CONSIDER (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2020)
Sustainable Management of Industrial Heritage as a Resource for Urban Development
Abandoned industrial buildings in many cities of Europe cause a loss economically, environmentally, and culturally due to the fact that they are kept idle. However, a sustainable management model needs to be developed in order to deal with the areas within the scope of industrial inheritance together with the urban development plans and, maintain such areas creating a source for the city.
As our third project as coordinator supported by the Horizon 2020 Program, CONSIDER (Sustainable Management of Industrial Heritage as a Resource for Urban Development) Sees it as a constraint that studies in the field of industrial heritage are mosty based in Western Europe and North for most of the time as a restriction. It aims that the discussions that are made in this respect be directed to the East Mediterranean and East Asia, and thus the conceptual thoughts about the protection of industrial heritage be enriched accordingly. Consequently, it plans that the possible contribution of the areas in the cities of Istanbul, Wien, Newcastle, and Haifa within the scope of industrial heritage to the concept of urban development is documented, and this comprehensive study is included in the European Industrial Heritage Route.
The project coordinator Prof. Dr. Yonca Erkan, a lecturer at the Department of Architecture and the Chairperson at the Management and Promotion UNESCO, says that, the project CONSIDER aims that a management model developed to ensure that the areas within the scope of industrial heritage are protected and contribute to urban development: “We aim that the areas within the scope of industrial heritage are made use of as a source for the benefit of the local communities, the collective identities are strengthened, the cityscape is improved, the environment friendly solutions are promoted, and also the contribution to the urban economy and the sustainable future of the cities” states Prof. Erkan, underlining that the solutions to be developed to that end would be designed in cooperation between the academic society, civil society, and local governments.
The academic institutions in the consortium of the project CONSIDER are Kadir Has University (Turkey), Newcastle University (UK), Ruhr University (Germany), Central European University (Austria), Hong Kong University and Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Israel) while the constituents of the local governments are represented by Municipality of Kadıköy (Turkey), Municipality of Haifa (Israel) and City Council of Newcastle (UK). In addition, this consortium also includes non-governmental organizations such as Tyne & Wear Building Preservation Trust (TWBPT, UK) and EUTROPIAN (Austria) as well as UNESCO World Heritage Site Zollverein Foundation (Germany). With a budget of 1 million 196 thousand Euros, this project will have a research team of 76 people. Project starts on October 1, 2021, and will end on September 30, 2025.
Project details: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101008186
Project website: https://considerproject.eu/
AI4LABOUR (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2020)
Reshaping Labor Force Participation with Artificial Intelligence
A new era called Industry 4.0 has been triggered in the last decade, thanks to the tremendous progress of computing power. This new revolutionary progress in manufacturing systems also creates a huge impact on the socio-economic dynamics of society. Moreover, very recent pandemic conditions caused by the COVID-19 disease show that the modern labour force is highly sensitive to these conditions, and they are subject to change.
Prof. Meltem Ucal, the faculty member of the KHAS Economics Department and the coordinator of the AI4LABOUR (Reshaping Labor Force Participation with Artificial Intelligence) project, states that the technologies based on data processing are changing not only the manufacturing standards, but also the daily life of the people: “Given that studies on future of work mentioned the possibility of automation of 30% of global working hours by 2030, it becomes important to take into account that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can take over the monotonous and repetitive aspects of human jobs. It is also predicted that AI will create new job fields that may require different skills all over the world, and it is expected that people will change their jobs or gain new skills to support the use of AI in the future.”
AI4LABOUR, our second project as coordinator funded by Horizon 2020, aims to shed a light on future developments in the field of employment. Prof. Ucal seeks to bring a new perspective to employment studies and believes that focusing on more strategic or analytical works will be inevitable.
AI4LABOUR is one of two successfully funded projects in the field of Economics under the H2020-MSCA-RISE-2020 Call. The project’s overall budget is 713,000 Euros. Coordinated by KHAS, the project’s participants are Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain), University of Limerick (Ireland), University of Wolverhampton (UK), Instituto Tecnológico de Castilla y León (Spain), Arçelik A.S. (Turkey), The Irish Center for Business Excellence (Ireland), and Jonathan Lee Recruitment (UK). The 48-month project will start on May 1, 2021, and last until April 30, 2025.
Emphasizing the necessity to focus on studies that are more strategic and following the needs of the time, and to design and plan the training which upskills human resources, Prof. Ucal says that AI4LABOUR will offer solutions to problems that may arise in the labor market: “AI4LABOUR aims to predict which kind of new occupations will appear in near future and which kinds of skills will be needed to get these new occupations. The project will also design an innovative skill-based modeling and skills development methodology for the labour force, equipped with AI techniques. This methodology will be the building block of a web portal, which will serve as a recommendation tool for all parties – individuals, companies, institutions, and policymakers.”
Project details: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101007961
Project website: http://www.ai4labour.com/
Detailed information on the MSCA funds: https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/marie-sklodowska-curie-actions
Click for the MSCA 2021 working program