Peri-urban areas, at the interface between urban and rural, link rural livelihoods with the urban lifestyles that put multiple pressures on peri-urban ecosystems. This poses huge challenges for the health and livelihoods of an increasing number of disenfranchised, poor and marginalised citizens, and for sustainable urban development.
Sorghum crop is grown under tropical and temperate latitudes for several purposes including production of health promoting food from the kernel and forage and biofuels from aboveground biomass. One of the concerns of policy-makers and sorghum growers is to cost-effectively predict biomass yields early during the cropping season to improve biomass and biofuel management. The objective of this study was to investigate if Sentinel-2 satellite images could be used to predict within-season biomass sorghum yields in the Mediterranean region.
These Proceedings report on the second International Conference of the Convergence of Sciences (CoS) programme in Elmina (2009). The first International Conference was four years earlier in the same location, where it was discussed how to follow up on the findings of the first CoS Programme phase (entitled CoS1 running from 2001 to 2006). The Conference was intended to introduce the focus on “innovation systems”, and how to enhance these systems for smallholder farmers’ development.
The usual linear top-down approach of the innovation process has been transformed into an 'ecological vision' in which regions make up the appropriate scale for the elaboration of agricultural innovation systems (AIS). Interfaces such as institutional arrangements have been created in industrial countries. However, there is still a lack of interaction among parties involved in innovation for the agricultural sector, especially in the outermost regions and in developing countries.
In this paper, presented at the 8th European IFSA Symposium ( Workshop 6: "Change in knowledge systems and extension services: Role of the new actors") in 2008, the authors discuss a conceptual framework that understands innovation processes as the outcome of collaborative networks where information is exchanged and learning processes happen. They argue that technical and economic factors used to analyse drivers and barriers alone are not sufficient to understand innovation processes.
Given the search for new solutions to better prepare cities for the future, in recent years, urban agriculture (UA) has gained in relevance. Within the context of UA, innovative organizational and technical approaches are generated and tested. They can be understood as novelties that begin a potential innovation process. This empirical study is based on 17 qualitative interviews in the U.S. (NYC; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Chicago, IL, USA).
Innovation is important for development in the private sector, but inevitably public sector also needs innovation to enhance services and processes, with research on employee-driven digital innovation in public organizations being limited. Was proposed a study in a public organization based on action design research (ADR) methodology to enhance theoretical knowledge and develop practice in relation to employee-driven digital innovation.
Social Network Analysis is a practical and useful tool that looks at the linkages present in an innovation network and monitors their development over time. It maps the relationships between the stakeholders in the network and highlights the changes between them.
This tool was designed to assess innovation capacities, identify strengths and weaknesses and monitor capacity changes over time. The scoring tool makes it clear which functional capacities are going to be needed to promote, lead or successfully participate in innovation processes. The tool evaluates capacities on the basis of 21 indicators (each of which is graded on a scale from 0 (low capacity) to 3 (high capacity), and build on the key innovation capacities identified in the capacity needs assessment.
The Action Planning is a tool that formalizes commitments and plots the route to their implementation. An action plan is intended for the use of the core actors, who will have been identified beforehand in the visioning phase. It determines who does what and when, and is therefore essential to ensuring that things get done and that the goals and visions set out in the capacity development strategy are achieved.