems. Besides, studies have shown that the inhabitants of Rotterdam-South are the least mobile and suffer from transportation poverty, causing them to come across more barriers to the accessibility of various services and opportunities. Based on the defined problem, the following main research question is formulated for this research: “In what way can public parties use shared mobility services to stimulate urban neighbourhood renewal in Rotterdam-South?”. To answer the main research question it was decided that a qualitative approach would be appropriate. The qualitative method includes the review of literature, interviews with advisors, the municipality and providers of shared mobility service in combination with a case study of the neighbourhood Tarwewijk, which is located in Rotterdam-South. From the results, it can be concluded that by the implementation of shared mobility services in a disadvantaged neighbourhood, public parties can positively affect and stimulate two aspects of urban renewal. These are the social and environmental conditions of a neighbourhood. Although the implementation of shared mobilities can offer opportunities for urban renewal areas, it can also bring several barriers and challenges. So, before implementing shared mobility services to stimulate urban renewal, public parties must consider how to implement policies/strategies. This to ensure that the barriers to using these shared mobilities are eliminated. Hereby, this research has suggested several policies and strategies for public parties.

Open dumping, open burning and burying of municipal solid waste (MSW) can be the cause environmental and public health issues. These practices are more prevalent in developing countries such as Mexico,where proper waste management systems are not present. Considering the environmental and health issues, it is therefore important to minimise the number of open dumps in Mexico. The construction ofsanitary landfills is regarded as the best alternative to open dumping since it is the a cost-effective and environmentally friendly solution.

An important part of constructing sanitary landfills is the selection of potential locations for these wastefacilities where investment will be made to build them. In order to select these locations first the weakspots need to be located. Weak spots are areas that do not have enough (proper) waste managementservices. Since Mexico does not have a national solid waste information system, a method to locate theseweak spots needs to be developed. With the use of the weak spots a method can be developed to select the potential locations for sanitary landfills that also takes the social, economical and legal constraintsinto account. The following research question is formulated: What are the weak spots in the current waste infrastructure network in Mexico and, based on this, where should strategic investment be madeto improve waste disposal? By answering this question, information will be provided on the issues withthe management of waste in Mexico with a focus on the areas of the weak spots and the locations where investment can be made to develop new sanitary landfills.

To detect the weak spots, a set of factors of different scenarios were developed, scored, overlaid, and visualised in maps. Regions that have the lowest score were detected as weak spots. To select the potential locations for investment in new sanitary landfills a spatial decision support system (SDSS) was developed and implemented as a QGIS plugin. The weak spots that corresponded to urban areas were used for analysis in the SDSS. This is due to the fact that it is more economically beneficial to construct sanitary landfills in urban areas.

The weak spot analysis showed that the southern region of Mexico, especially the state of Oaxaca, hadthe highest deficiencies in waste infrastructure. With the output from the QGIS SDSS plugin we are able to determine potential areas for new sanitary landfills in an automated manner.

This research has resulted in the visualisation of the weak spots in the Mexican waste infrastructure and the selection of potential locations where investment can be made for the construction of new sanitary landfills. The approach for locating the weak spots of the waste infrastructure can be used to find the weak spots in other types of infrastructure on a state and country scale in Mexico. The QGIS SDSS plugin could also be used to locate sanitary landfills in Mexico that violate the standards and regulations. The approach used to develop methods to detect the weak spots in the waste infrastructure and select potential locations for investment into new sanitary landfills could be used as a model for other countries to develop their specific approaches.

This thesis is focused on benchmarking municipal sport policy. Physical activity is used by the Dutch government as a policy tool to create a healthy society. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport stimulate people to adopt active life styles in order to combat the prosperity diseases: overweight, diabetes and depression. In benchmarking municipal sport policy there are the following complexities. Firstly complexities related to the governance of municipal sport policy, there are many actors involved with contradictory interests. In addition municipal sport policy is focussed within municipal boundaries and evolves on previously pursued policies. Secondly complexities related to benchmarking. Benchmarking is from origin a method developed for the industrial industry and now is also applied in the public sector, but the applicability of the method is contested. Moreover benchmarking is not straightforward and is dependent on its design, data reliability and the way of processing data.

An essential actor in sport policy are the municipalities: they conduct sport policy in order to heave healthy citizens and focus their policy to a large extent on sport facilities. Currently municipalities lack insight in whether the output of the sport policy (namely the quantity, type, and location of sport facilities) leads to the desired effects (namely healthy citizens), which we define as a lack of insight in the effectiveness of the sport policy. This insight is crucial for municipalities, since it can be used in the policy evaluation to assess the performance of their policy.

A method that has been proven useful for measuring and comparing of performance is benchmarking. Benchmarking is the research in which the output between organisations can be compared. However, there is a lack of literature describing how sport policy by municipalities can be compared, whereas comparison with other municipalities can provide additional insights and stimulate learning. In this study a benchmarking method for municipal sport policy aspects is developed and conducted.

The benchmarking method is designed based on a benchmarking literature review. Based on the review it was established that the design of the benchmarking method consists of phases, process steps and criteria. Subsequently with the literature review a benchmarking model is designed consisting of phases, steps, and criteria directed at assessing the performance of municipal sport policy. In the benchmarking criteria common elements are: the usage of indicators, transparency in performance measurement method and self-assessment of performance. In the benchmarking models common process steps are: set objectives, define indicators, select benchmark groups, collecting data, preparing data, analyzing data, determining significant different findings and reporting findings.

With the designed benchmarking model the benchmark is conducted, resulting in the following findings. The benchmarking results found no significant correlation between the dimensions, the output and the outcome of municipal sport policy. This study found that for benchmarking both the benchmarking design as the benchmarking process are crucial. Currently literature focuses on the design of the benchmarking method. This study found that the benchmarking process confronts challenges mainly related to data analytics.