Project description

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, there is still a perceptible lack of interconnectedness in educational and scientific research behavior and its population is lately facing many challenges in the urban context. Especially after the global financial crisis, there was an observed intention to apply sustainable development policies within urban sectors. Moreover, there is a remarkable intention of shifting innovation plans from an economic based to knowledge based innovations in all areas of industry. The role of institutions to achieve this, is to develop their structures and conduct interdisciplinary innovative knowledge flows within their educational structures. One effective key action for global innovation is international collaboration and sharing of experience and this is expected to be given an initiating impulse through the short working measures in the German-Arab Knowledge Transfer Colloquium.

The working measures consist of interdisciplinary scientific topics related to the wide context of “Resilience of Industrial Urban Systems” in addition to presentations relative to structural development and knowledge production. The main aim is to exchange educational skills to develop institutional structures, self-governance and young student’s promotion of partner institutions coming from the MENA region with an expected intensification of scientific contact with the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) by long-term future innovative plans.

The scientific topics are categorized into three main topics relative to “Resilience of Industrial Urban systems” as a part of Emerging Concepts of Logistics (ECoL):

1. Environmental Technology,
2. Renewable Energy Resources,
3. Smart Systems.

The presentations are going to be summarized systematically and categorized after each set of presentations on one of the topics mentioned above. The aim is to structure interrelations between the topics discussed and integrate it within ECoL topics which will be visible at the final wrap up day. According to the activities of the colloquium, they are expected achieve the following:

• Developing mindsets for more understanding of Urban complexity issues,
• Structural development actions within the partner institutions (i.e New curricula, developing new competencies),
• Improvements in decision making patterns within partner institutions with the focus on student participation and gender diversity,
• Developing new teaching methods,
• Addressing critical urban issues within the participating countries and knowledge based solutions,
• Further innovation plans with partner institutions that can be integrated with the main objectives of ECoL (i.e. joint projects, international innovation networks)

Achieving these goals by the activities of the colloquium will give a strong impulse for intensification of scientific contact with partner institutions along with the other addressed goals on a long-term interaction plan.