Project acronym ALLEGRO
Project unrAvelLing sLow modE travelinG and tRaffic: with innOvative data to a new transportation and traffic theory for pedestrians and bicycles
Researcher (PI) Serge Hoogendoorn
Host Institution (HI) TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH3, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary A major challenge in contemporary traffic and transportation theory is having a comprehensive understanding of pedestrians and cyclists behaviour. This is notoriously hard to observe, since sensors providing abundant and detailed information about key variables characterising this behaviour have not been available until very recently. The behaviour is also far more complex than that of the much better understood fast mode. This is due to the many degrees of freedom in decision-making, the interactions among slow traffic participants that are more involved and far less guided by traffic rules and regulations than those between car-drivers, and the many fascinating but complex phenomena in slow traffic flows (self-organised patterns, turbulence, spontaneous phase transitions, herding, etc.) that are very hard to predict accurately.
With slow traffic modes gaining ground in terms of mode share in many cities, lack of empirical insights, behavioural theories, predictively valid analytical and simulation models, and tools to support planning, design, management and control is posing a major societal problem as well: examples of major accidents due to bad planning, organisation and management of events are manifold, as are locations where safety of slow modes is a serious issue due to interactions with fast modes.
This programme is geared towards establishing a comprehensive theory of slow mode traffic behaviour, considering the different behavioural levels relevant for understanding, reproducing and predicting slow mode traffic flows in cities. The levels deal with walking and cycling operations, activity scheduling and travel behaviour, and knowledge representation and learning. Major scientific breakthroughs are expected at each of these levels, in terms of theory and modelling, by using innovative (big) data collection and experimentation, analysis and fusion techniques, including social media data analytics, using augmented reality, and remote and crowd sensing.
Summary
A major challenge in contemporary traffic and transportation theory is having a comprehensive understanding of pedestrians and cyclists behaviour. This is notoriously hard to observe, since sensors providing abundant and detailed information about key variables characterising this behaviour have not been available until very recently. The behaviour is also far more complex than that of the much better understood fast mode. This is due to the many degrees of freedom in decision-making, the interactions among slow traffic participants that are more involved and far less guided by traffic rules and regulations than those between car-drivers, and the many fascinating but complex phenomena in slow traffic flows (self-organised patterns, turbulence, spontaneous phase transitions, herding, etc.) that are very hard to predict accurately.
With slow traffic modes gaining ground in terms of mode share in many cities, lack of empirical insights, behavioural theories, predictively valid analytical and simulation models, and tools to support planning, design, management and control is posing a major societal problem as well: examples of major accidents due to bad planning, organisation and management of events are manifold, as are locations where safety of slow modes is a serious issue due to interactions with fast modes.
This programme is geared towards establishing a comprehensive theory of slow mode traffic behaviour, considering the different behavioural levels relevant for understanding, reproducing and predicting slow mode traffic flows in cities. The levels deal with walking and cycling operations, activity scheduling and travel behaviour, and knowledge representation and learning. Major scientific breakthroughs are expected at each of these levels, in terms of theory and modelling, by using innovative (big) data collection and experimentation, analysis and fusion techniques, including social media data analytics, using augmented reality, and remote and crowd sensing.
Max ERC Funding
2 458 700 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-11-01, End date: 2020-10-31
Project acronym FamilyComplexity
Project Intergenerational Reproduction and Solidarity in an Era of Family Complexity
Researcher (PI) Matthijs Kalmijn
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH3, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary One of the important consequences of the Second Demographic Transition has been the increasing complexity of families. The aim of this project is to study how rising family complexity has affected two fundamental aspects of intergenerational relationships: reproduction and solidarity. Theoretically, family complexity is distinguished into four dimensions: (a) the length, timing and nature of exposure to the child, (c) biological relatedness to the child, and (c) characteristics of parent-parent ties (triadic effects), (d) characteristics of the wider family network. Using insights from several disciplines, I develop a common theoretical framework for understanding intergenerational reproduction and solidarity. To test the theory, an innovative multiactor survey is developed with an oversampling strategy in which for each adult child, information is collected on all parent figures, and for each parent, information on all adult children. In addition, register data are used to analyze one aspect of reproduction in a dynamic fashion (educational reproduction) and vignette data are used to analyze one aspect of solidarity in more depth (norms prescribing solidarity). By studying reproduction and solidarity as outcomes, I shift the traditional focus from examining how the SDT has affected individual well-being, to the question of how the SDT has affected relationships. In doing so, I analyze a new problem in demography and sociology and contribute to classic debates about population ageing and social inequality. Theoretically, the study of family complexity yields unique opportunities to test ideas about the nature of intergenerational relationships and will shed new light on the traditional dichotomy of social vis-à-vis biological bases of intergenerational relationships. Methodological innovation is made by developing solutions for well-known problems of multiactor data, thereby strengthening the theoretical relevance of survey data for the social sciences.
Summary
One of the important consequences of the Second Demographic Transition has been the increasing complexity of families. The aim of this project is to study how rising family complexity has affected two fundamental aspects of intergenerational relationships: reproduction and solidarity. Theoretically, family complexity is distinguished into four dimensions: (a) the length, timing and nature of exposure to the child, (c) biological relatedness to the child, and (c) characteristics of parent-parent ties (triadic effects), (d) characteristics of the wider family network. Using insights from several disciplines, I develop a common theoretical framework for understanding intergenerational reproduction and solidarity. To test the theory, an innovative multiactor survey is developed with an oversampling strategy in which for each adult child, information is collected on all parent figures, and for each parent, information on all adult children. In addition, register data are used to analyze one aspect of reproduction in a dynamic fashion (educational reproduction) and vignette data are used to analyze one aspect of solidarity in more depth (norms prescribing solidarity). By studying reproduction and solidarity as outcomes, I shift the traditional focus from examining how the SDT has affected individual well-being, to the question of how the SDT has affected relationships. In doing so, I analyze a new problem in demography and sociology and contribute to classic debates about population ageing and social inequality. Theoretically, the study of family complexity yields unique opportunities to test ideas about the nature of intergenerational relationships and will shed new light on the traditional dichotomy of social vis-à-vis biological bases of intergenerational relationships. Methodological innovation is made by developing solutions for well-known problems of multiactor data, thereby strengthening the theoretical relevance of survey data for the social sciences.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 533 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-11-01, End date: 2020-10-31
Project acronym LEGALARCHITECTURES
Project Legal Architectures: The Influence of New Environmental Governance Rules on Environmental Compliance
Researcher (PI) Suzanne Elizabeth Kingston
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2014-STG
Summary Non-compliance with the EU’s environmental rules is one of the key weaknesses of the EU’s environmental policy. This research investigates the influence that environmental governance laws have on compliance decisions, and how we might best design our laws to maximise compliance. One of the most important trends in European environmental regulatory techniques over the past decade has been the shift from hierarchical, state-led government via command-and-control techniques, to decentralised, society-led governance by local private actors (see, e.g., Jordan et al (2013)). The EU has strongly supported efforts to empower compliance and enforcement by non-State actors, as embodied in the UNECE Aarhus Convention and implementing laws. Yet little is known about how this major change in environmental governance laws has actually influenced compliance levels in practice, and why. Can the design of environmental governance rules influence us not only to comply with the letter of the law, but also to go further? This research seeks to fill that gap by means of an interdisciplinary, bottom-up study of the relationships between the legal architecture of environmental governance and compliance decisions, in a selected field of EU environmental policy (biodiversity), and in three selected States. It is novel in terms of theory, because it tests new hypotheses about the effects environmental governance rules have on compliance. It is novel in terms of methodology, because in testing these hypotheses, it uses techniques that have not up to now been applied to measure the effect of law. It is challenging, because it sits at the intersection between the law and economics, socio-legal and governance/regulatory literatures, and brings together multiple methods from these fields to test its hypotheses. It has potentially high impact, because non-compliance is one of the most serious problems the EU’s environmental policy faces, and is closely linked to environmental outcomes.
Summary
Non-compliance with the EU’s environmental rules is one of the key weaknesses of the EU’s environmental policy. This research investigates the influence that environmental governance laws have on compliance decisions, and how we might best design our laws to maximise compliance. One of the most important trends in European environmental regulatory techniques over the past decade has been the shift from hierarchical, state-led government via command-and-control techniques, to decentralised, society-led governance by local private actors (see, e.g., Jordan et al (2013)). The EU has strongly supported efforts to empower compliance and enforcement by non-State actors, as embodied in the UNECE Aarhus Convention and implementing laws. Yet little is known about how this major change in environmental governance laws has actually influenced compliance levels in practice, and why. Can the design of environmental governance rules influence us not only to comply with the letter of the law, but also to go further? This research seeks to fill that gap by means of an interdisciplinary, bottom-up study of the relationships between the legal architecture of environmental governance and compliance decisions, in a selected field of EU environmental policy (biodiversity), and in three selected States. It is novel in terms of theory, because it tests new hypotheses about the effects environmental governance rules have on compliance. It is novel in terms of methodology, because in testing these hypotheses, it uses techniques that have not up to now been applied to measure the effect of law. It is challenging, because it sits at the intersection between the law and economics, socio-legal and governance/regulatory literatures, and brings together multiple methods from these fields to test its hypotheses. It has potentially high impact, because non-compliance is one of the most serious problems the EU’s environmental policy faces, and is closely linked to environmental outcomes.
Max ERC Funding
1 494 650 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-07-01, End date: 2021-06-30
Project acronym MADE
Project Migration as Development
Researcher (PI) Hein Gysbert de Haas
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary How do processes of development and social transformation shape human migration? More specifically, how do development process affect the geographical orientation, timing, composition and volume of both internal and international migration? The relation between development and human mobility is highly contested. While economic development in poor countries and areas is usually seen as the most effective way to reduce migration, other studies suggest that development actually increases migration. However, evidence has remained highly inconclusive so far because of theoretical and methodological limitations.
This research develops new theoretical and empirical approaches to gain a fundamental understanding of the relation between development processes and human migration. While prior analyses focused on a limited number of economic and demographic ‘predictor’ variables, this project applies a broader concept of development to examine how internal and international migration trends and patterns are shaped by wider social, economic, technological and political transformations.
This will be achieved through (i) theory-building (reconceptualising migration as an intrinsic part of broader development processes) enabling the formulation of appropriate hypotheses; (ii) quantitative tests drawing on new, innovative databases on international and internal migration flow and stocks; and (iii) mixed method case-studies of six countries (provisionally Brazil, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Italy, Morocco and the Netherlands) representing different development-migration trajectories over the 19th and 20th centuries.
This project is scientifically ground-breaking by fundamentally shifting our understanding of how long-term development and social transformation processes shape human migration. This is also relevant for policy by challenging popular understandings of migration as a development failure and to make more realistic assessments of how future global change may affect migration.
Summary
How do processes of development and social transformation shape human migration? More specifically, how do development process affect the geographical orientation, timing, composition and volume of both internal and international migration? The relation between development and human mobility is highly contested. While economic development in poor countries and areas is usually seen as the most effective way to reduce migration, other studies suggest that development actually increases migration. However, evidence has remained highly inconclusive so far because of theoretical and methodological limitations.
This research develops new theoretical and empirical approaches to gain a fundamental understanding of the relation between development processes and human migration. While prior analyses focused on a limited number of economic and demographic ‘predictor’ variables, this project applies a broader concept of development to examine how internal and international migration trends and patterns are shaped by wider social, economic, technological and political transformations.
This will be achieved through (i) theory-building (reconceptualising migration as an intrinsic part of broader development processes) enabling the formulation of appropriate hypotheses; (ii) quantitative tests drawing on new, innovative databases on international and internal migration flow and stocks; and (iii) mixed method case-studies of six countries (provisionally Brazil, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Italy, Morocco and the Netherlands) representing different development-migration trajectories over the 19th and 20th centuries.
This project is scientifically ground-breaking by fundamentally shifting our understanding of how long-term development and social transformation processes shape human migration. This is also relevant for policy by challenging popular understandings of migration as a development failure and to make more realistic assessments of how future global change may affect migration.
Max ERC Funding
1 748 656 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
Project acronym SHARECITY
Project SHARECITY: Assessing the practice and sustainability potential of city-based food sharing economies
Researcher (PI) Anna Ray Davies
Host Institution (HI) THE PROVOST, FELLOWS, FOUNDATION SCHOLARS & THE OTHER MEMBERS OF BOARD OF THE COLLEGE OF THE HOLY & UNDIVIDED TRINITY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH NEAR DUBLIN
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary With planetary urbanization fast approaching there is growing clarity regarding the unsustainability of cities, not least with respect to food consumption. Sharing, including food sharing, is increasingly being identified as one transformative mechanism for sustainable cities: reducing consumption; conserving resources, preventing waste and providing new forms of socio-economic relations. However, such claims currently rest on thin conceptual and empirical foundations. SHARECITY will identify and examine diverse practices of city-based food sharing economies, first determining their form, function and governance and then identifying their impact and potential to reorient eating practices. The research has four objectives: to advance theoretical understanding of contemporary food sharing economies in cities; to generate a significant body of comparative and novel international empirical knowledge about food sharing economies and their governance within global cities; to design and test an assessment framework for establishing the impact of city-based food sharing economies on societal relations, economic vitality and the environment; and to develop and implement a novel variant of backcasting to explore how food sharing economies within cities might evolve in the future. Providing conceptual insights that bridge sharing, social practice and urban transitions theories, SHARECITY will generate a typology of food sharing economies; a database of food sharing activities in 100 global cities; in-depth food sharing profiles of 7 cities from the contrasting contexts of USA, Brazil and Germany, Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Australia; a sustainability impact toolkit to enable examination of city-based food sharing initiatives; and scenarios for future food sharing in cities. Conducting such frontier science SHARECITY will open new research horizons to substantively improve understanding of how, why and to what end people share food within cities in the 21st Century.
Summary
With planetary urbanization fast approaching there is growing clarity regarding the unsustainability of cities, not least with respect to food consumption. Sharing, including food sharing, is increasingly being identified as one transformative mechanism for sustainable cities: reducing consumption; conserving resources, preventing waste and providing new forms of socio-economic relations. However, such claims currently rest on thin conceptual and empirical foundations. SHARECITY will identify and examine diverse practices of city-based food sharing economies, first determining their form, function and governance and then identifying their impact and potential to reorient eating practices. The research has four objectives: to advance theoretical understanding of contemporary food sharing economies in cities; to generate a significant body of comparative and novel international empirical knowledge about food sharing economies and their governance within global cities; to design and test an assessment framework for establishing the impact of city-based food sharing economies on societal relations, economic vitality and the environment; and to develop and implement a novel variant of backcasting to explore how food sharing economies within cities might evolve in the future. Providing conceptual insights that bridge sharing, social practice and urban transitions theories, SHARECITY will generate a typology of food sharing economies; a database of food sharing activities in 100 global cities; in-depth food sharing profiles of 7 cities from the contrasting contexts of USA, Brazil and Germany, Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Australia; a sustainability impact toolkit to enable examination of city-based food sharing initiatives; and scenarios for future food sharing in cities. Conducting such frontier science SHARECITY will open new research horizons to substantively improve understanding of how, why and to what end people share food within cities in the 21st Century.
Max ERC Funding
1 860 009 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-10-01, End date: 2021-07-31
Project acronym SIZE
Project Size matters: scaling principles for the prediction of the ecological footprint of biofuels
Researcher (PI) Mark Antonius Jan Huijbregts
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary There is a major scientific and societal challenge in quantifying and reducing ecological footprints of products. Ecological footprint calculations suffer severely from a limited availability of data, such as the amount of energy and materials associated with the production, use and disposal of products. Furthermore, ecological footprints pertaining to biodiversity are typically biased towards a limited number of well-known species with a focus on relative species richness, leaving out ecosystem service attributes of biodiversity. As it is virtually impossible to collect all the empirical data required for all species, there is an urgent need to develop an operational framework to derive representative ecological footprints with limited data requirements. I propose to develop a novel framework based on a set of unifying scaling principles related to the production size of products and the body size of species. These scaling principles will be developed to predict key characteristics of biofuel production, such as energy return of investment, agricultural land requirements and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as global impact indicators, such as species extinction risks. The focus of the research is on (1) liquid biofuel production (bioethanol and biodiesel) from various first and second generation feedstock as an important but controversial renewable energy source (2) vascular plant diversity, as the common basis of all terrestrial ecosystems, and (3) habitat destruction and climate change, as important drivers of global change. Together with the PI, two PhD students, two Postdocs and a technical assistant will work on different components of the new predictive models, substantially enhancing the scientific understanding of how to provide reliable ecological footprints in practice.
Summary
There is a major scientific and societal challenge in quantifying and reducing ecological footprints of products. Ecological footprint calculations suffer severely from a limited availability of data, such as the amount of energy and materials associated with the production, use and disposal of products. Furthermore, ecological footprints pertaining to biodiversity are typically biased towards a limited number of well-known species with a focus on relative species richness, leaving out ecosystem service attributes of biodiversity. As it is virtually impossible to collect all the empirical data required for all species, there is an urgent need to develop an operational framework to derive representative ecological footprints with limited data requirements. I propose to develop a novel framework based on a set of unifying scaling principles related to the production size of products and the body size of species. These scaling principles will be developed to predict key characteristics of biofuel production, such as energy return of investment, agricultural land requirements and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as global impact indicators, such as species extinction risks. The focus of the research is on (1) liquid biofuel production (bioethanol and biodiesel) from various first and second generation feedstock as an important but controversial renewable energy source (2) vascular plant diversity, as the common basis of all terrestrial ecosystems, and (3) habitat destruction and climate change, as important drivers of global change. Together with the PI, two PhD students, two Postdocs and a technical assistant will work on different components of the new predictive models, substantially enhancing the scientific understanding of how to provide reliable ecological footprints in practice.
Max ERC Funding
1 670 406 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
Project acronym U4IA
Project (Euphoria): Emerging Urban Futures and Opportune Repertoires of Individual Adaptation
Researcher (PI) Harry J.P. Timmermans
Host Institution (HI) TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT EINDHOVEN
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH3, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary Activity-based analysis and modelling has rapidly gained momentum in transportation, urban planning, and geography. It examines which activities are conducted where, when, for how long, with whom, and the transport mode and route involved at a very fine scale of spatial and temporal resolution. All currently operational models are concerned with daily activity-travel patterns and do not consider any dynamics, illustrating the limitations of current approaches. This proposal reflects the ambition to achieve breakthroughs in the analysis and modelling of DYNAMIC activity-travel patterns, integrating long-term, mid-term and short-term time horizons: the research agenda in this field of research for the next decade. Several PhD projects will analyze and model the impact of innovative policies concerned with urban futures (focusing on new urban forms, creative pricing policies, restricted energy, community-based social networks and personalized guidance systems) on behavioural change in activity-travel patterns. Results will be integrated into a new generation multi-agent activity-based system to simulate primary and secondary effects of various types of policies on dynamic activity-travel patterns and therefore on accessibility, mobility, time use, energy consumption, social exclusion, and economic welfare. A large scale panel survey of dynamic activity-travel patterns (supposed to be the first of its kind in the world), and (virtual reality) adaptation experiments will be used for the analyses and estimating and validating the models. The project will lead to (i) a better understanding and an integrative framework and simulation model to assess the primary and secondary effects of various types of policies on sustainable urban environments in terms of a series of indicators (mobility, accessibility, energy use, etc.), derived from dynamics activity-travel patterns and (ii) guidelines how the effectiveness of such policies can be improved.
Summary
Activity-based analysis and modelling has rapidly gained momentum in transportation, urban planning, and geography. It examines which activities are conducted where, when, for how long, with whom, and the transport mode and route involved at a very fine scale of spatial and temporal resolution. All currently operational models are concerned with daily activity-travel patterns and do not consider any dynamics, illustrating the limitations of current approaches. This proposal reflects the ambition to achieve breakthroughs in the analysis and modelling of DYNAMIC activity-travel patterns, integrating long-term, mid-term and short-term time horizons: the research agenda in this field of research for the next decade. Several PhD projects will analyze and model the impact of innovative policies concerned with urban futures (focusing on new urban forms, creative pricing policies, restricted energy, community-based social networks and personalized guidance systems) on behavioural change in activity-travel patterns. Results will be integrated into a new generation multi-agent activity-based system to simulate primary and secondary effects of various types of policies on dynamic activity-travel patterns and therefore on accessibility, mobility, time use, energy consumption, social exclusion, and economic welfare. A large scale panel survey of dynamic activity-travel patterns (supposed to be the first of its kind in the world), and (virtual reality) adaptation experiments will be used for the analyses and estimating and validating the models. The project will lead to (i) a better understanding and an integrative framework and simulation model to assess the primary and secondary effects of various types of policies on sustainable urban environments in terms of a series of indicators (mobility, accessibility, energy use, etc.), derived from dynamics activity-travel patterns and (ii) guidelines how the effectiveness of such policies can be improved.
Max ERC Funding
2 461 681 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-01-01, End date: 2013-12-31
