Urenio Watch Watch: Innovation

New Report: Overview of the use and impact of AI in public services in the EU

The present study is addressing the role of AI in the public sector and providing an  overview and analysis of the use and impact of AI in Public Services. The main goal of the authors is to gather information on EU Member States’ initiatives on the use of AI in public services and develop a methodology to identify risks, opportunities, drivers and barriers.

This report is published in the context of AI Watch, the European Commission knowledge service to monitor the development, uptake and impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Europe, launched in December 2018.

New paper: Understanding Civic Crowdfunding as a Mechanism for Leveraging Civic Engagement and Urban Innovation

This paper analyses the dynamics of government initiated civic crowdfunding platforms, with regards to participation inequalities and their defining dimensions. Such platforms are considered by the authors as governmental responses for bottom-up peer-to-peer support mechanisms related to urban innovation, which also allows top-down governance and governmental support systems for civic entrepreneurship.

Sharing cities and citizens sharing: Perceptions and practices in Milan

Sharing has become a global phenomenon; business models, social innovations and technological developments enable an escalated number of uses for a given asset, resulting in reshaped urban dynamics, practices and morphologies.

This paper is exploring diverse aspects of sharing economy as part of the urban fabric, through participatory activities with citizens and stakeholders. It investigates the co-construction of society and technology with respect to the implementation of sharing-based strategies in urban practices.

Transforming innovation for decarbonisation? Insights from combining complex systems and social practice perspectives

The transformation of research and policy approaches to innovation for decarbonisation towards a type of social innovation, is promising to open discussions and interrelate with the present reality. This paper starts by challenging the demand-supply dichotomy. Complex systems and social practice theories represent the compelling frameworks whereby to deal with this transformation.

Energy Communities An overview of energy and social innovation

This report is providing an overview of the activities, organisation and implications of energy communities as participants across the energy system. It identifies them as contiguous processes of both the energy transition and social innovation. Paths for future policy implications and research initiatives are analysed and informed. The European Commission’ s Clean Energy for All Europeans Package is stated as the indicator of the role prosumers and their collective forms will play in the future energy system.