Search results

The purpose of this paper is to describe the experiences of RCE Hamburg, one of the latest Regional Centres of Excellence (RCE) to be created. It outlines the activities performed by the RCE and describes its relationships with the various stakeholders.

A description of the region where the RCE is located is provided, along with some facts and figures related to the site. In addition, a description of the structure and the activities of the RCE Hamburg is provided, complemented by a description of the engagement of various stakeholders.

The paper shows that, by means of projects and action‐based initiatives, synergies between regional centres of expertise on education for sustainable development and agencies based at the local level can be achieved.

The RCE is characterised by an integrated approach where different target groups are involved (e.g. schools, NGOs and industry) and where a local university plays a catalyst role.

Buying secondhand clothing is not only interesting for consumers wanting to save money but also for sustainable clothing enthusiasts. It is now among a number of consumption practices which slow down fast fashion production while saving 10 to 20 times the energy (Fletcher, 2008, p. 100). While most of the recent scholarly work focuses on secondhand consumers (Bianchi & Birtwistle, 2010; Franklin, 2011; Norum, 2015), this paper aims to examine business activities. This perspective from economic anthropology enhances understandings of secondhand clothing, as research to-date has tended to neglect the semiotic function of clothing while underlining exchanges. To gain insight into the dynamics of the sector in Germany today, two businesses from Hamburg have been ethnographically examined by the author since 2014. This study outlines their work practices and explains the development of this high-end segment of the market from the 1970s until the digital age. For businesses, the digitalization of the trade has had massive effects on their business practice because it seems to solve inherent problems connected to the selling of pre-owned clothing. I argue that the digitalization did not only promote acceptance of buying secondhand clothing in Germany but also the emergence of new businesses models.

The interconnections between climate change and health are well studied. However, there is a perceived need for studies that examine how responses to health hazards (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, ozone layer effects, allergens, mental health and vector-borne diseases) may assist in reducing their impacts. The purpose of this paper is to review the evidence on health responses to climate hazards and list some measures to address them.

A mixed literature review, bibliometric analysis and an original online survey were undertaken on 140 participants from 55 countries spread across all geographical regions.

The bibliometric analysis identified that most climate-related health hazards are associated with extreme weather events. However, only one-third of the investigated papers specifically analysed the connections between climate change and health hazards, revealing a thematic gap. Also, although Africa is highly affected by climate change, only 5% of the assessed studies focused on this continent. Many respondents to the survey indicated “heat distress” as a significant vulnerability. The survey also identified social determinants relevant to climate-induced health vulnerabilities, such as socioeconomic and environmental factors, infrastructure and pre-existing health conditions. Most respondents agree that policies and regulations are the most effective adaptation tools to address the public health hazards triggered by climate change. This paper presents some suggestions for optimising public health responses to health hazards associated with climate change, such as the inclusion of climate-related components in public health policies, setting up monitoring systems to assess the extent to which specific climate events may pose a health threat, establishing plans to cope with the health implications of heatwaves, increased measures to protect vulnerable groups and education and awareness-raising initiatives to reduce the overall vulnerability of the population to climate-related health hazards. These measures may assist the ongoing global efforts to understand better – and cope with – the impacts of climate change on health.

The combination of a literature review, bibliometric analysis and an original world survey identified and presented a wide range of responses.

Today three out of four Europeans live in towns and cities. Urban areas are concentrated with most of the environmental challenges facing our society, but also bring together the commitment and innovation needed to resolve these challenges. The European Commission has long recognised the important role that local authorities play in improving the environment and their high level of commitment to genuine progress; in this regard, it launched the European Green Capital Award (EGCA) in 2009 as an initiative to promote and reward cities making efforts to improve the urban environment and move towards healthier and sustainable living areas. The EGCA is given each year to the city deemed to be most deserving on the basis of 10 environmental parameters: the local contribution to global climate change, local mobility and passenger transport, the availability of local public open areas, the quality of local ambient air, noise pollution, waste production and management, water consumption, waste water treatment, environmentally sustainable management of the local authority and sustainable land use.

This chapter has been composed on the basis of materials found in the literature and on websites, and thanks to contacts created with some departments of the municipalities considered.

Stockholm, Hamburg and Copenhagen represent the winning cities in 2010, 2011 and 2014, respectively. This chapter focuses on the successful experiences of these cities, which show how the convergence of the environmental and economic development is important in order to reach sustainable development.

This chapter shows that environmental protection must not be thought of as a cost for our society. On the contrary, it illustrates how it can support economic development in urban contexts if well planned, managed and participated in at a municipal scale.

This chapter focuses on clarifying the cooperation and convergence between tourism and audiovisual (AV) sectors in Hamburg and Riga. In light of increasingly easier and more accessible travel, the tourism sector is a growing trend in most countries and regions. To what extent does this affect cooperation with the AV sector? The chapter gives an overview of different types of cooperation in these regions and brings out the main obstacles for innovation. When describing the innovation systems, focus is put on institutional frameworks in these two regions. We end by arguing that raising the demand for innovation in the tourism sector is a real challenge and demonstrating that the public sector plays an important role in driving the cross-innovation processes between the observed sectors.

This chapter explores how architecture is used as a signifier in the development and promotion of urban megaprojects (UMPs). It argues that these projects rely on architecture to gain visibility. First, UMPs need to be highly visible in order to justify their exceptional status and second, they have to be visibly new and different in order to initiate the desired symbolic transformations with which they are attributed. Drawing on the case studies of HafenCity in Hamburg and Donau City in Vienna the chapter traces the logics of using architecture as a signifier and means of legitimizing the UMP. Data on the planning history of the two case studies, their administrative and institutional frameworks and the overall urban development strategies is combined with a qualitative text and image centered analysis of marketing material, planning documents, and press articles. The discussion shows how visibility is achieved by very different means. The question of how to distinguish the UMP from other projects and of how to make it uniquely identified with the particular city guides the debate in both cases. However, the lines of argument are not predictable or easily comparable from city to city and “global architecture” emerges as a contradictory and relative concept. Based on a succinct review of the related literature the chapter disputes the alleged uniformity of UMPs and argues for a meaning and discourse-oriented approach to the analysis of architecture as vehicle of urban change and political legitimation.

This paper aims to address a gap in investigating specific impacts of climate change on mental health in the Pacific region, a region prone to extreme events. This paper reports on a study on the connections between climate change, public health, extreme weather and climate events (EWEs), livelihoods and mental health, focusing on the Pacific region Islands countries.

This paper deploys two main methods. The first is a bibliometric analysis to understand the state of the literature. For example, the input data for term co-occurrence analysis using VOSviewer is bibliometric data of publications downloaded from Scopus. The second method describes case studies, which outline some of the EWEs the region has faced, which have also impacted mental health.

The results suggest that the increased frequency of EWEs in the region contributes to a greater incidence of mental health problems. These, in turn, are associated with a relatively low level of resilience and greater vulnerability. The findings illustrate the need for improvements in the public health systems of Pacific nations so that they are in a better position to cope with the pressures posed by a changing environment.

This paper contributes to the current literature by identifying the links between climate change, extreme events, environmental health and mental health consequences in the Pacific Region. It calls for greater awareness of the subject matter of mental health among public health professionals so that they may be better able to recognise the symptoms and relate them to their climate-related causes and co-determinant factors.

The Hamburg Institute for International Economics is one of five large institutes in the Federal Republic of Germany engaged in economic research, independent of the relevant activities of universities as well as other research organizations in government, trade and industry. Being a scientific institute of the Free and Hanseatic Town of Hamburg it is controlled by the University Department of the Hamburg schoolboard. The Director of the Institute is Professor Dr Heinz‐Dietrich Ortlieb. The staff numbers 120 members, including thirty departmental heads and scientific specialists.

Recent advances in contemporary virtual reality (VR) technologies are going to have a significant impact on everyday life. Through VR it is possible to virtually explore a computer-generated environment as a different reality, and to immerse oneself into the past or in a virtual museum without leaving the current real-life situation. For such an ultimate VR experience, the user should only see the virtual world. Currently, the user must wear a VR headset which fits around the head and over the eyes to visually separate himself from the physical world. Via the headset images are fed to the eyes through two small lenses. The purpose of this paper is to present the generation of a virtual 3D model of the wooden model of Solomon’s Temple, located at the Hamburg museum (Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte), and its processing for data integration into the two game engines Unity and Unreal.

Cultural heritage (CH) monuments are ideally suited for both thorough multi-dimensional geometric documentation and realistic interactive visualisation in immersive VR applications. Additionally, the game industry offers tools for interactive visualisation of objects to motivate users to virtually visit objects and places.

The project has been carried out by the Photogrammetry & Laser Scanning Lab of the HafenCity University Hamburg, Germany to demonstrate an immersive and interactive visualisation using the VR System HTC Vive.

The workflow from data acquisition to VR visualisation, including the necessary programming for navigation and interaction, is described. Furthermore, the use (including simultaneous multiple users environments) of such a VR visualisation for a CH monument is discussed in this contribution.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the extant literature about the exploitation of Internet of Things (IoT) in seaports by illustrating in detail how such IT infrastructures can impact on the redesign of their business processes. Thus, the research question of the study is: how do IoT technologies redesign the business processes of seaports?

The paper reports the illustrative case study of the German Port of Hamburg, one of the main European seaports, which widely adopted technologies based on IoT over the last few years.

The results show the adoption of IoT technologies widely redesigns and improves the performance of all the main business process of the port analyzed, in particular those processes related to technology and information of the organization. The IoT-driven business process redesign (BPR) must be planned strategically by the port management and implies the involvement of all the port stakeholders and, if necessary, the hiring external professional partners.

Despite some authors report generically which are the ports operational domains more affected by IoT, there is a lack of studies about the specific implications of the adoption of such technologies on the BPR of seaports. The paper fills in this gap.