World Café Method to Engage Smart Energy-District Project Partners in Assessing Urban Co-benefits

Abstract

Urban energy-district projects introduce outstanding technological innovation in buildings and energy systems increasing sustainability in city neighborhoods. Such projects generate additional co-benefits for the city beyond changes in physical elements and development of social and institutional relationships (e.g. local employment, environmental quality, public health, property values, innovation attitude, etc.). Since exceeding main declared goals or not always clearly foreseen in the early project phase, these co-benefits are often not properly understood and considered. However, only their explicit recognition will make possible their inclusion in the assessment of the whole project's performance. From these considerations, this study faces the issue of engaging project partners in assessing co-benefits in order to consider a broad spectrum of relevant, positive effects in the evaluation process. Group knowledge and group thinking of this complex topic are investigated through the world café method, providing an atmosphere of trust and open discussions among participants. This empirical work lays the foundations to go beyond the mere economic measure as the sole criterion for assessing project effects, also including changes in end-user behavior and intangible assets.

The use of video essays and podcasts to enhance creativity and critical thinking in engineering

“…For the design of experiences using Podcast, the authors considered the results and suggestions of the studies by Ketelle [65] and Hess et al [66]. For the design of experiences using World Café, the authors considered the results and suggestions of Torres and Costa Neto [67] and Bisello et al [68]. Various other activities (on-line debates, discussions, argumentative panels, round tables and micro-workshops) were carried out to adapt to the particular social conditions of each group and to the circumstances derived from confinement by COVID-19 throughout the year 2020 and part of 2021 [69,70].…”

Assessing Multiple Benefits of Housing Regeneration and Smart City Development: The European Project SINFONIA

“…Group dynamics may lead to the development of new agreements or the emergence of different priorities. [12]. Nevertheless, in the case of the SINFONIA project, both the WCM and the analysis of the individual answers halfway through the project, the same as in the final valuation, identified "health and well-being of residents increased" as the most important co-benefit.…”

“…The following subsections present the key steps of the methodology performed to identify the key urban co-benefits to be further discussed and the main results achieved, while the full description of activities carried out is available in [11,12].…”