Your Voice, Your Campus, Your Impact!
How can the university campus become part of a climate-resilient and energy-aware future in the city?
24 April 2025
🎓✨ Your Voice, Your Campus, Your Impact! How can the university campus become part of a climate-resilient and energy-aware future in the city? At the Community Collaboration Lab (CCLab), we believe that meaningful energy transition begins with YOU and the everyday spaces you inhabit, observe, and experience. At RWTH Aachen University, we’re launching a fun and quick map-based survey as part of an exciting doctoral research project by Alper Al, reimagining the RWTH university campus, buildings and outdoor spaces alike, as facilitators of a potential energy community.By contributing photos, comments, and general location data, you’re helping us build the foundation for a digitally informed serious game – a creative tool supporting neighborhood-scale energy transitions through co-creation, empathy, and play.Your input promotes inclusive governance, supports community-led energy transitions, and helps bridge the gap between expert knowledge and lived experience – one campus space at a time. The insights we gather will also help inform strategies beyond the university, shaping more inclusive, responsive climate action in other communities.
🔐 Your Privacy: We do not collect your name, address, or any personal identifiers. All data is used for research and educational purposes only, in anonymised and aggregated form.
✅ By continuing, you confirm that you are 18 or older and that you understand how your contributions will be used. Participation is voluntary, and you are free to exit at any time.
🗺️ Ready to join? 🕓 It only takes 5 minutes!
🔗 Scan the QR code or click the link to get started!
https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/ee544cc626af4cd6bd2a27b07523b7fc
Answer questions basic questions regarding your affiliation to the campus.
📍 Pin locations on the RWTH Aachen Campus where you think places are underused or could be improved for climate resilience and energy awareness – and tell us why you chose them.
📸 Upload photos and impressions of places
More information on Alper Al’s thesis:
Fostering Positive Energy Communities at University Campuses: RWTH Aachen Case
Carbon neutralization is a key target to mitigate climate change. Acknowledging that energy generation from fossil fuels is still the primary contributor to carbon emissions, the transition toward renewable energy is urgent. The Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) emerged as a concept promoting energy-efficient and energy-flexible urban areas. PEDs highlight a neighborhood scale, community-centered transition addressing inequalities by equitable access to clean energy, reliable infrastructure, and involvement of multiple stakeholders. However, challenges of Positive Energy Districts include high initial costs, resistance to change, regulatory obstacles, limited technological infrastructure, and the lack of community participation. Local governments require guidance and points of reference for the design, implementation, and assessment of PEDs.
This project focuses on transformation of university campuses as potential positive energy communities. Campuses as social infrastructures have great potential in encompassing the interplay between social elements such as community, policy, and cultural factors, spatial elements such as buildings and open public spaces, and energy infrastructure such as active systems for generating renewable energy, energy storage, and mobility.
The project aims to explore participatory methodologies to foster energy communities and bridge expert and citizen knowledge. To achieve this, a digitally informed serious game will be developed to initiate community-oriented, neighborhood-level transition strategies. Serious games are effective in facilitating acceptance and developing a sense of belonging. Community engagement through serious games can enable empathising and behavior change, which is critical for community resilience and long-term applicability of future solutions. The research also develops implications on how to enhance hybrid participation by identifying the advantages and potential of analogue and digital participation tools.