The SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research Project is hosting a special track on “Affecting the River of Knowledge in Sustainability: Knowledge Management Strategies and Tools in Cross-Cultural Settings” at the 18^th International Forum on Knowledge Asset Dynamics (IFKAD) 2023.

The URA Raumbild Workshop Series aims to develop sustainable development pathways for the study region in Huangyan-Taizhou on the basis of our scientific analyses through the “Raumbild 图 景 共 构” approach. The series is intended to strengthen URA internal collaboration and to serve as a preparation for the upcoming Multi-Actor Workshops in Huangyan (08/23, 03/24), in which the sustainable development strategiesare are to be discussed and elaborated in abroader circle of local and trans-local actors.

The FloodAdaptVN takes part at the German Vietnamese Science Day on April 27th in DaNang.

An accompanying workshop “Regional Cooperation on Flood Risk Adaptation” on April 26th will be chaired by the FloodAdaptVN team.

The FloodAdaptVN organizes a Regional Networking Forum on April 25th with selected stakeholders of the Thua Thien Hue province and neighbouring provinces. The Regional Networking Forum on Climate Change Adaptation, Flood and Disaster Risk Reduction focuses on the exchange of experiences of different provinces prior, during and after past flooding events.

On 20 April 2023, the second Build4People Sustainable Building Arena took place at Raintree Cambodia.

Around 50 frontrunners in the field sustainable building collaborated in an inspiring participatory workshop prepared by Ravi Jayaweera, Build4People Work Package “Sustainable Urban Transformation” with support from Melanie Mossard from Impact Hub Phnom Penh.

From 14 to 17 March 2023, the PolyUrbanWaters – Symposium was held in Siem Reap/Cambodia.
It brought together the research network with more than 50 representatives of partners from Cambodia, Germany, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

On the 07 March 2023, the 4th Science Workshop of WP2 “Sustainable Building” took place at the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC). This workshop was a continuation of the 3rd workshop on 29 September 2022 where questions about what is a sustainable building in Cambodia and what are the most important environmental challenges that should be considered when such a definition is attempted were asked.

On 03 March 2023, the Build4People Ecocity Transition Lab 2023 Presentation Conference took place at the Grand Hall of Borey Peng Huoth.

During this event, the different working groups presented their empirical results after an intensive week of multidisciplinary joint analysis with the aim to develop potential micro-interventions and preliminary guideline ideas to foster a more sustainable development of Peng Huoth group, Cambodia most renowned developer company.

The launching event of the 2nd Build4People poster exhibition “Green Buildings and Sustainable Neighbourhoods”, this time with best practice examples from Southeast Asia and from China, attracted many people at Bophana Centre in Phnom Penh.

On 28 February 2023, the concluding event of Build4People Sustainable Building Incubator took place at Impact Hub Phnom Penh. In the course of the pitching night, five teams of young aspiring entrepreneurs presented their exciting business ideas in the field of sustainable building. In the end, the winner was AquaBuild – a startup working on making building materials more sustainable and environmentally friendly from water hyacinths to eliminate waste and limit water pollution, especially in the Tonle Sap Lake area.

On 24 February 2023, the Build4People Urban Climate Conference took place at Sunway Hotel, Phnom Penh.

The rationale behind this event is that global climate change will increase heat and flooding problems in cities. Therefore it is important to understand urban climate and its application in urban planning and building design.

On 23 February 2023, Build4People Work Package #1 “Behaviour Change” led by Magdeburg University conducted a Science Workshop with the topic “Urban Quality of Life in Phnom Penh” at the Cambodian Korean Cooperation Centre of Royal University of Phnom Penh.

The Science Workshop on “Urban Green Infrastructure in Phnom Penh” took place on 26 January 2023. It covered the research plan, milestones, and related activities for the B4P RD phase (2021-2025) and featured presentations on various topics related to urban green infrastructure. The workshop was jointly organized by the Royal University of Agriculture (RUA) in Phnom Penh and the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE) in Germany.

On January 26th, URA Raumbild workshop #1 took place in Berlin in a hybrid form, focusing on collaborative works on sustainable future strategies for Beiyang Town and Huangyan-Taizhou region.

On 29 November 2022, the 2nd Science Workshop of the Build4People Work Package #3 “Sustainable Neighbourhoods” took place. It was organized and moderated by representatives from Eble Messerschmidt Partner (EMP), Rolf Messerschmidt, leader of the Build4People WP3 “Sustainable Neighbourhoods” and Nuria Mariela Roig Mejia, WP#3 Research Associate.

On 24 November 2022, the Build4People Urban Quality of Life Workshop took place at Magdeburg University. For Build4People urban quality of life is the common link of our scientific-conceptional, analytical and normative dimension, which we consider to be the general foundation for our people-driven approach.

Last week, the PolyUrbanWaters team organised the three-day National Stakeholder Workshop in Laos Vietnam. There, PolyUrbanWaters, together with the project implementation committee, presented the key findings of the draft baseline study and the first urban development.
After an engaging and productive week. During which the interdisciplinary project partners of the Project Implementation Committee developed a better awareness of the current and future challenges, opportunities and optional strategies.

On 14 November, Prof. Frauke Kraas (MYrisk) and Prof. Jörg Noennig (SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research project) took part in the side event "Knowledge for sustainable and resilient cities in times of climate change: Latest findings and persisting needs" at the German Pavillon at COP27.

The SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research project will contribute to the Urban Transitions Conference 8 - 10 November in Barcelona with two paper presentations. The first will be on the topic "The use of AI in sustainable urban development research: Natural language processing (NLP) usage in urban research, a comparative analysis between different AI engines". The other presentation...

Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the URA symposium has been successfully completed on the 2nd and 3rd of November 2022. This intensive workshop offered the team an opportunity to jointly reflect and develop further the project process.

From Oct 25-27 2022, the German Red Cross, with the support of BBK, katNet and DKKV, organized the Disaster Risk Reduction Conference in a digital format. In this context, the MYrisk project, in collaboration with the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK), conducted a workshop...

On 06 October 2022, the Build4People Work Package #6 “Sustainable Urban Transformation” and their research partners from the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) held a productive Science Workshop at the Cambodia-Korea Cooperation Centre. The aim of the workshop...

The GreenCityLabHuế invites all interested people to the final round and award ceremony of the design competition for implementing Green-blue Infrastructure in Huế. The design competition is held for four individual plots, so called Showcases.

At the third workshop, the Spatial Image Lab, excellent presentations and discussions were held to find out what possibilities there are for implementing the approaches the URA team has collected for Spatial Image in the Nordhausen area.

Agota Barabas and Joerg Rainer Noennig will give a presentation on the topic “Transformation research: A cross-cutting perspective on tools, technologies and approaches for sustainable urban regions development projects” at the IOER Annual Conference 2022 in Dresden on 23 September 2022 on behalf of the SURE Facilitation & Synthesis Research project.

Partners form South East Asia and Germany will host a panel discussion titled “Water-sensitive transformation of secondary and tertiary cities in South East Asia” at the 5th WPSC and the 16th APSA Congress in Bali, Indonesia.

The three research projects FloodAdaptVN, IMECOGIP and PolyUrbanWaters as well as the SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research project will host a parallel session on the topic...

On 18 August 2022, the WP#2 “Sustainable Building” 2nd Science Workshop took place within the one day seminar on “Sustainable Development, Sustainable City, Smart City, Cambodia “ at the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC), Phnom Penh.

Mai Ahmed will give a presentation on the topic “Unknown knowns: Knowledge mining for sustainable transformation research and practice” at the AESOP Congress in Tartu, Estonia on 27 July 2022 on behalf of the  SURE Facilitation & Synthesis Research project.

The first in-person Co-Development Workshop of the FloodAdaptVN R&D Phase took place on 27th July 2022. The progress and the ongoing activities were presented to the attending stakeholders. The Vice President of Hue University Assoc. Prof. Huynh Van Chuong and the...

SURE hosted a Networking Event at the #WUF11 on “Science Meets Policy: New Approaches for Multisectoral Collaborations to Build Urban-Rural Resilience for Sustainable Futures”. Thank you to all participants for the insights and the fruitful discussion!

Most of the world’s population lives in urban areas, which provide people with resources that meet their daily needs to a certain extent. At the same time, ecosystems in urban regions – and at the global level – are threatened...

Joint Build4People Webinar with Centre for Khmer Studies: »The role of environmental psychology in promoting urban quality of life in Cambodia«

The PolyUrbanWaters team has continued its work in the field with participatory workshops, this time in Sam Neua, Laos, to discuss the current status of water in the city (based on the findings of the baseline study report).

On the 9th of June, the PUW team organised participatory workshops in Sariharjo Village, Sleman, Indonesia to discuss the current state of water in the city – based on the results from the Baseline Study Report – and to develop the first water-sensitive visions for the village.

Gulam Mohiuddin, Research Associate from Build4People Work Package 4 Urban Green Infrastructure at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development has attended the recent Living Planet Symposium in Bonn, Germany, from 23-27 May 2022.

On 18 May 2022, representatives of Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) met with representatives from the Build4People project to discuss a potential cooperation in the field of joint curriculum development.

Joint Build4People Webinar with Centre for Khmer Studies: »Urban Climate in the Planning Process«

Co-development of sectoral vision and of a preliminary Transition Agenda with sustainability-oriented frontrunners

Kick-off meeting »Designing MSc and PhD curriculum for regional and urban planning«, hosted by Royal University of Agriculture

To conduct a collaborative and trans-disciplinary planning workshop that aims to create an understanding of the relevant local issues within the dynamically growing Chbar Ampov District, located at the urban-rural edge in the Southeast of Phnom Penh

On 3 January 2022 Dr. Sonja Schlipf gave a Thursday Talk on new approaches for urban water management and stormwater management in Hamburg. In order to address the increasing accumulation of storm water events, droughts and hot spells, HAMBURG WASSER and the Hamburg Environmental Authority (now BUKEA) launched the collaborative process of RainWaterInfraStructureAdaptation (RISA)...

This event shall inform on the state of the art of academic field of sustainable urban transformation, introduce case studies of sustainable urban transformation from other Asian cities (New Dehli, Singapore) and discuss the sustainable urban transformation approaches of Build4People in Phnom Penh.

In the afternoon of December 11, 2021, the Mientrung Institute for Scientific Research (MISR) of the Vietnam Museum of Nature (VNMN), the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) in collaboration with the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues (UfU, Berlin) and the Faculty of Architecture, Huế University of Sciences (HUSC) implemented the Kick-off Workshop for the »Huế Initiatives – Green Space, Green City« Design Competition...

The University of Tuebingen team presented results of their research on urban heat effects in Vietnamese metropolitan areas at the 11th International Forum on Green Technology and Management (IFGTM 2021), Can Tho, Viet Nam.

Following the call for new integrated territorial planning approaches and people- and place-based development at the urban-rural interface that is aligned with the localisation of SDG’s and the New Urban Agenda (NUA), the session takes stock of recent attempts to develop new approaches which accounts for the manifold interrelations and linkages ...

On the last session of Thursday Talks, Rizqa Hidayani, an Urban Planner and Program Manager at Kota Kita, gave a presentation via Zoom on the topic: Towards Climate Resilient Semarang – From the city scale to resilient kampung (neighborhood).

The session introduced innovative planning approaches from a newly setup long-term funding priority of BMBF called Sustainable Development of Urban Regions (SURE). In total it stretches over a period of more than eight years with different funding phases incorporating 10 large research consortia involving ...

Prof. Dr. Kraas participated in the panel discussion on »Urban Resilience in Germany and in an International Context« at the Disaster Risk Reduction Conference (DRC), which took place digitally on 25-26.10.2021.

On the 30th of September 2021, Dr. Christof Voßeler was the guest on PolyUrbWaters Thursday Talk – a practice oriented science-policy dialogue – and gave a presentation on Building climate resilience in Bremen.

At the Trialog 2021 Conference: Changing Voices, PolyUrbanWaters, together with SURE and Build4People Team discussed the role of civil society organisations in action research. During the session, several projects of the research programme Sustainable Development of Urban Regions (SURE) supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) introduced ...

The proj­ect conducted its first two on­line stakeholder workshops with the project partners from Thailand and Vietnam. The aim was to introduce the proj­ect and discuss fu­ture joint work steps in the two new partner coun­tries and to tackle several topics with the ...

The FloodAdaptVN team presented the experiences and results of the 21-month Definition phase and provided an outlook on the collaborative activities of the Research and Development phase in next four years. The Kick-Off ended with an active and fruitful discussion of the FloodAdaptVN participants and stakeholders ...

The first international conference within the framework of the PolyUrbanWaters research and development project will explore the political, ecological and social relevance of integrated approaches in management of urban waters on a global scale.

On March 11th 2021, the MienTrung Institute for Scientific Research (MISR) together with its project partners Humboldt University Berlin (HUB), the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues (UfU), the Hue Institute of Development and Studies (HueIDS), and the Faculty of Architecture of the Hue University of Science (HUSC) successfully ...