Explore the key governance challenges for smart sustainable city (SSC) initiatives and the approach required. Learn to organize co-creation and to use a roadmap that support planning, implementation, close monitoring and risks mitigation.

Urban planners, policy makers and managers have an important role in making cities and communities more sustainable and resilient by incentivizing and developing smart solutions. Medellín in Colombia is a good example of how effective governance and cooperation with citizens led to the remake of the city and transformed it to a safer environment with a thriving economy. But how can those initiatives be sustained and governed? How can we deal with the challenges along the way, like effective stakeholders’ engagement, conflicting interests, decision-making under deep uncertainty, interdependent problems, spatial justice, and the transformation towards a digital society? To sum it up: building smart sustainable cities initiatives requires a strong governance capacity and new approaches!

This course will:

- provide the principles for incentivising, planning, developing and managing sustainable smart city initiatives
- present an overview of the drivers and barriers for SSC development
- present sustainability challenges and tools for SSC development
- show practical recommendations to strengthen SSC governance capacity
- introduce a smart city governance roadmap
- explain the conditions for effective stakeholder engagement and ways to organize co-creation pathways
- clarify the regulatory and legal framework for SSC including privacy and cybersecurity issues
- describe the conditions to implement digital innovation that benefit citizens including data governance
- show the importance of close monitoring and assessing SSC projects including data reliability and algorithms
- equip you with knowledge and learnings from case studies from various projects that were carried out in Latin America, next to familiarizing you with common challenges that arise in the process. These cases range from urban transportation to participatory budgeting, safety and waste management applications, but always making the connection with the governance and sustainability aspects.

The course will be moderated in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

This MOOC is a spin-off of the EU-funded Cap4City project.

This course has been developed, and will be delivered by experts in the field of Smart Sustainable Cities from twelve different universities in Latin America and Europe. You will find more information on the instructors while you navigate the course.

This lesson uses a small snack to review spreadsheet tasks. It is typically enjoyable and memorable because the students get to eat as part of this lesson.

This video segment adapted from NOVA/FRONTLINE looks at American energy consumption and the resulting production of greenhouse gases.

This article provides an overview of social bookmarking and how educators can use Diigo, a free social bookmarking tool, to organize, annotate, and share web sites.

This course surveys canonical and recent theories and methods in science studies. We will organize our discussions around the concept of “reproduction,” referring variously to:

Scientific reproduction (how results are replicated in lab, field, disciplinary contexts)
Social reproduction (how social knowledge and relations are regenerated over time)
Biological reproduction (how organic substance is managed in the genetic age)
Electronic reproduction (how information is reassembled in techniques of transcription, simulation, computation).

Examining intersections and disruptions of these genres of reproduction, we seek to map relations among our social, biological, and electronic lives.

This unit looks at the challenges of adapting work processes to new technology, and the resulting impact on quality, efficiency, and safety. This unit also examines the phenomena of social and technical resistance to change, especially among clinicians.

This activity is about rocket shape and performance. Learners will test a rocket model and predict its motion. They will launch their rocket multiple times, make observations and record the distance it traveled. They will have the opportunity to answer a research question by collecting and analyzing data related to finding out the best nose cone length and predicting the motion of their model rockets. The lesson models the engineering design process using the 5E instructional model and includes teacher notes, vocabulary, student journal and reading.

This introductory video summarizes the process of generating solar electricity from photovoltaic and concentrating (thermal) solar power technologies.

Students learn how the innovative engineering of photovoltaics enables us to transform the sun’s energy into usable power—electricity—through the use of photovoltaic cells. Watching a short video clip from “The Martian” movie shows the importance of photovoltaics in powering space exploration at extreme distances from the Earth. Then students learn that the photovoltaic technologies designed to excel in the harsh environment of space have the potential to be just as beneficial on Earth—providing electricity-generating systems based on renewable energy sources is important for our electricity-gobbling society. Two student journaling sheets assist with vocabulary and concepts.

In this 'Energy Education for the 21st Century' design challenge, students construct and evaluate a solar-powered model car. Students utilize the design process and undergo review by their peers to select an optimal gear ratio and components for their car. As a culminating activity, students compete in a Solar Sprint race modeled after the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Junior Solar Sprint competition.

Student teams design and build solar water heating devices that mimic those used in residences to capture energy in the form of solar radiation and convert it to thermal energy. In this activity, students gain a better understanding of the three different types of heat transfer, each of which plays a role in the solar water heater design. Once the model devices are constructed, students perform efficiency calculations and compare designs.

This is a reading associated with activities during Solar Week, a twice-yearly event in March and October during which classrooms are able to interact with scientists studying the Sun. Outside of Solar Week, information, activities, and resources are archived and available online at any time. This is a blog entry about the process by which rocket payloads are assembled prior to launch. It was written by one of the female team members associated with a NASA sounding rocket launch program. The blog entry reading is scheduled to occur during Friday of Solar Week.

This is an online lesson associated with activities during Solar Week, a twice-yearly event in March and October during which classrooms are able to interact with scientists studying the Sun. This activity is scheduled to occur during Monday of Solar Week. The lesson introduces the concept of astronomical filters and their connections to imaging different objects in space. Learners will explore perceptions of images as seen using different colors of light, construct a filter wheel, and practice investigating various astronomical images using the filter wheel. This material was designed to highlight how filters are useful to astronomers and show how a real astronomical telescope uses filters to image the Sun. Outside of Solar Week, information, activities, and resources are archived and available online at any time.

This is a lesson about using the light from the star during an occultation event to identify the atmosphere of a planet. Learners will add and subtract light curves (presented as a series of geometrical shapes) to understand how this could occur. The activity is part of Project Spectra, a science and engineering program for middle-high school students, focusing on how light is used to explore the Solar System.

Students use a simple seesaw to visualize solving a two- or three-step mathematics equation, while solving a basic structural engineering weight balance problem in the process. They solve two-step equations on a worksheet and attempt to solve the challenge of "balancing a beam" through hands-on problems. The use of sensor equipment for correct position monitoring aids students in balancing the structure, as well as balancing the equation as they solve it on paper.

The mission of Southwest Research and Information Center is to promote the health of people and communities, protect natural resources, ensure citizen participation, and secure environmental and social justice now and for future generations. The Uranium Impact Assessment Program contains information about current issues dealing with the Navajo Nation. Useful fact sheets are found on this site.

This unit begins by introducing students to the historical motivation for space exploration. They learn about the International Space Station, including current and futuristic ideas that engineers are designing to propel space research. Then they learn about the physical properties of the Moon, and think about what types of products engineers would need to design in order for humans to live on the Moon. Lastly, students learn some descriptive facts about asteroids, such as their sizes and how that relates to the potential danger of an asteroid colliding with the Earth.

This collection of activities is based on a weekly series of space science mathematics problems distributed during the 2012-2013 school year. They were intended for students looking for additional challenges in the math and physical science curriculum in grades 5 through 12. The problems were created to be authentic glimpses of modern science and engineering issues, often involving actual research data. The problems were designed to be one-pagers with a Teacher’s Guide and Answer Key as a second page.

This site provides fun activities for children to do and make, while they learn about space and Earth science, and the technology that enables science. The Teachers Corner on the WWW site contains curriculum supplements originally published in the ITEA (International Technology Education Association) Technology Transfer Teacher magazine.

This activity introduces the electromagnetic spectrum. A riddle is proposed and users stroll through an imaginary amusement park to identify the object being described. During the journey, they discover the different types of electromagnetic energy and learn about telescopes that see the universe in these different parts of the spectrum.