As part of the World Class Cities Partnership’s 2013 research project — “Co-Creating Urban Sustainability” — 4 Sauder MBA students (Phil Gray, Reid Keller, Michele Mossman & Geoff Carran) have started a project on Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging. http://www.northeastern.edu/wccp/
The course (a Sauder Directed Study) is being led along strategic design principles, which include:
- Co-creation of the project and its outcomes with the students and stakeholders. Involvement in the project of key stakeholders, including researchers in wireless charging technologies at UBC, the UBC Research and Partnerships Office, the School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture, TransLink, the Chief Engineer of the City of Vancouver, and BC Hydro.
- Strategic design processes and techniques will be used throughout the project. The prime outcome of the course work will be a report which will be an important reference document for the City of Vancouver’s Engineering Department as they develop their plan to deploy electric vehicle charging infrastructure throughout the city. The report will also contain business model and competitive intelligence information of value to UBC researchers. The report will also form the basis of the Vancouver contribute to the annual WCCP research report – this year on co-creating urban sustainability.
These insights will be of particular value for three research-related activities currently underway:
- The first of these is the Campus-City Collaborative (C3), a research partnership among the City of Vancouver and the six post-secondary institutions in the city (including UBC). One of the issues of great interest to C3 is the value and applicability of the design studio research methodology to the City’s research challenges.
- The research methodology and outcomes will also be of value to the World Class Cities Partnership (WCCP), a small international network of cities that work closely with the universities located within them. Vancouver and UBC are part of this network, and the course at UBC is running concurrently with similar courses at four other universities (University College Dublin, HafenCity University in Hamburg, the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Northeastern University in Boston).
- Finally, an important part of the C3 collaboration is considering how universities can deploy their technology expertise in support of cities; this project provides an excellent test case of one way this might be achieved. Initial Question/Challenge: Implications for implementation Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging in the City of Vancouver Learning. However, in the course of the project (not surprisingly) this question has been refined. Stay tuned for the next blog.
Objectives: Over the course, students will:
o Evaluate co-creation and strategic design techniques
o Develop collaborative and facilitation skills around the co-creation process
o Build relationships with domestic and international program partners
o Contribute to WCCP annual research report.