Spatial distribution of social innovation potential in disadvantaged areas: The case of two Hungarian counties

For more than a century, technical progress and innovation have been at the forefront of economics. This is one of the reasons why the importance of innovation has been recognised by economic policy makers and the concept has become part of the public narrative. However, this does not mean that research has come to an end, which would in any case contradict Schumpeter's theory of the need for change and renewal. Despite the wealth of knowledge we have, we can state that there are a number of recurring (e.g. social and ethical aspects of innovation, etc.) and new (e.g. spill-over effects of innovation, the effectiveness of public intervention in supporting the development of innovation networks, etc.) questions that can be asked about innovation. In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, the cyclical COVID crisis starting in 2019 and, not least, the Russian-Ukrainian war, the peripheral regions of the post-socialist countries of Europe are falling further behind. Research, development and innovation investment, already extremely low, has further declined and the economic outlook has worsened. Social innovation may therefore be of particular importance in these regions. Our study has two main parts. First, we briefly review the place and role of innovation in economic thinking and assess the definitions of social innovation; in the second part we analyse the differences in the NUTS2 regions of the Visegrad countries in terms of the ranking of technological and social innovation potential.

Temporal and spatial changes in element distribution in bone and cartilage

The present and potential spatial distributions of vegetation were estimated respectively by remote sensing data and a logarithmic normal distribution model in the lower reaches of Heihe River, northwestern China. The results show: (1) the comparability of the potential and present spatial distribution of Populus euphratica is 66.3% and Tamarix ramossima is 74.7%; (2) the higher comparability of the potential and present spatial distribution indicates that the groundwater level is the decisive factor in the changes of spatial distribution of Populus euphratica and Tamarix ramossima in the study area. The difference is obvious between the potential and present spatial distribution of Populus euphratica and Tamarix ramossima in the distribution region of hardy salt layer. This study is an important reference for analyzing the relationships between vegetation distribution and groundwater level.

New technologies, market-based solutions, and regulation have proven inadequate in remedying today's human caused ecological crises. This suggests that detrimental social practices need to be fundamentally changed. While social innovation is one possible approach for such change, a comprehensive picture of research on social innovation in relation to ecological challenges is missing. Therefore, with an emphasis on so-called strong sustainability, this article's purpose was to investigate social innovation's potential in relation to ecological crises, to identify important gaps, and advance research implications. A systematic literature review of social innovation research that address environmental issues was carried out, and the resulting literature was analyzed according to sustainability and five dimensions of social innovation. To reap more of social innovation's potential in our time of ecological crises, we suggest a move in social innovation research towards strong sustainability and propose such research avenues within each of the five dimensions of social innovation: conceptualization, environmental needs and challenges, key resources, capabilities, and constraints, types of governance, networks and actors, and, finally, process dynamics for strongly sustainable social innovation.

Major contributions of agricultural management practices to topsoil organic carbon distribution and accumulation in croplands of East China over three decades

How should ‘social innovation’ be understood in the context of active ageing and long-term care for older people, and to what extent are the countries of Europe actively fostering innovation in the care sector? Based on in-depth, comparative case study analysis of select countries, the authors discuss the drivers and barriers of social innovation practices and policies across different care regime typologies. They identify clear ‘first mover’ and ‘early mover’ countries where evidence points to complex, integrated service innovations being scaled up with public sector support and ‘starter’ countries where less complex innovations tend to operate on a small scale, for short periods of time, with limited public support. The authors outline four areas where the need and potential for social innovation is greatest: expanding the type and scope of long-term care services, improving integration and coordination of long-term care systems, developing community-based care models, and improving the employment and training opportunities within the care sector.

The international literature is paying significant and increasing attention to the analysis of the regions’ innovation potential, and its active contribution to economic growth and competitiveness. Beside the classical, technical innovation, also the social innovation is getting even more emphasis. It can solve as alternative basically in the case of the peripheral territories. The convergence of peripheries is a stressed priority in the European Union. The territorial disparities are resulting in significant social and political problems also in the case of the Visegrad countries’ regions. The authors in their research represent a possible method for the measurement of regional (NUTS-2) level social innovation potential on the example of the Visegrad countries, and they also analyse the causes and consequences of disparities. The applied complex social innovation index can be calculated as a result of three pillars (economic, social, culture and attitude), and several components. As a result of the created patterns can be concluded that compared to the economic indicators, the disadvantage of the peripheries is not so significant in the case of the social innovation index, because of the complex character of the index. In the second part of the research, the authors analyse and evaluate also the methods, which can be adequate for increasing the social innovation potential.

The post-industrial innovation system with its distinct focus on social innovation allows for theoretical and conceptual connections between innovation research and new fields of social practice. In this article we elaborate on the potential of social innovation and especially digital social innovation to tackle digitally excluded persons’ needs. Public internet access points are key infrastructures driving the digital inclusion of marginalized persons. Empirical results presented in this paper shows that these players act socially innovative by creating collaborative spaces for digital inclusion, by developing hybrid staff competence profiles and by creating community-based, intergenerational learning content. The paper relates research perspectives from the social innovation and the digital inclusion discourse and argues against the background of research and development results of six EU funded projects on social innovation and/or digital inclusion in the years 2011–2015.KeywordsTelecentreDigital gapDigital inclusionSocial innovationDigital social innovation

Accelerating energy transitions that are both sustainable and just remains an important challenge, and social innovation can have a key role in this transition. Here, we examine the diversity and potential of social innovation in energy systems transformation, synthesizing original mixed methods data from expert interviews, document analysis, social innovation experiments, a representative survey, and an expert survey. Based on a thematic analysis of these data, we advance four key findings: (1) the diversity of social innovation in energy is best understood when recognizing core social practices (thinking, doing, and organizing) and accounting for changes in social relations (cooperation, exchange, competition, and conflict); (2) governance, policy networks, and national context strongly shape social innovation dynamics; (3) processes of social innovation are implicated by multidimensional power relations that can result in transformative changes; and (4) social innovation in energy generally has strong social acceptance among citizens, benefits local communities and is legitimized in key community and city organizations. We discuss an agenda for 9 future research directions on social innovation in energy, and conclude with insights related to national context, governance, and acceleration.

As an important part of the urban ecosystem, urban trees provide various benefits to urban residents. It is therefore important to examine the spatial distribution and the temporal change in urban tree canopies. Different from traditional overhead view remote sensing-based methods, street-level images, which present the most common view that people have of greenery, provide a more human-centric way to quantify street tree canopies. This study mapped and analyzed the spatial distribution and temporal change in the green view index, which represents the visibility of tree canopies along streets in New York City during the last 10 years using historical Google Street View images. Deep learning and computer vision algorithms were used to derive the quantitative information of street tree canopies from street-level images and map the spatial distribution of the green view index. This study further investigated the potential disparities in terms of green view index across different racial/ethnic groups by comparing with census data. Results show that non-Hispanic Whites tend to live in neighborhoods with higher green view index and Hispanics tend to live in neighborhoods with lower green view index. The green view index values in New York City have increased slightly in the last 10 years, and the change of green view index has no significant correlation with resident’s ethnic/racial status. This study proves the usability of historical Google Street View images for monitoring the temporal change of urban street tree canopy changes at large scale, and it also provides insights and a valuable reference for urban greening programs.

Climate change, particularly at South Asia region is having a huge impact on precipitation patterns, its intensity and extremeness. Mountainous area is much sensitive to these extreme events, hence having adverse effect on environment as well as people in term of fluctuation in water supply as well as frequent extreme weather events such as flood, landslide etc. So, prediction of extreme precipitation is imperative for proper management. The objective of this study was to assess the spatial distribution and temporal change of extreme precipitation events on Koshi basin of Nepal during 1980-2010. Five indicators (R1day, R5 day, R > 25.4 mm, SDII and CDD) were chosen for 41 meteorological stations to test the extreme events. Inverse distance weighting and kriging interpolation technique was used to interpolate the spatial patterns. Result showed that most extreme precipitation events increased up to mountain regions from low river valley; and then it decreased subsequently up to Himalayan regions (south to north direction). However, there is high value of indices for lowland Terai valley also. Most of the indices have hotspot with higher value at north western and southern part of the study area. For temporal change, most of the extreme precipitation indices showed increasing trend within 30 years’ period. The spatial distribution of temporal change in indices suggests that there is increasing trend in lowland area and decreasing trend in mountainous and Himalayan area. So, adaptive measure should be adopted through proper land use planning, especially at those hotspot areas and their tributaries; to reduce adverse effect of extreme precipitation events.

The spatial distribution and temporal changes of demosponges and bryozoans in the northern basin of the Venice Lagoon were studied from samples collected from wooden piles and artificial rocks in June and October 2001. Twenty species of demosponges and 18 species of bryozoans were recorded. Sponges were found at 10 out of 11 sampling stations, while bryozoans were found at all 11 sampling stations. The studied taxocoenoses showed a high percentage cover of the lagoon hard bottoms. Eleven out of the 20 detected species of sponges were reported in a previous study on this taxocoenosis carried out on material collected in 1954–1955. Moreover, the most abundant species were also recorded during a study in 1989. These observations suggest a remarkable degree of persistence of the sponge community. Among bryozoans, the comparison with literature data showed a wider variation in species composition, with the occurrence of five new species in the studied area. The Indo‐Pacific invasive Tricellaria inopinata replaced the native Bugula spp. in the role of dominant species. Finally, a significant increase in species richness along the salinity gradient, more evident for sponges than for bryozoans, was identified.

Social innovations have proven to be valuable in identifying, designing and implementing new solutions to social and environmental problems. The recent COVID-19 outbreak has put a spotlight on the potential of social innovation as a resilience mechanism, including for local development. This paper presents a preliminary framework for analysing social innovation ecosystems at the local level. It can help policy makers to better understand the different concepts around social innovation, and to develop policies to support social innovation and its implementation. The first section considers the features of social innovation and the benefits it can bring. The second section provides an analytical framework for social innovation at the local level. The final section sets a number of guidelines that support the implementation of social innovation ecosystems at local level, including examples of specific policy instruments.

It is generally well-accepted in innovation research that consumer/user adoption of an invention is key to its diffusion. Despite general awareness about the importance of the adopter perspective in innovation diffusion, the majority of the literature on social innovation, hardly addresses the adoption-side of innovation diffusion. Social innovation potential therefore often remains under-utilized. In this paper the result of a review of 468 (predominantly English language) publications on social innovation is provided (based on Web of Science), searching for the adopter perspective in social innovation research. The findings show that, although some hints at the role of adopters, and their environment, can be found in the literature, attention for the willingness and capacities of potential adopters is meager in peer-reviewed publications. Propelled by high policy expectations, at the national as well as European level, scientific interest in social innovation has been booming over the last decade. Without a proper understanding of social innovation diffusion dynamics and adopter willingness and their interactions with existing institutions, expectations may not be fulfilled and specific social innovation policies that have been emerging across Europe may not be able to achieve intended policy goals.

Knowledge of the spatial distribution and temporal changes of the land surface parameters at the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) region is essential to understanding the changes of hydrological processes and climate systems possibly brought by TGD. Based on accumulated observations for years from a spaceborne passive microwave radiometer, this study presents and analyzes the spatial and temporal distribution of soil moisture in the TGD region. Major drought and flood events are identified from the satellite-derived soil moisture products. Moreover, the areas around the largest freshwater lakes of China, the Dongting and Poyang Lakes, are frequently subjected to drought events, which might be partially related to the impoundment of TGD since the year 2006. Data analysis further reveals a statistically significant drying trend in May in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River over the years 2003–11. These analyses indicate that water shortage becomes a realistic challenge for the once water abundant Yangtze River region, and more considerations on the possible consequences brought by climate changes are needed for the operation of TGD.