Card Overview

Flocc: Connecting people to their smart office

The office building is transforming from a static piece of concrete towards a flexible shell with internet connected infrastructure, called smart buildings. This shift is also reflected in the way that people work; from individual work in a fixed office space, towards collaborative project work in which people find their flexible desk every day. As delightful as it sounds, a downside is that people can have a hard time coping with this flexibility. To always know where you can find the people you work with, and to have a strong sense of community is essential for every employee. The result of this graduation project, Flocc, is meant to create a feeling of belonging to the temporary workplace. Flocc builds upon Mapiq, which is a software platform for smart buildings. Mapiq integrates all of the sensors and services of a modern flex work office in one UI. Flocc is an exploration of how to bring the interface of a smart building platform into the physical realm. Graduation project Student Jip Eilbracht Coaches Elif Özcan Catelijne van Middelkoop Sander Schutte The design is based on a generative system that creates unique visual and auditory patterns for every project team. These identities are embedded in various ways throughout the office building, allowing employees to locate their project teams in a flex work office. At the same time the sense of community is strengthened by giving people a fixed reference in an ever-changing office environment. 3 Prototypes were made to show how the team identities can be utilized. First, an interactive lobby floor shows a collection of visual patterns and shows the direction towards each team. Afterwards, the patterns are projected in the ceiling above the workplaces for reference. Additionally the team identities are shown in Mapiq's smartphone app for detailed information. Flocc shows what can happen when technology celebrates the ambiguity of the way humans work in and interact with their physical environments. Previous project Overview of projects Next project

A Design Game for Families

Star Designer is a design game for families, in which players explore the essential 21st century skills creative thinking, communication, and empathy through an open and creative mindset. During the game, different characters drop by with all kinds of problems. All players are asked to come up with handy but sometimes crazy or foolish solutions. The game consists of three phases. First, together you determine the goal/problem of a character. Then, all players invent an idea based on their secret assignment card, using their individual drawing boards to visualize their ideas. Finally, you present your idea to the group by explaining how it works and how it helps the character. However, this game is not about having the best idea it is about guessing the secret assignments of your fellow players. Graduation project Student Wouter van Strien Coaches Rudolf Wormgoor Mathieu Gielen The result of this graduation project has taken the first steps in making children acquainted with the 21st century skills in a safe and competitive game environment. The key insights gathered through the playtesting sessions with families show a positive relationship between the embedded game elements and a fun-factor. The highest empathic behaviour has been detected when players define a goal/problem for an in-game character themselves. Also, recognizable characters have the potential to make children think of someone from their own environment, such as a grandmother, making their ideas more personal and diverse. Furthermore, the secret assignment cards with ambiguous words are found to encourage kids to turn their first idea into something different (divergent thinking). This project might be of great interest for other game designers and design education in general. The central aim has been to explore the potential of a family-friendly design game that engages kids to learn and practice the essential 21st century skills by embracing an open and creative attitude. Further research should investigate if repeatedly playing this game increases learning efficiency of the 21st century skills. Previous project Overview of projects Next project

Rational Override; Influencing behaviour beyond nudging

Service designers and organizations increasingly want to understand and change customer behaviour. They struggle however to create durable change, as behavior is complex, dynamic and very often not rational. Knowledge from behavioural sciences can provide designers with the ability to more fundamentally understand and change customer behaviour. For this graduation project, a qualitative and exploratory research was conducted to develop a design approach and toolkit that supports service designers to create behavioural interventions across customer journeys. In an attempt to influence customer behaviour, service designers have increasingly experimented with nudges: Simple, unconscious interventions that facilitate unconscious decision making. Although nudges have been proven to be very effective, they are not always scalable, sustainable or suitable to apply in a service context. The exploratory research shows that endured behaviour change requires customers to be in the right mindset at the right time. Service designers should thus not only facilitate automatic and fast thinking but also stimulate people to switch to more deliberate and conscious thinking when necessary. Graduation project Student Anne van Lieren Coaches Jan Schoormans Giulia Calabretta Lavrans Løvlie This research introduces a new design approach, in which two types of behavioural interventions (nudges and rational overrides) are combined across a customer journey to either speed up or slow down the user's momentum. The interventions do not only facilitate automatic and fast thinking but can switch customers to the conscious state. People can be prompted to switch by implementing micro moments of friction, also referred to as rational override interventions. A service design toolkit, consisting of five templates, two card sets and two databases, was designed to support designers, organizations and stakeholders to understand and design behavioural interventions. The toolkit enables designers to create tailor-made solutions that fits both the customer, business and organization. Previous project Overview of projects Next project

Detecting Malnutrition in East-Africa

In collaboration with Philips, the student team Levo Design developed the concept of a product that applies 3D scanning technology to enable low educated people to do a reliable, accurate, comfortable, and rapid assessment to indicate all three types of malnutrition. The product and workflow designed allows Community Health Volunteers in East Africa to indicate malnutrition amongst children of 0-5 years old. The design facilitates the access to health coverage across countries like Kenya, where health facilities are located more than 5km away from the communities they should attend. The project was divided into four different phases. In the first phase, a brief analysis was conducted on the strategic side of the product, on Kenya and its culture, on the current procedures and on the possibilities and limitations of 3D scanning for the context and application chosen. To come to a concept that is suitable for the context, the potential users in Kenya were directly involved in the design process during multiple co-creation sessions. Joint master project Student Alaitz Izaguirre Astrid van Smoorenburg Inge Bartels Elisa Mesland Coaches Annemiek van Boeijen Jan Carel Diehl Pavan Dadlani Nies Buning Company Philips The final concept consists of several solutions. A device with an integrated 3D scanner to take different measurements like malnutrition, dehydration and temperature. Furthermore, a vest and a tray, to position the child while making the scan since the positioning is fundamental to the accuracy of the measurement. The vest is a people-oriented solution, for the child is carried by the mother. In this way, they are close together, making it comfortable and familiar for both of them. The tray is the technology oriented solution. The children are most restricted in their movements improving the accuracy of the measurement. A cultural element was taken into account when designing the tray, a Kanga is a piece of decorated thin cotton cloth used among other things to carry babies strapped to the back by Kenyan women. Previous project Overview of projects

Computer Aided Consumer Design

The consumer market shows a growing heterogeneity in demand. This means that consumers are more and more looking for custom and unique products. As a reaction, companies developed a new strategy called Mass-Customization which revolves around offering products that are developed and produced custom to user specific needs. Via online tool-kits consumers can personally customize the products they buy by choosing colours, materials and combining building blocks. The goal of this project is to take this principle of Mass-Customization to the next level by enabling consumers to customize the physical shape of products themselves. The means to reach this goal is Algorithms Aided Design. Algorithms Aided Design makes use of algorithms to generate and control Computer Aided Design (CAD) geometry. Its parametric nature enables to generate a variety of product shapes. It also enables the creation of design complexity that exceeds human capabilities. Graduation project Student Olmo Meijs Coaches Stefan van de Geer Sebastiaan van den Elshout The developments of Algorithms Aided Design introduce a new form of Mass-Customization: Computer Aided Consumer Design which enables the laymen consumer to design their own products by letting them modify CAD models directly. This way consumers can modify the physical shape of products they buy. I designed and developed an algorithm for Bende, a small Rotterdam based company of creators, designers and makers, that produces a variety of tables. By changing parameters millions of different table designs can be created serving multiple functions from small coffee tables to large dining tables. The table is designed to be fully manufactured out of CNC routed sheet material. Each unique design will be produced, flat packed and delivered to the consumer who assembles the table himself. Previous project Overview of projects Next project

Lavoro: Discussion Tool

For the Design Strategy Project in de SPD master, a collaboration strategy had to be designed for Vanderlande, a logistics and parcel company. Right now in Vanderlande there are several challenges regarding collaboration among divisions: There is a difference of expectation of employees that work in different department in Vanderlande Different departments make use of different design processes and do not understand each other Vanderlande has a very complex IT landscape, which results in limited IT understanding and little to no documentation So things need to change in the future in order to achieve better results and solve the problems stated above. To do so, the way of sharing information needs to change. When this is achieved it will save time in documenting and give structure to the workflow. Furthermore, trust is an important topic when collaborating. When there is trust, it will nurture collaboration. For trusting one another, people need to be able to learn how to share insights, concerns and expectations. Student project Student Tea Todorovic Sophie Krah Rose Tsai Nien-Hua Gu Coach Katinka Bergema For this Lavoro has been designed. The Lavoro package consists out of two different elements. The first element is the Lavoro online system, the second element is the Lavoro discussion tool. Both elements complement each other and will be distributed at the same time. With the Lavoro Package, the acquired company [MdK1]and Vanderlande have the opportunity to improve their collaboration and communication. The Lavoro system helps in coordinating a certain project because of milestones that are assigned to employees. An employee can only continue with new tasks if previous milestones have been completed in the right way. The Lavoro discussion tool helps employees with communicating and making project expectation explicit. Therefore, the slogan of Lavoro: Collaborate, Communicate, Coordinate. This proposal for Vanderlande reduces the complexity of the organisation and its IT landscape, since it has all the functions that are needed for a good collaboration in one package. Previous project Overview of projects Next project

Estimating the safety factor of monsoon-affected urban drainage systems using fault tree analysis

By Florida Visser, supervised by Martine Rutten Many cities in South-East Asia increasingly face flooding problems that frequently inundate large parts of the city. The main cause is twofold: these cities are often affected by monsoons, and rapid urbanization quickly alters the runoff generation. Drainage systems can often not keep up with the changes and start to fail. There are many different failure mechanisms that cause failure in different parts the system. These mechanisms are often known to local experts and maintenance workers and are treated one by one. The mutual relationships of the causes of failure are easily overlooked in this way. For this research, the capitol of Vietnam, Hanoi, is taken as a case study. This city has grown from 1.7 to 7 million inhabitants in the last 2 decades. During the monsoon season, heavy rains occur and can inundate certain locations multiple times per year. This research aims to provide a more formal approach to the conditionality of the failure mechanisms: in what way do failure mechanisms relate to each other? This is done by means of fault tree analysis (FTA). This method connects the different mechanisms using the failure probability of each specific failure mechanism and connects them using Boolean logic. The methodology is carried out in two main steps. First, the fault tree is drawn using the input of local experts. Interviews and a focus group are held with inhabitants of Hanoi that come from different disciplines, such that their experience is represented in a formal way. Second, a normative neighborhood of Hanoi is modelled using PCSWMM software. This software combines the tools of the well-known drainage modelling software SWMM and e.g. QGIS. Additionally, the software enables the user to execute the scripting tool. This allows me to perform Monte Carlo simulations, such that the relevant uncertainties can be estimated. In this way, the sensitivity to certain failure mechanisms is explored, and the failure probability of these mechanisms can be predicted using characteristic values and ranges. The formal approach of FTA provides a clear and quick overview of the vulnerable parts of the system, and their relative contributions to the inundation problems. The result of this study can be used for local drainage authorities, such that they can make more targeted improvements.

Adaptation pathways to prevent dry periods in De Dommel

by A.J. van Osnabrugge, supervised by O.A.C. Hoes and J.S. Timmermans With climate change the weather is changing in the Netherlands. In the last century the summers have become drier and the rain pattern has changed to shorter but more intense rainfalls, resulting in longer dry periods (KNMI, 1980, 2019). The Dutch infrastructure for waterways has been designed to direct the water as quickly as possible towards the sea because there was sufficient water available and the country would otherwise be prone to flooding (Arcgis, 2021). But due to the changing weather agriculture, nature, industry and the population of the Netherlands suffer from a shortage of water during summer times (Rijkswaterstaat). The higher parts of the Netherlands, which often consist of sandy soils and thick sandy aquifers, suffer even more resulting in water restrictions for agriculture (Rijkswaterstaat). Also at Waterboard ‘De Dommel’ They face these problems. This can be harmful for agricultural yields, but is necessary for nature and drinking water companies. During high intensity summer storms water is quickly diverted to the bigger channels, not recharging the groundwater level. A transition from diverting access water towards retaining and infiltrating this access water is therefore necessary. It is needed to insure sufficient water in future summers. This research is about the possibility to prevent water shortage during the summer months in two different areas in ‘waterschap’ (waterboard) de Dommel, Brabant. Due to climate change this has become an issue in these areas. With a groundwater model different adaptation paths will be tested. The adaptation paths will be combinations of different interventions come up by the water board and other experts. The XLRM framework will be used to define when an adaptation path is ‘working’ or not. Some future scenarios will be modelled in the groundwater model to test if the adaptation paths will also ‘work’ in more extreme or other future scenarios. In the end, the difference in the results of the groundwater behaviour, due to the adaptation paths, in both areas will be compared.

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Flocc: Connecting people to their smart office

The office building is transforming from a static piece of concrete towards a flexible shell with internet connected infrastructure, called smart buildings. This shift is also reflected in the way that people work; from individual work in a fixed office space, towards collaborative project work in which people find their flexible desk every day. As delightful as it sounds, a downside is that people can have a hard time coping with this flexibility. To always know where you can find the people you work with, and to have a strong sense of community is essential for every employee. The result of this graduation project, Flocc, is meant to create a feeling of belonging to the temporary workplace. Flocc builds upon Mapiq, which is a software platform for smart buildings. Mapiq integrates all of the sensors and services of a modern flex work office in one UI. Flocc is an exploration of how to bring the interface of a smart building platform into the physical realm. Graduation project Student Jip Eilbracht Coaches Elif Özcan Catelijne van Middelkoop Sander Schutte The design is based on a generative system that creates unique visual and auditory patterns for every project team. These identities are embedded in various ways throughout the office building, allowing employees to locate their project teams in a flex work office. At the same time the sense of community is strengthened by giving people a fixed reference in an ever-changing office environment. 3 Prototypes were made to show how the team identities can be utilized. First, an interactive lobby floor shows a collection of visual patterns and shows the direction towards each team. Afterwards, the patterns are projected in the ceiling above the workplaces for reference. Additionally the team identities are shown in Mapiq's smartphone app for detailed information. Flocc shows what can happen when technology celebrates the ambiguity of the way humans work in and interact with their physical environments. Previous project Overview of projects Next project

A Design Game for Families

Star Designer is a design game for families, in which players explore the essential 21st century skills creative thinking, communication, and empathy through an open and creative mindset. During the game, different characters drop by with all kinds of problems. All players are asked to come up with handy but sometimes crazy or foolish solutions. The game consists of three phases. First, together you determine the goal/problem of a character. Then, all players invent an idea based on their secret assignment card, using their individual drawing boards to visualize their ideas. Finally, you present your idea to the group by explaining how it works and how it helps the character. However, this game is not about having the best idea it is about guessing the secret assignments of your fellow players. Graduation project Student Wouter van Strien Coaches Rudolf Wormgoor Mathieu Gielen The result of this graduation project has taken the first steps in making children acquainted with the 21st century skills in a safe and competitive game environment. The key insights gathered through the playtesting sessions with families show a positive relationship between the embedded game elements and a fun-factor. The highest empathic behaviour has been detected when players define a goal/problem for an in-game character themselves. Also, recognizable characters have the potential to make children think of someone from their own environment, such as a grandmother, making their ideas more personal and diverse. Furthermore, the secret assignment cards with ambiguous words are found to encourage kids to turn their first idea into something different (divergent thinking). This project might be of great interest for other game designers and design education in general. The central aim has been to explore the potential of a family-friendly design game that engages kids to learn and practice the essential 21st century skills by embracing an open and creative attitude. Further research should investigate if repeatedly playing this game increases learning efficiency of the 21st century skills. Previous project Overview of projects Next project

Rational Override; Influencing behaviour beyond nudging

Service designers and organizations increasingly want to understand and change customer behaviour. They struggle however to create durable change, as behavior is complex, dynamic and very often not rational. Knowledge from behavioural sciences can provide designers with the ability to more fundamentally understand and change customer behaviour. For this graduation project, a qualitative and exploratory research was conducted to develop a design approach and toolkit that supports service designers to create behavioural interventions across customer journeys. In an attempt to influence customer behaviour, service designers have increasingly experimented with nudges: Simple, unconscious interventions that facilitate unconscious decision making. Although nudges have been proven to be very effective, they are not always scalable, sustainable or suitable to apply in a service context. The exploratory research shows that endured behaviour change requires customers to be in the right mindset at the right time. Service designers should thus not only facilitate automatic and fast thinking but also stimulate people to switch to more deliberate and conscious thinking when necessary. Graduation project Student Anne van Lieren Coaches Jan Schoormans Giulia Calabretta Lavrans Løvlie This research introduces a new design approach, in which two types of behavioural interventions (nudges and rational overrides) are combined across a customer journey to either speed up or slow down the user's momentum. The interventions do not only facilitate automatic and fast thinking but can switch customers to the conscious state. People can be prompted to switch by implementing micro moments of friction, also referred to as rational override interventions. A service design toolkit, consisting of five templates, two card sets and two databases, was designed to support designers, organizations and stakeholders to understand and design behavioural interventions. The toolkit enables designers to create tailor-made solutions that fits both the customer, business and organization. Previous project Overview of projects Next project

Detecting Malnutrition in East-Africa

In collaboration with Philips, the student team Levo Design developed the concept of a product that applies 3D scanning technology to enable low educated people to do a reliable, accurate, comfortable, and rapid assessment to indicate all three types of malnutrition. The product and workflow designed allows Community Health Volunteers in East Africa to indicate malnutrition amongst children of 0-5 years old. The design facilitates the access to health coverage across countries like Kenya, where health facilities are located more than 5km away from the communities they should attend. The project was divided into four different phases. In the first phase, a brief analysis was conducted on the strategic side of the product, on Kenya and its culture, on the current procedures and on the possibilities and limitations of 3D scanning for the context and application chosen. To come to a concept that is suitable for the context, the potential users in Kenya were directly involved in the design process during multiple co-creation sessions. Joint master project Student Alaitz Izaguirre Astrid van Smoorenburg Inge Bartels Elisa Mesland Coaches Annemiek van Boeijen Jan Carel Diehl Pavan Dadlani Nies Buning Company Philips The final concept consists of several solutions. A device with an integrated 3D scanner to take different measurements like malnutrition, dehydration and temperature. Furthermore, a vest and a tray, to position the child while making the scan since the positioning is fundamental to the accuracy of the measurement. The vest is a people-oriented solution, for the child is carried by the mother. In this way, they are close together, making it comfortable and familiar for both of them. The tray is the technology oriented solution. The children are most restricted in their movements improving the accuracy of the measurement. A cultural element was taken into account when designing the tray, a Kanga is a piece of decorated thin cotton cloth used among other things to carry babies strapped to the back by Kenyan women. Previous project Overview of projects

Computer Aided Consumer Design

The consumer market shows a growing heterogeneity in demand. This means that consumers are more and more looking for custom and unique products. As a reaction, companies developed a new strategy called Mass-Customization which revolves around offering products that are developed and produced custom to user specific needs. Via online tool-kits consumers can personally customize the products they buy by choosing colours, materials and combining building blocks. The goal of this project is to take this principle of Mass-Customization to the next level by enabling consumers to customize the physical shape of products themselves. The means to reach this goal is Algorithms Aided Design. Algorithms Aided Design makes use of algorithms to generate and control Computer Aided Design (CAD) geometry. Its parametric nature enables to generate a variety of product shapes. It also enables the creation of design complexity that exceeds human capabilities. Graduation project Student Olmo Meijs Coaches Stefan van de Geer Sebastiaan van den Elshout The developments of Algorithms Aided Design introduce a new form of Mass-Customization: Computer Aided Consumer Design which enables the laymen consumer to design their own products by letting them modify CAD models directly. This way consumers can modify the physical shape of products they buy. I designed and developed an algorithm for Bende, a small Rotterdam based company of creators, designers and makers, that produces a variety of tables. By changing parameters millions of different table designs can be created serving multiple functions from small coffee tables to large dining tables. The table is designed to be fully manufactured out of CNC routed sheet material. Each unique design will be produced, flat packed and delivered to the consumer who assembles the table himself. Previous project Overview of projects Next project

Lavoro: Discussion Tool

For the Design Strategy Project in de SPD master, a collaboration strategy had to be designed for Vanderlande, a logistics and parcel company. Right now in Vanderlande there are several challenges regarding collaboration among divisions: There is a difference of expectation of employees that work in different department in Vanderlande Different departments make use of different design processes and do not understand each other Vanderlande has a very complex IT landscape, which results in limited IT understanding and little to no documentation So things need to change in the future in order to achieve better results and solve the problems stated above. To do so, the way of sharing information needs to change. When this is achieved it will save time in documenting and give structure to the workflow. Furthermore, trust is an important topic when collaborating. When there is trust, it will nurture collaboration. For trusting one another, people need to be able to learn how to share insights, concerns and expectations. Student project Student Tea Todorovic Sophie Krah Rose Tsai Nien-Hua Gu Coach Katinka Bergema For this Lavoro has been designed. The Lavoro package consists out of two different elements. The first element is the Lavoro online system, the second element is the Lavoro discussion tool. Both elements complement each other and will be distributed at the same time. With the Lavoro Package, the acquired company [MdK1]and Vanderlande have the opportunity to improve their collaboration and communication. The Lavoro system helps in coordinating a certain project because of milestones that are assigned to employees. An employee can only continue with new tasks if previous milestones have been completed in the right way. The Lavoro discussion tool helps employees with communicating and making project expectation explicit. Therefore, the slogan of Lavoro: Collaborate, Communicate, Coordinate. This proposal for Vanderlande reduces the complexity of the organisation and its IT landscape, since it has all the functions that are needed for a good collaboration in one package. Previous project Overview of projects Next project

Estimating the safety factor of monsoon-affected urban drainage systems using fault tree analysis

By Florida Visser, supervised by Martine Rutten Many cities in South-East Asia increasingly face flooding problems that frequently inundate large parts of the city. The main cause is twofold: these cities are often affected by monsoons, and rapid urbanization quickly alters the runoff generation. Drainage systems can often not keep up with the changes and start to fail. There are many different failure mechanisms that cause failure in different parts the system. These mechanisms are often known to local experts and maintenance workers and are treated one by one. The mutual relationships of the causes of failure are easily overlooked in this way. For this research, the capitol of Vietnam, Hanoi, is taken as a case study. This city has grown from 1.7 to 7 million inhabitants in the last 2 decades. During the monsoon season, heavy rains occur and can inundate certain locations multiple times per year. This research aims to provide a more formal approach to the conditionality of the failure mechanisms: in what way do failure mechanisms relate to each other? This is done by means of fault tree analysis (FTA). This method connects the different mechanisms using the failure probability of each specific failure mechanism and connects them using Boolean logic. The methodology is carried out in two main steps. First, the fault tree is drawn using the input of local experts. Interviews and a focus group are held with inhabitants of Hanoi that come from different disciplines, such that their experience is represented in a formal way. Second, a normative neighborhood of Hanoi is modelled using PCSWMM software. This software combines the tools of the well-known drainage modelling software SWMM and e.g. QGIS. Additionally, the software enables the user to execute the scripting tool. This allows me to perform Monte Carlo simulations, such that the relevant uncertainties can be estimated. In this way, the sensitivity to certain failure mechanisms is explored, and the failure probability of these mechanisms can be predicted using characteristic values and ranges. The formal approach of FTA provides a clear and quick overview of the vulnerable parts of the system, and their relative contributions to the inundation problems. The result of this study can be used for local drainage authorities, such that they can make more targeted improvements.

Adaptation pathways to prevent dry periods in De Dommel

by A.J. van Osnabrugge, supervised by O.A.C. Hoes and J.S. Timmermans With climate change the weather is changing in the Netherlands. In the last century the summers have become drier and the rain pattern has changed to shorter but more intense rainfalls, resulting in longer dry periods (KNMI, 1980, 2019). The Dutch infrastructure for waterways has been designed to direct the water as quickly as possible towards the sea because there was sufficient water available and the country would otherwise be prone to flooding (Arcgis, 2021). But due to the changing weather agriculture, nature, industry and the population of the Netherlands suffer from a shortage of water during summer times (Rijkswaterstaat). The higher parts of the Netherlands, which often consist of sandy soils and thick sandy aquifers, suffer even more resulting in water restrictions for agriculture (Rijkswaterstaat). Also at Waterboard ‘De Dommel’ They face these problems. This can be harmful for agricultural yields, but is necessary for nature and drinking water companies. During high intensity summer storms water is quickly diverted to the bigger channels, not recharging the groundwater level. A transition from diverting access water towards retaining and infiltrating this access water is therefore necessary. It is needed to insure sufficient water in future summers. This research is about the possibility to prevent water shortage during the summer months in two different areas in ‘waterschap’ (waterboard) de Dommel, Brabant. Due to climate change this has become an issue in these areas. With a groundwater model different adaptation paths will be tested. The adaptation paths will be combinations of different interventions come up by the water board and other experts. The XLRM framework will be used to define when an adaptation path is ‘working’ or not. Some future scenarios will be modelled in the groundwater model to test if the adaptation paths will also ‘work’ in more extreme or other future scenarios. In the end, the difference in the results of the groundwater behaviour, due to the adaptation paths, in both areas will be compared.
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TU Delft jointly wins XPRIZE Rainforest drone competition in Brazil

TU Delft jointly wins in the XPRIZE Rainforest competition in the Amazon, Brazil Imagine using rapid and autonomous robot technology for research into the green and humid lungs of our planet; our global rainforests. Drones that autonomously deploy eDNA samplers and canopy rafts uncover the rich biodiversity of these complex ecosystems while revealing the effects of human activity on nature and climate change. On November 15, 2024, after five years of intensive research and competition, the ETHBiodivX team, which included TU Delft Aerospace researchers Salua Hamaza and Georg Strunck, achieved an outstanding milestone: winning the XPRIZE Rainforest Bonus Prize for outstanding effort in co-developing inclusive technology for nature conservation. The goal: create automated technology and methods to gain near real-time insights about biodiversity – providing necessary data that can inform conservation action and policy, support sustainable bioeconomies, and empower Indigenous Peoples and local communities who are the primary protectors and knowledge holders of the planet’s tropical rainforests. The ETHBiodivX team, made of experts in Robotics, eDNA, and Data Insights, is tackling the massive challenge of automating and streamlining the way we monitor ecosystems. Leading the Robotics division, a collaboration between TU Delft’s Prof. Salua Hamaza, ETH Zurich’s Prof. Stefano Mintchev and Aarhus University’s Profs. Claus Melvad and Toke Thomas Høye, is developing cutting-edge robotic solutions to gather ecology and biology data autonomously. “We faced the immense challenge of deploying robots in the wild -- and not just any outdoor environment but one of the most demanding and uncharted: the wet rainforests. This required extraordinary efforts to ensure robustness and reliability, pushing the boundaries of what the hardware could achieve for autonomous data collection of images, sounds, and eDNA, in the Amazon” says prof. Hamaza. “Ultimately, this technology will be available to Indigenous communities as a tool to better understand the forest's ongoing changes in biodiversity, which provide essential resources as food and shelter to the locals.” . . . .

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