Smart Aging in Smart Cities? Societal and Individual Prerequisites from Polish and German Perspectives

ogólnouniwersyteckie

The aim of the webinar is to analyze the concept of smart cities in relation to active aging. The rationale behind is that aging is the major challenge faced by cities today and onto the future. The webinar aims to analyze how cities using digital technology can contribute to successful ageing. In parallel, we ask what prerequisites are in need at the societal and individual level to further this process. The use of technology in the design of smart cities can contribute to the improvement of care, the creation of adequate infrastructure; the supply of goods and services demanded by seniors can increase their level of activity and quality of life at large. However, smart city is not only about technology, but also about comfortable living. Thus, due to the nature of the research challenges coming with smart cities, the webinar is an interdisciplinary course combining economics, sociology, political sciences, social geography, psychology and gerontology.

Lecturers:

Grzegorz Kula (UW), Anna Nicińska (UW), Katarzyna Śledziewska (UW), Christiane Schwieren (HU), Hans-Werner Wahl (HU)

Collaboration: Ludek Sykora (Charles University), Claire Charlot (Sorbonne University), Emmanuel Raju (Copenhagen University)

Five 3-hour long sessions are planned for the course, starting in the first session with a panel discussion between researchers elaborating on main topics currently discussed in the literature and possible methods used in their respective fields to study them. Possible data sources will be presented. The second session will be dedicated to tutors´ presentation of their ongoing research related to ageing in smart cities and the so called silver digital economy. In the final 3 sessions students will be presenting their work using their skills in a direction chosen individually, yet connected to one of the main topics of the webinar.

The topics of the webinar may cover:

Social activities of the older adults (HWW):

Beyond paid work, older adults can take active action in a multitude of social contexts: being involved in some volunteer activities, helping other people, including their age peers, or families with children, or young adults, taking proactively part in the life of their communities, etc. The literature suggests that this will improve their health status, and reduces their need for help and support. It will also bring so far mostly unused benefits to the society.

Ageing and the need for financial support:

With an ageing population and limited resources many elderly will find themselves in difficult financial conditions. With a decline in cognitive abilities, will they make efficient and reasonable decisions concerning their finances? Will they need help in this, especially with respect to technology use? How to provide them with such help and with financial support?

Older adults and work:

What are the incentives making older people still work – both on their side and on the side of firms employing them? Where and in what position would they prefer to work? What is the role of their community and institutions in helping them to keep working?

Acceptance of technology by older adults (HWW):

Technology can help older individuals to remain independent longer. However, the question is how much technology we need and what will be accepted. Is it possible that we want too much technology for the needs of older individuals? It seems to be still an open question, whether surrounding ourselves with sensors and robots will really prolonging our independency and improve our quality of life as we age?

Technological infrastructure:

What kind of technology do older adults need? Robots, rehabilitation and assistive devices, access to information at the digital level at large, etc.? How should they be supplied with such technology? Who is supposed to deliver it, pay for it and teach older people how to use it?

Cognitive and sensu-motor development in late life (HWW):

Cognitive and sensu-motor development is seen by aging research as well as the public as essential areas of psychological aging and smart device use. However, combined with a possible decline in cognitive performance, the process of using technology efficiently and adequately may become difficult today and in the future. A main question is how to support older individuals in developing technology skills without producing new dependencies.

Successful ageing across Europe – What can smart cities contribute? (HWW)

The concept of successful ageing became an important issue. However, making the lives of the elderly better is not a trivial issue. Are there some objective criteria of successful ageing? Are there cross-cultural differences? Are those differences visible also on a local scale? We concentrate our discussion here on the community level, particularly the anticipated potential and constraints of smart cities in the future.

Urban infrastructure and activities of older adults:

The role of municipalities in which older adults live and age is crucial, since they are responsible for the creation of an infrastructure which can either make it easier or more difficult to remain active or not. If an old person has problems with walking on uneven pavement, cannot cross a street or enter a bus, provided that there is a bus in the first place, then we cannot expect her to be active. How does this function if older people do not live in the center of cities?

Examples of the literature:

Baisch, S., Kolling, T., Schall, A., Selic, S., Rühl, S., Kim, Z., Rossberg, H.H., Klein, B., Pantel, J., Oswald, F., Knopf, M. (2017). Acceptance of social robots by elder people: Does psychosocial funcitoning matter? International Journal of Social Robotics, 9, 293- 307.

Hank, C. (2012). How “successful” do older Europeans age? Findings from SHARE. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 66, 230-236.

Lim KTK and Yu R (2015) Aging and wisdom: age-related changes in economic and social decision making. Front. Aging Neurosci. 7:120.

Lindenberger, U. (2014). Human cognitive aging: Corriger la fortune? Science, 346, 572-548.

Maja J. Mataric, Brian Scassellati: Socially assistive Robotics Robotics In: Siciliano, Bruno, and Oussama Khatib, eds. Springer handbook of robotics. Springer, 2016.

H.F. Machiel Van der Loos, David J. Reinkensmeyer, Eugenio Guglielmelli: Rehabilitation and Health Care Robotics In: Siciliano, Bruno, and Oussama Khatib, eds. Springer handbook of robotics. Springer, 2016.

Margaret McConnell (2013) Behavioral economics and aging J. Econ. Ageing, 1 (2013), pp. 83-89

Michael, Yvonne L., Mandy K. Green, and Stephanie A. Farquhar. "Neighborhood design and active aging." Health & place 12.4 (2006): 734-740

Mitzner, T.L., Boron, J. B., Fausset, C. B., Adams, A. E., Charness, N., Czaja, S. J., Dijkstra, K., Fisk, A. D., Rogers, W. A., & Sharit, J. (2010). Older adults talk technology: Their usage and attitudes. Computers in Human Behavior, 269, 1710-1721.

Oswald, F., Hieber, A., Wahl, H.-W., & Mollenkopf, H. (2005). Ageing and person-environment fit in different urban neighbourhoods. European Journal of Ageing, 2(2), 88-97 (DOI: 10.1007/s10433-10005-10026-10435)

Oswald, F., Jopp, D., Rott, C. & Wahl, H.-W. (2011). Is aging in place a resource for or a risk to life satisfaction? The Gerontologist, 51(2), 238-250. doi: 10193/geront/gnq096

Shoval, N., Wahl, H.-W., Auslander, G., Isaacson, M., Oswald, F., Edry, T., Landau R. & Heinik, J. (2011). Use of the global positioning system to measure the out-of-home mobility of older adults with different cognitive functioning: Ageing & Society, 31, 849-869. doi: 10.1017/S0144686X1000145

Sproten, A. and Schwieren C. (2015): Age Differences in the Reaction to Incentives - a Test of the Suc-cessful Ageing Extension of Social Production Functions Theory, The Journal of the Economics of Ageing 2015- 6: 176–186

Roman Romero-Ortuno, Lisa Cogan, Clodagh U. Cunningham, Rose Anne Kenny, Do older pedestrians have enough time to cross roads in Dublin? A critique of the Traffic Management Guidelines based on clinical research findings, Age and Ageing, Volume 39, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 80–86

Schmidt, L. & Wahl, H.-W. (2019). Predicting performance in technology-based tasks in older adults with mild cognitive impairment and healthy controls: The role of self-efficacy and obsolescence. The Gerontologist, 59, 90-100. doi: 10.1093/geront/gny062

Wahl, H.-W., Iwarsson, S., & Oswald, F. (2012). Aging well and the environment: Toward an integrative model and research agenda for the future. The Gerontologist, 52(3), 306-316. doi:10.1093/geront/gnr154

Wahl, H.-W., Siebert, J. & Tauber, B. (2017). Theories of successful aging. In Pachana, N. (Ed.). Encyclopedia of geropsychology (S. 1931-1940). New York: Springer.

Wettstein, M., Wahl, H.-W., & Schwenk, M. (2018). Life space in older adults. In B. Knight, S. D. Neupert, N. D. Anderson, H.-W. Wahl, & N. A. Pachana (Eds.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology and Aging (S. 1205-1225). London: Oxford University Press.

Effects of education:

Knowledge:

1. Students know about the ageing process and its consequences at the local and state level (S2A_W02, S2A_W03, S2A_W04, S2A_W05, S2A_W07, S2A_W08, S2A_W09).

2. Students know methods and tools of analysis of individual and population ageing outcomes (S2A_W06).

3. Students gain a better understanding of what interdisciplinary ageing research is able to contribute.

Skills:

1. Students are able to model, analyze and interpret social and economic processes resulting from population ageing (S2A_U01, S2A_U02, S2A_U03, S2A_U08).

2. Students are able to use their knowledge and analytical skills to solve research problem (S2A_U05, S2A_U06, S2A_U07).

3. Students are able to conduct quantitative and qualitative empirical research, choose proper data sources and present results orally and in a written form (master thesis) (S2A_U01, S2A_U02, S2A_U03, S2A_U07, S2A_U09, S2A_U10).

Social values:

1. Students are able to prioritize research tasks (S2A_K03).

2. Students are able to schedule and perform life-long learning (S2A_K06).

Delivering presentations, participation in discussions during sessions and writing an essay; for PhD level students the essay must contain main elements of research conducted individually by students.