Around the world, major challenges of our time such as population growth and climate change are being addressed in cities. Here, citizens play an important role amidst governments, companies, NGOs and researchers in creating social, technological and political innovations for achieving sustainability.

Citizens can be co-creators of sustainable cities when they engage in city politics or in the design of the urban environment and its technologies and infrastructure. In addition, citizens influence and are influenced by the technologies and systems that they use every day. Sustainability is thus a result of the interplay between technology, policy and people’s daily lives. Understanding this interplay is essential for creating sustainable cities. In this MOOC, we zoom in on Amsterdam, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City, Nairobi, Kampala and Suzhou as living labs for exploring the dynamics of co-creation for sustainable cities worldwide. We will address topics such as participative democracy and legitimacy, ICTs and big data, infrastructure and technology, and SMART technologies in daily life.

This global scope will be used to illustrate why specific forms of co-creation are preferred in specific urban contexts. Moreover, we will investigate and compare these cities on three themes that have a vast effect on city life:

•  Water and waste
•  Energy, air, food and mobility
•  Green spaces and food

This MOOC will teach you about the dynamics of co-creation and the key principles of citizens interacting with service providing companies, technology and infrastructure developers, policy makers and researchers. You will gain an understanding of major types of co-creation and their interdependency with their socio-technical and political contexts. You will become equipped to indicate how you can use co-creation to develop innovative technologies, policy arrangements or social practices for a sustainable city in your own community. You will demonstrate this by developing an action plan, research proposal or project idea.

Basic knowledge of sustainability in urban settings, urban environmental technology and urban management is assumed.

This course forms a part of two educational programme of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) - AMS Vital and Circular city research themes. It is developed by Wageningen UR and TU Delft, two of the founding universities of AMS Institute, and in cooperation with Tsinghua University.

What you will learn:

• Different definitions, forms and typical examples of co-creation for developing sustainable urban water, energy and green systems.
• The potential of co-creation for developing sustainable cities.
• The interdependency between co-creation and its policy and socio-technical contexts.
• Comparison of different real-life cases of co-creation.
• To understand interdependencies between the real-life cases of co-creation and their policy and socio-technical contexts.
• How to formulate the potential of co-creation in your work or daily life.

Today, more and more onus is on governments to provide seamless inter-modal travel for their citizens. With increased transport options comes greater need for instant data exchange between transportation authorities providing the would be passenger with the right information at the right place in the right time. This webinar will discuss the key challenges in providing a seamless intermodal travel scenario and provide answers how to address these challenges.

Some of the topics to be discussed in this webinar are:

• How to improve multimodal travel with technology – what is there, what is missing
• How to design the best door to door information platform which would provide a traveller with personalized and real – time data
• Smart Ticketing
• Last mile problem
• What travelers expect from inter-modal terminals and stops – PTL model – place – time – language

Simulation tools help public authorities in the planning of e-bus systems and electrification of their fleets. They are an integral part of the work in the use cases of Pillar A “Safe integration of e-Buses using existing electric public transport infrastructure” of the ELIPTIC project. After a short introduction into the work of the ELIPTIC project and the use cases related to the webinar’s topic, the presenters from the research organisations RWTH Aachen, Fraunhofer IVI and Vrije Universiteit Brussel showed different aspects of simulation that help in the planning of e-buses. This included the presentation of a software-based approach to find the optimal technical configuration for the use of e-buses on different routes by Fabian Meishner, RWTH Aachen. These calculations are a helpful tool to build sound business cases for the long-term use of electric bus systems. An example was also given of the results of a vehicle simulation-based feasibility study of converting a Diesel bus line with hybrid trolleybuses (by extending the existing trolleybus line) in a rural area in the East of Germany (Dr.-Ing Thoralf Knote, Fraunhofer IVI). Hybrid trolleybuses have an on-board energy storage which enables a fully electric operation without catenaries. Finally, the webinar addressed design questions and charging strategies for e-buses, exemplified in the case of Brussels (Prof. Dr. Omar Hegazy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel).

This EU-funded mobility project offers training courses to help companies develop innovative solutions that can reduce congestion in cities. The FLOW project aims to tackle urban congestion by developing walking and cycling measures. Its training courses are for companies, such as app developers and consultancies, that provide products and services related to urban transport, urban planning, walking and cycling and/or reducing urban road congestion. The training consists of interactive e-learning modules and webinars that introduce new products developed by FLOW partners, such as software that analyses traffic, provides forecasts, and manages data from geographic information systems. Companies that take part in the training will feature in an online catalogue that FLOW will present to European local authorities - opening doors to new contacts and potential clients.

UITP (International Association of Public Transport) has various training materials, webinars and eCourses. However, this material is only available for participants that take part in UITP training courses.

The fast development of technologies creates many challenges for traditional public procurement, and in many cases the desired innovative solutions cannot be adopted by using a traditional procurement strategy. The EU public procurement directives, e.g. DIRECTIVE 2014/24/EU, provide the legal framework for the utilisation of innovation procurement approaches. This webinar aims to share knowledge and good practices on smart procurement in the transport sector and discuss challenges public procurers and industry face.