The prime criterion for nations to be successful is GDP. This means that governmental and managerial decisions are primarily led by economic growth. For rich nations such as The Netherlands this is not an obvious choice anymore. In future, a lot more attention must be paid to the well-being of its population.
A typical example is the development of the successful Dutch airport Schiphol. Until today, the only ambition is growth, growth, growth. As a consequence, the airport noise increased significantly and well-being of the people around the airport has seriously suffered. Today, the situation is socio-economically unstable.
A vision has been developed how this imbalance between prosperity of The Netherlands and well-being around Schiphol can be corrected. It is shown that Schiphol can continue its vital role for the Dutch economy — connecting The Netherlands with all large economical centres of the world — while simultaneously the living conditions around the airport can be substantially improved.
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The holy grail of the social sciences focuses on poverty reduction, economic growth and social inequality. Not only on a national but also on a global scale. With the super-fast development of data technology, it is possible to follow socio-economic developments closely ('monitoring'). As a result, unexpected changes can be signaled on time. Moreover, the consequences of a new policy can be measured in an objective way. With this feedback, policy makers have the opportunity to constantly improve their way of working.
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To obtain insight in the (im)balance between prosperity and well-being in a society, it is essential to bring together social, economic and demographic data and then to combine them into a transition path that provides insight in the development of 'broad prosperity' in a society (country, province, municipality, neighborhood). The transition path gives a big picture over the years about how happy people feel in their living environment. From this picture it can be derived whether the broad prosperity policy has actual success or whether adjustments are necessary.
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The Earth’s climate system is extremely complex. Changes in the global natural system are responsible for the great climatic cycles (sequence of ice ages and hot periods) in the past millions of years. On top of these megatrends we are dealing with faster variations due to changes in solar activity, volcanism, hot & cold ocean currents and human activities. In this project we try to get clarity with a team of physicists and geologists about the pressing issue whether mankind can change the Earth’s climate or whether mankind must adapt to what the global natural forces bring about.
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Affordable energy is the source of prosperity and clean energy is an important source of well-being. Therefore, security of supply must continue to play a dominant role in any sustainable energy policy. For all these indispensable requirements (clean, affordable and security of supply) a new set of instruments has been provided in terms of the energy matrix and the energy economic transition path. With this new set of instruments, nations and regions can design, execute and monitor a prosperity-based energy transition that fulfills the sustainability conditions.
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Being led by the Delphi team at the Technical University of Delft (‘TU Delft’), a group of ca. 30 international companies in the geo-energy sector together finance new options in the complex scientific field of geophysical imaging. Advanced geophysical imaging is vital for the exploration and production of minerals: with modern geo-imaging technology it is possible to look into the earth at large depths, making the complex geological structures visible and showing the composition and properties of rocks in great detail. The Delphi team plays worldwide a leading role in data-driven research on multiple-scattering imaging.
The Delphi research is not only important for mineral extraction. Better understanding of the complex dynamic processes in the Earth – think at earthquakes and volcanic eruptions – is also of significant importance for society as a whole. In particular, geological layering represents an impressive archive that reveals the changing natural environment on planet Earth over millions of years. It is expected that the geo-sciences will play a key role in the future research on climate change, revealing the many big changes in the earth’s climate in the past
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Today, we see that Western democracies fail to address the important issues in modern society, both globally and locally. Think of the rising violent conflicts in all parts of the world, the increasing suffering of communities by international criminal gangs and the unstoppable flow of illegal migrants. Politicians show little interest in long-term issues; many of them appear only interested in party politics and personal benefit than caring for the future of their country. In addition, the very segmented governmental organizations come up with highly complex solutions that do not perform. A school example is the atrocious Monetary Union of the EU. Governments are consistent in asking a lot of money from their citizens, but in return they deliver an inferior product. We have to rethink the democratic system, both in poor and rich countries, change the role of politicians and redesign the governmental system to diminish their bureaucratic footprint on society. It is time to reinvent our democracy.
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