Suchergebnisse

Municipalities in the European Union are ageing fast. However, achieving societal and environmental change with a focus on the development of an age-friendly environment, ambient assisted living, eHealth, public spaces that facilitate active ageing and wellbeing for all generations and social support networks for older adults with declining functional capacities represent a major challenge for European municipalities. Additionally, developing and financing smart social infrastructure to support a growing number of older adults with declining functional capacities so that they can postpone moving to a nursing home and live longer in the community is a major challenge for European municipalities. Social innovations for the digital transformation of health care and social care delivery systems can help older adults live autonomously and independently in their own communities and postpone or even avoid entering a nursing home. The innovations will lead to a more efficient combination of the existing societal resources in the communities for fulfilling the health care and social needs of the ageing members of the society who are dependent on the help of others due to illness or functional decline. On the supply side, new scientific (optimisation of the supply networks), organisational (self-managed communities) and technological innovations, such as robotics, domotics, CPS based on the Internet of Things and cloud computing, offer new utilities and create new businesses for the supply of goods and services to older people and also provide new job opportunities for young people. The aim of this paper is to consider the development and financing of community and smart social infrastructure and present the case for Slovenia. Keywords: ambient assisted living, lifetime neighbourhood, independent living, assisted living, housing with care, health care, long-term care, ageing population ; publishedVersion

Efficient risk allocation has been proven to be at the heart of effective and efficient infrastructure project operation. While most risks may be reasonably assigned in transport infrastructure projects, demand risk remains ambiguous due to the multiple factors influencing its appropriate allocation. The present research is a first attempt to introduce indicators as tools to guide contracting parties in assigning demand risk. The level of control, based on infrastructure characteristics and attributes, describes the potential control over demand an operator may have. The optimal demand risk allocation is seen as an assessment of the appropriateness of demand risk allocation effected. The indicators are constructed following accomplished rules set by supranational organizations. Furthermore, 51 project cases ranging different transport infrastructure modes from 19 European countries including projects delivered traditionally and as Public Private Partnerships were used to validate the indicators and assess their performance. Results show the potential of both indicators to guide governments, operators and also financiers in appropriately allocating demand risk in transport infrastructure projects. This optimality was shown to be related to more accurate traffic forecasts resulting in sustainable transport infrastructure as the project then delivers on its economic, environmental, and social/welfare targets. Keywords: transport infrastructure; sustainable demand risk allocation; Public Private Partnerships; composite indicators ; publishedVersion ; © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

This paper addresses the main challenges in climate resilience of the building sector, including climate adaptation schemes, energy efficiency, and mitigation approaches. These challenges are evaluated with regard to the state of the art, research interest, and regulatory issues, providing an assessment of the advances and defining research gaps in the literature review. The review shows that climate resilience mainly deals with larger systems, whereas the field is still developing at the building level. One of the main challenges identified is the institutional response. Many publications state that it is necessary to revise policies and develop legislation; however, this is sometimes hindered by uncertain climate change predictions. The EU legislation currently provides partial coverage of resource efficiency and climate mitigation in the building sector, while the national legislation is delayed. The current situation can impair the competitiveness of the national building sector, causing it to lag behind the goals set for achieving sustainability. From the cost perspective, immediate short-term actions are seen as more expensive, because delays can result in increased risks for major investments. The authorities are currently choosing between rapid and delayed actions, balancing the costs of early actions and the reciprocal costs of delay. Keywords: buildings, climate change, climate resilience, economy, climate change adaptation ; publishedVersion

Building energy retrofit is not only an efficient approach to increase energy efficiency through technical installations, but also has great potential to improve social acceptance through co-creation. However, there are many existing residential buildings with low energy efficiency in need of retrofit, which is currently not being done. This paper aims to examine the barriers to conducting the residential building retrofit and co-created a suitable business model to overcome these challenges and improve social acceptance. Thirty-nine deep interviews and a workshop with representatives from people (residential building owners), public and private sectors were conducted. The results show that the barriers include lack of information sharing and consulting, limited resources and knowledge, and risks of not achieving the expected energy efficiency. Then a public–private-people partnerships (PPPP) business model is co-created to overcome the barriers by improving information sharing, making use of operational experience and financial resources from the private sector, as well as political and financial support from the public sector. Furthermore, the results illustrate the value of co-creating, by considering how the different sectors' wishes can be negotiated. It includes agility to adapt to the complex challenges by being open to ongoing suggestions instead of established planning and the scope to lead to new cooperation among the different sectors in the co-creation communication process. For further study, more workshops with participants from a wider range of backgrounds are needed to further refine the model and explore an efficient method to balance the power of different participants in the co-creation process. Keywords : PPPP; Public-private-people partnerships; EPC; energy performance contracting ; publishedVersion

In this research, an attempt is made to present the field of real estate funds in Slovenia, to point out the differences between private and public real estate funds, and explore some possibilities of public-private partnerships in this field. 'Consumers in Europe' (2009) Eurostat data shows that in 2007 Slovenia belonged to the states which had more than 80% of owner occupied dwellings in their total housing stock, 4.8% of the stock presents commercial rental units and only 1.3% of the stock consists of non-profit rental apartments. This issue is being examined in order to establish whether an introduction of Real Estate Investment Funds to Slovenian legislation and their cooperation with public funds could contribute to solving the problematic lack of rental apartments in Slovenia, especially in the non-profit segment.