The decarbonisation of cities is critical for accomplishing the targets of both the European Green Deal and the Paris Agreement. However, recent studies highlight that political incentives for such low-carbon transitions typically exclude disadvantaged areas and/or population groups. Failure to include disadvantaged areas and their inhabitants may cause a dramatic delay in urban decarbonisation and exacerbate pre-existing societal inequalities. To tackle this failure, the Just Positive Energy Planning Processes (JUST PEPP) project aims to empower disadvantaged population groups by investigating how positive energy districts can be planned for, with and by residents of disadvantaged urban areas. Specifically, the JUST PEPP project will explore solutions for energy-efficiency and energy-flexibility in existing buildings and urban transport by examining four disadvantaged districts located in Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway by interacting with residents to examine their needs. Building on insights from previous projects, the project consortium will design new citizen-centric solutions geared toward well-being and inclusiveness to be piloted in the three focus countries, and, in the future, deployed across Europe to meet EU-level goals whilst balancing environmental and social concerns. To achieve this, JUST PEPP draws on expertise from a cross-disciplinary environment, encompassing researchers, local policymakers, non-profit organisations and practitioners to address these challenges.

• dr. M.Y. (Mitali) Joshi
• dr. Luis Eduardo Ramirez Camargo

• Per Carlborg (project coordinator)
• Johan Kask
• Sophie-Marie Ertelt
• Vojtech Klezl
• Alinda Wiering
• Pepijn Lijklema

Multiple sustainable development goals (SDGs) identified by the United Nations relate directly to healthy and safe urban environments. To realize the designed targets, the appearance of streetscapes plays a vital role. Urban environments perceived as safe, pleasant, and walkable stimulate sustainable and healthy human behavior in terms of mobility, outdoor activities, access to environmental resources etc. Data on people’s environmental perception are, however, difficult to collect typically relying on a few in-situ neighborhood audits which are impossible to scale-up while being time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive. A solution to this challenge may arise through urban big data analytics based on artificial intelligence (AI).

We propose an innovative AI-based approach to map human perceptions of streetscapes (e.g., safety, pleasantness, walkability) through a state-of-the-art deep learning computer vision-based model trained using crowdsourced stated preferences of street view data. Based on a coordinated effort exploiting synergies between three disciplines within the Faculty of Geosciences, the project will deliver robust evidence on the perceived qualities of streetscapes putting the FAIR principles into practice. We envision these data will be helpful in formulating actionable progress by making suggestions for expanding and refining SDG indicators on sustainable communities.

• drs. Maarten Zeylmans Van Emmichoven
• dr. Matthew Danish
• dr. S.M. Labib
• dr. Marco Helbich