Living Lab Research Articles

Challenges for Digitalisation in Building Renovation to Enhance the Efficiency of the Process: A Spanish Case Study

Although construction is one of the largest industries in the world, it is one of the least digitised and its productivity is still very low. Excesses of time and cost are common and are even more accentuated for building renovation. Recently, the building information modeling (BIM) methodology has strongly entered in the construction sector and appears to be an effective paradigm shift. Considering all of the previously mentioned aspects, this article addresses the identification and analysis of the critical barriers of renovation and the potential for digitalisation to overcome them using BIM. The methodology that was used is based on an open innovation approach called Living Labs, where consultations with the key stakeholders of the construction process aims for a higher digitalisation to focus on real needs and fitted to the user’s requirements. Starting from a worldwide survey, the analysis of the Spanish casuistry is deepened. From the analysis of barriers and opportunities, the necessary requirements for an optimal BIM application in renovation are highlighted. After identifying the key aspects that each stakeholder’ typology has considered as relevant, a set of key performance indicators have been selected, to monitor the improvements in the renovation process when BIM is adopted.

Hydrogen-based electricity storage optimization on buildings by coupling thermal and photovoltaic electricity production towards carbon neutrality

Self-sufficiency (SS) of buildings with low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be obtained using photovoltaics (PV). To maximize self-consumption - minimizing the import of grid electricity - PV can be coupled with a hydrogen storage system converting the electricity to hydrogen by electrolysis during the summer season, when the on-site production is higher, and using it during the winter season with fuel cells. This article deals with the sizing constraints of solar hydrogen systems at building-scale. The future building for the Smart Living Lab (SLL) in Fribourg (Switzerland) has been taken as case study. It has four stories and a mixed usage (Office-building and Research facilities), with a multi-oriented PV installation in order to produce enough electricity to achieve at least 50% of self-sufficiency. Using the PV production, this study aims to optimise the sizing of a hydrogen storage system allowing to reach the required self-sufficiency ratio. Finally, a comparison of the global efficiency of the system for three different demand-side scenarios.

Digitalizzazione e tracciabilità: i principali risultati del Living Lab sulla filiera legno-energia in Italia

Italy is the first importer of wood-energy biomass worldwide, with tons of timber illegally imported every year and significant negative socio-economic and environmental consequences. A Living Lab was established involving 25 among stakeholders and key informants of the wood-energy supply chain in order to foster a participatory and open assessment of the impact of digital technology on traceability. A Socio-Cyber-Physical System (SCPS) approach was adopted to map entities, activities and relationships at stake in the wood-energy sector, aimed to analyse impacts of the introduction of digital technologies. Participatory activities allowed to identify both positive and negative impacts of the digitalisation process in the wood-energy sector. What emerged from the analysis is that, to orient digitalisation towards a real path to sustainability in the Italian wood-energy sector, a holistic approach taking into account all the social, geographical and environmental elements at stake is strongly needed.

Urban Living Labs and Transformative Changes: A qualitative study to the triadic relationship between financing, stakeholder roles and outcomes of Urban Living Labs on their impact creation in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands.

1 IntroductionUrban living labs (ULLs) have arisen in cities as a response to a pressing challenge (Marvin et al., 2018): How can cities provide economic prosperity and social cohesion while achieving environmental sustainability? In this perspective, the core idea of ULLs is that urban sites can provide a learning arena within which the co-creation of innovation can be

Editorial: Insights

From the Guest EditorsA special issue on the theme of Living Labs in the Technology Innovation Management Review was selected and developed from papers presented at the DLDD and the XXXII ISPIM Innovation Conference, both held virtually in 2021. “DLDD stands” for Digital Living Lab Days 2021, which is organized by the European Network of Living Labs.

A Closer Look at the Role of Higher Education in Living Labs: a scoping review

IntroductionThe world is changing rapidly, leading to complex societal challenges. Continuous social changes affect the types of competences needed for professionals to contribute to innovation. Employers expect professionals to be lifelong learners and to constantly update their expertise in accordance with societal and professional demands. Complex societal challenges call

Implementing agricultural living labs that renew actors’ roles within existing innovation systems: A case study in France

Living Labs are developed in widely diverse innovation domains, based on principles of users involvement and experimentation in ‘real-world’ contexts, inviting to question the various actors' roles within innovation systems. In the agricultural sector, the implementation of Living Labs may face incumbent routines for experimentation, actors' relationships, and information circulation, as ‘users’ are mostly farmers already embedded in innovation systems. How, beyond adhesion to inclusiveness principles, the actual practices related to an agricultural Living Lab development make possible to renew or redistribute actors' roles in the innovation process? To address this issue, we realized a case study, following the development of an agricultural Living Lab in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region (France) by one year long immersion and participant observation. Our theoretical approach was to consider the Living Lab as a boundary object supposed to allow actors from different social worlds to work together in a new way, and relying on infrastructures in order to do so. We thus studied the intertwining between various rationales about the innovation model or the territory, the infrastructures on which the innovation process relied, and actors' roles construction. Our findings underline the divergent rationales conserved among the LIT's steering actors, associated with undefined roles, especially for farmers. We further show how these divergent rationales participated in maintaining existing infrastructures of the innovation system, preventing from effectively renewing actors' arrangements and respective roles. Among these, we describe the farmers' workshops, and the information sharing paths, both limiting the ownership of the process by non-incumbent actors. Complementarily to the distinctions of various roles in literature, we contribute to relate potentially neglected aspects of the Living Lab management (because not judged strategical) to the room for manoeuvre and possibilities for enactment of expected actors' roles. We finally discuss the relevant skills and their distribution among actors that our findings suggest for the development of an agricultural Living Lab within an existing innovation system.

Extracting Users: Regimes of Engagement in Norwegian Smart Electricity Transition

Recent efforts to involve digital technologies and renewables in the electricity grid have placed users at center stage in the legitimation of energy transitions. This move has been paralleled by an emphasis on users and energy practices in social studies of energy related to science and technology studies. This article builds on an eighteen-month Living Lab exploration of energy practices with smart electricity users in Bergen, Norway. We make two interrelated arguments. First, energy production and distribution in Norway and elsewhere is shifting toward greater automation of tasks, possibly bypassing the “active user” concept. Energy sector practices are evolving from simply extracting natural resources (Extraction 1.0) toward extraction of users’ behavioral data (Extraction 2.0), and privacy thus emerges as a key component in the stabilization of energy systems. Second, we reflect on displacements of the roles and possibilities of users (or “energy citizens”) thereby enabled, especially their normative (political and regulatory) aspects. We propose that conceptualization of energy practices be supported by the concept of regimes of engagement from pragmatist sociology. Relatedly, we argue that market, civic, ecological, and industrial regimes are being actively merged through digital innovation and what we call the techno-epistemic network of smart electricity.

A Methodology for Designing Smart Urban Living Labs from the University for the Cities of the Future.

Cities have high demand and limited availability of water and energy, so it is necessary to have adequate technologies to make efficient use of these resources and to be able to generate them. This research focuses on developing and executing a methodology for an urban living lab vocation identification for a new water and energy self-sufficient university building. The methods employed were constructing a technological roadmap to identify global trends and select the technologies and practices to be implemented in the building. Among the chosen technologies were those for capturing and using rain and residual water, the generation of solar energy, and water and energy generation and consumption monitoring. This building works as a living laboratory since the operation and monitoring generate knowledge and innovation through students and research groups that develop projects. The insights gained from this study may help other efforts to avoid pitfalls and better design smart living labs and off-grid buildings.

Living Labs Past Achievements, Current Developments, and Future Trajectories

The year 2006 is the ‘official’ start of European Living Labs as the movement gained real momentum through European policy measures, culminating in the birth of the pan-European network ENoLL (European Network of Living Labs) [...]

Unraveling the politics of \u2018doing inclusion\u2019 in transdisciplinarity for sustainable transformation

Transdisciplinary research and innovation (R&I) efforts have emerged as a means to address challenges to sustainable transformation. One of the main elements of transdisciplinary efforts is the ‘inclusion’ of different stakeholders, values and perspectives in participatory R&I processes. In practice, however, ‘doing inclusion’ raises a number of challenges. In this article, we aim to contribute to re-politicizing inclusion in transdisciplinarity for transformation, by (1) empirically unraveling four key challenges that emerge in the political practice of ‘doing inclusion’, (2) illustrating how facilitators of inclusion processes perform balancing acts when confronted with these challenges, and (3) reflecting on what the unfolding dynamics suggests about the politics of stakeholder inclusion for societal transformation. In doing so, we analyze the transdisciplinary FIT4FOOD2030 project (2017–2020)—an EU-funded project that aimed to contribute to fostering EU R&I systems’ ability to catalyze food system transformation through stakeholder engagement in 25 Living Labs. Based on 3 years of action-research (including interviews, workshops and field observations), we identified four inherent political challenges to ‘doing inclusion’ in FIT4FOOD2030: (1) the challenge to meaningfully bring together powerful and marginalized stakeholders; (2) combining representation and deliberation of different stakeholder groups; (3) balancing diversities of inclusion with directionalities implied by transformative efforts; and (4) navigating the complexities of establishing boundaries of inclusion processes. We argue that by understanding ‘doing inclusion’ as a political practice, necessitating specificity about the (normative) ambitions in different inclusion settings, facilitators may better grasp and address challenges in transdisciplinarity for transformation.

Prepare for the CAV Future

Lucien Linders is general manager of Smart Mobility Living Lab: London (SMLL) – the most advanced urban connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) testbed in the world. Here he discusses the importance of educating the wider public as to the benefits of CAVs as well as the valuable contribution that SMLL is making to developing the technologies

리빙랩(Living lab)을 통한 문화예술교육 활성화 방안

이 연구는 최근에 새롭게 등장하는 리빙랩 연구로 도시의 생활환경 개선과 도시의 변화가 이루어지고 있는 현실에서 리빙랩을 문화예술교육에 접목하여 융복합 교육으로 이루어진다면 그동안 개별화된 방식 으로 이루어져 왔던 문화예술에 시민들이 한층 더 쉽게 다가갈 수 있게 될 수 있다. 이 연구의 과정으로 서 리빙랩의 의미를 살펴보고, 현재 진행되고 있는 문화예술교육을 영역별로 분석하여 나아갈 방향을 설 정하고 구체화하는 데 목적을 두었다. 리빙랩은 그동안 개념화되지 못하고 파편화되어 있는 개인의 생각 이나 이웃과 협력하는 공동체적 삶을 함께 공유할 수 있다는 실천과정을 보여준다. 인간의 역사에서 공 동체가 협력하여 만들어가는 것은 과거에도 많이 있었으나 최근에는 자유주의에 내포된 개인주의가 확 산하면서 점점 사라지고 있다. 공동체 의식은 가정에서 학교교육으로 이어져 생활문화로 형성하여야 한 다. 지역의 문화예술에 대한 주민들의 향유를 위해서는 공동체 사회에 대한 참여와 희생의 정신이 마음 속에 내포되어 있어야 한다고 보았다. 최근에 확산하기 시작한 리빙랩은 생활실험실의 의미를 지니며, 지역 재생과 환경개선에 많이 적용되고 있는 것으로 나타나고 있으며, 문화예술에서도 충분히 접목할 수 있다는 것을 보여주고 있다. 문화와 예술교육 시스템을 개괄적으로 살펴보고, 문화예술교육이 이루어지 고 있는 학교교육, 사설교육, 공공기관 교육의 조화로운 운영을 강조하고, 문화예술교육이 시민들에게 이 루어져 공공성을 강화할 필요가 있다. 교육의 방향성 분석을 통해 학교교육을 보편성, 사설교육은 전문 성, 공공기관 교육은 대중성을 강조하고 있다는 점을 제시하고, 공공기관 교육에서는 개인에게 제2의 기 회부여 차원에서 문화예술교육이 이루어져야 한다고 하였다. 따라서 이 연구는 리빙랩을 통해 문화예술 활성화를 위한 교육 방안을 찾아보는 것에 중점을 둔다. 그동안 문화예술이 개인 중심의 전문성 교육 중 심으로 이루어져 왔으나 최근에는 기관 중심의 프로그램을 통해 대중 중심으로 나아가는 경향을 보인다. 이러한 상황에서 리빙랩을 통한 문화예술이 어떻게 활성화되어야 하고, 교육의 방향은 어떻게 이루어져 야 하는가를 알아보고자 하는 것이다.

Cracks in the wall of a car-oriented local mobility system – Results of an urban living lab

This paper focuses on evaluating the effects of an Urban Living Lab (ULL), which aims to promote the sustainable transition of a local mobility system through civic engagement within a multi-actor cooperation network. For this purpose, an approach is presented on how to measure and evaluate the impacts of a ULL on different levels. Therefore, a framework integrating the transition management approach and the multi-level perspective is developed and used for a mixed-methods evaluation approach of a ULL in a small rural town. The empirical results provide some evidence that after one year, the ULL activities cause some ‘cracks in the wall’ of the currently car-use dominated local mobility system: A significant decrease in the perceived social support of a local transport policy prioritizing car user needs is observed, as well as a significant decrease in the perceived social support for policy measures aiming to upgrade the existing car use infrastructure. Furthermore, citizens now perceive a higher local descriptive norm in favour of walking and cycling. However, ULL activities are not associated with a significant reduction of personal car use. Implications of the evaluation results for the further development of this specific local ULL as well as ULLs in general are discussed. Moreover, lines of psychological research aimed at supporting a better understanding of effective ULLs are described.

Setting the Social Monitoring Framework for Nature-Based Solutions Impact: Methodological Approach and Pre-Greening Measurements in the Case Study from CLEVER Cities Milan

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are currently being deployed in many European Commission Horizon 2020 projects in reaction to the increasing number of environmental threats, such as climate change, unsustainable urbanization, degradation and loss of natural capital and ecosystem services. In this research, we consider the application of NBS as a catalyst for social inclusivity in urban regeneration strategies, enabled through civic participation in the co-creation of green interventions with respect to social cohesion and wellbeing. This article is focused on a social monitoring framework elaborated within the H2020 CLEVER Cities project, with the city of Milan as a case study. Firstly, we overviewed the major regeneration challenges and expected co-benefits of the project, which are mainly human health and wellbeing, social cohesion and environmental justice, as well as citizen perception about safety and security related to the NBS implementation process. Secondly, we examined the relevance of using NBS in addressing social co-benefits by analyzing data from questionnaires against a set of five major indicators, submitted to citizens and participants of activities during pre-greening interventions: (1) Place, use of space and relationship with nature, (2) Perceived ownership and sense of belonging, (3) Psychosocial issues, social interactions and social cohesion, (4) Citizen perception about safety and security, and lastly, we analyzed (5) knowledge about CLEVER interventions and NBS benefits in relation to socio-demographics of the questionnaires’ respondents. Thirdly, we cross-referenced a wind-rose multi-model of co-benefits analysis for NBS across the regeneration challenges of the project. Because of the COVID-19 emergency, in this research we mainly focused on site observations and online questionnaires, as well as on monitoring pre-greening scenarios in three Urban Living Labs (ULLs) in Milan, namely CLEVER Action Labs. Lastly, this study emphasizes the expected social added values of NBS impact over long-term urban regeneration projects. Insights from the pre-greening surveys results accentuate the importance of the NBS interventions in citizens’ perceptions about their wellbeing, general health and strong sense of neighborhood belonging. A wider interest towards civic participation in co-management and getting informed about NBS interventions in the Milanese context is also noted.

Design for disassembly, deconstruction and resilience: A circular economy index for the built environment

Globally, the building, construction and demolition industry generates the largest percentage of waste. Building material waste is still commonly landfilled, and materials such as concrete and steel are increasingly being retained in the material loop through suboptimal operations such as recycling. To contrast this trend, the objective of this paper is to present a new circular economy–based index for the built environment; design for disassembly, deconstruction, and resilience (3DR). We applied this index to our purpose-built prefabricated building, named Legacy Living Lab (L3). The 3DR method illustrates the steps and decision making that, if applied during design, production, maintenance, and end of life, would enable a closure of the building materials loop. To provide a complete picture of the benefits of the 3DR method, the material flow of the building was analysed, including a comparison of the amount of new materials. The amount of reusable materials was investigated to sustain the circularity once dissembling the building. The benefits of applying the 3DR method are proven during and for each stage of the project lifecycle. Specifically, the results of this study show that building refurbishment is possible through the 83% of walls and ceilings that can be disassembled during the operation phase. The prototype building can be relocated, which in the process produces less than 1% of the buildings mass in waste. The 3DR principles extend the knowledge and application of the circular economy approach through the conversion of building waste into new resources in buildings.

Using Living Labs to Explore Needs and Solutions for Older Adults With Dementia: Scoping Review.

BackgroundNumerous living labs have established a new approach for studying the health, independent living, and well-being of older adults with dementia. Living labs interact with a broad set of stakeholders, including students, academic institutions, private companies, health care organizations, and patient representative bodies and even with other living labs. Hence, it is crucial to identify the types of cocreations that should be attempted and how they can be facilitated through living labs.ObjectiveThis study aims to scope publications that examine all types of living lab activities, exploring the needs and expectations of older adults with dementia and seeking solutions, whether they live in the community or long-term health care facilities (LTHFs).MethodsThis scoping review was reported according to the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) recommendations for the extension of scoping reviews. We searched six bibliographic databases for publications up to March 2020, and a forward-backward citation chasing was performed. Additional searches were conducted using Google Scholar. The quality of the selected papers was assessed.ResultsOf the 5609 articles identified, we read 58 (1.03%) articles and retained 12 (0.21%) articles for inclusion and final analysis. All 12 articles presented an innovative product, developed in 4 main living labs, to assist older adults with cognitive disorders or dementia living in the community or LTHFs. The objectives of these studies were to optimize health, quality of life, independent living, home care, and safety of older adults with cognitive disorders or dementia, as well as to support professional and family caregivers or reduce their burdens. The overall methodological quality of the studies ranged from poor to moderate.ConclusionsThis scoping review identified several living labs playing a pivotal role in research aimed at older adults with dementia living in the community or LTHFs. However, it also revealed that living labs should conduct more better-quality interventional research to prove the effectiveness of their technological products or service solutions.International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)RR2-10.2147/SHTT.S233130

Co-creation Pathways to Inform Shared Governance of Urban Living Labs in Practice: Lessons From Three European Projects

Over recent decades Urban Living Labs (ULLs) have become a common space for co-creation processes' experimentation, whereby new approaches for sustainable urban development are highly connected to support evidence-based policy generation. Europe seems a particular 'hotspot' for this approach whenever it comes to public policy and specifically planning for urban transition. Systemic changes related to urban governance and different public participatory mechanisms, as in the case of ULLs, demand a growing interest from the stakeholders and deliberation in decision-making mechanisms. In this research paper, we analyze co-creation pathways and different shared governance mechanisms in three ongoing European projects: CLEVER Cities, Sharing Cities, and SUNEX projects from a practice perspective. This comparative study investigates stakeholder engagement (1) scales, (2) mechanisms, (3) methodologies of engagement, and finally the co-creation pathway challenges and pitfalls. From the analyzed ULLs' experiences, we identified key principles that suggest relevant clues to enable the consolidation of a forthcoming ULL 2.0 model and related innovation pathways for co-creating urban planning policies. We lastly reflect on the enablers and catalysts of co-creation processes to inform shared urban governance as major takeaways from our research.

Rationale and Methods of Evaluation for ACHO, A New Virtual Assistant to Improve Therapeutic Adherence in Rural Elderly Populations: A User-Driven Living Lab.

Low therapeutic adherence is a concern for health professionals as it decreases therapeutic efficiency while increasing costs, especially in elderly populations. To increase therapeutic adherence in elderly populations, the technology applied in the medical devices that are used must be adapted to improve usability. This paper outlines the rationale behind, and methods applied to assess the usability of, ACHO (Assistant on Care and Health Offline), a voice assistant that provides elderly patients with reminders of medical appointments to attend and when they need to take their medication. This work is a descriptive, cross-sectional, observational study, and will include a three-phase (analysis, testing and refinement) multidimensional usability analysis of an initial prototype, in the setting of a user-driven Living Lab, which enables the needs and characteristics of the end users to be identified and incorporated into the prototype with each iteration, in which a multidisciplinary team of researchers and users will participate as co-creators. This methodology will allow us to develop a better prototype, increasing usability and, thus, increasing therapeutic adherence.

Public Value Co-Creation in Living Labs—Results from Three Case Studies

Living Labs—innovation units established to introduce new methods and approaches into public sector organizations—have received a lot of attention as methods for experimentation and open innovation practices in public sector organizations. However, little is known so far about how they co-create public value and which conditions influence these co-creation practices. Therefore, the research questions are: which organizational factors influence the process of public value co-creation and which outcomes and values are produced as a result? The research questions were answered by employing a qualitative research approach conducting semi-structured interviews with employees and participants of three living labs in Germany and Austria. The results show top-level support and lab leadership as the most important context factors. Living labs produce tangible and intangible outcomes. The tangible outcomes are the products developed within the lab, and the intangible outcomes are created by the interaction between the lab’s participants. The main contributions are twofold: first, context factors are identified that lead to the success of co-creation processes within living labs. Second, the study contributes to the literature on public value because it is shown that participation in living labs itself leads to added value in addition to the tangible and intangible outcomes.