SRON is the Dutch national expertise institute for scientific space research and is part of NWO. It plays an important role in delivering contributions to the national and international space-research communities. Currently one of SRON’s involvements is in the X-IFU instrument for the Athena space X-ray …

Beyond the potential of new layers of urban infrastructure - sensor-laden networks, big data, artificial intelligence - to optimize cities functionally, lay promising opportunities to also use these technologies for new forms of social interactions. In an ongoing smart city development project, we explore …

Speech interactions are often associated with virtual assistants and smart home devices, designed primarily for private contexts. A less developed domain is speech interfaces in public contexts. In a smart city development project, we explored the potential of distributed conversational speech interfaces …

Responsive public spaces use interactive technologies to adapt to users and situations. This enhances the quality of the space as a public realm. However, the application of responsive technologies in spatial design is still to be explored. What exactly are the options for incorporating responsive technologies …

Maker spaces are generally regarded as a valuable innovation in comparison to traditional education, although it is largely unclear what is exactly learned. This deficiency hampers the deployment of maker spaces, particularly their embedding and integration in the existing practice in formal education. …

Current urban design and urban planning aim to facilitate global, regional and local urbanization programs. This implies most of the planning documents give room to the types of land use that seem to require space ‘here and now’. The amount of new housing, office and other industrial and commercial space, …

A lot of trends and developments are happening within facility management (FM). From using cleaning and caring robots till changing the workplace to a wellness destination (Sodexo, 2017; CBRE, 2017). Another trend involves around buildings, which are becoming more intelligent than their users (ISS, …

Introduction: A space’s atmosphere is an important factor in how that space is experienced. In fact, festival visitors consider the atmosphere as the most important factor in how they experience a festival (Van Vliet 2012). Atmosphere is also what distinguishes physical shops from online web shops (Van …

Over the next 10 years, the City of Amsterdam plans to develop major housing schemes provide 90,000 new homes within the existing urban fabric. At the same time, an urban renewal program is being launched to revitalize the most deprived neighbourhoods. Together, these challenges call for more evidence …

Background A key factor in successfully preventing falls, is early identification of elderly with a high risk of falling. However, currently there is no easy-to-use pre-screening tool available; current tools are either not discriminative, time-consuming and/or costly. This pilot investigates the feasibility …