As one of the largest pan-European and EU-funded research networks with about 150 members from more than 50 countries, our COST ACTION enjoys an international reputation even beyond the borders of Europe. RESTORE hits the nerve of the time, because environmental problems and resource bottlenecks are as urgent as today. As a major consumer of fossil resources and produced waste, the construction industry demands a fundamental rethink from the training of future planners to the environmentally and socially responsible use of real estate and entire residential districts. RESTORE not only intends to amend individual thematic fields, but also sets the course for a fundamental paradigm shift in industry and society.
This effort is a joint task which is why RESTORE brings together a wide range of expertise from research and industry. What is special about our ACTION is that we not only look for solutions in the classical inductive way, but also deductively form new practical approaches from research. Nature is the focus of our work. It is no longer just a means, but the goal of all economic and social activity.
After four years of intensive research, we have come noticeably closer to this goal. The success can be found in our sequential process structure, in which each Working Group took over results from the previous one and developed them further in a superordinate context. Like a hermeneutical circle, the initially impulse-giving theory gains practical relevance along the development path and the variety of topics increases concentrically.
As a result, we generated comparatively much more research output. For an effective dissemination, we applied a mix of methods that is unparalleled among the COST ACTIONs in its diversity and intensity. Just to name a few: the RESTORE website alone now contains over 50 thematic sections reporting on topics ranging from Carbon Offsetting to Scientific Missions of our Members. We post all our activities via Twitter with currently over 1200 tweets, Facebook and our own monthly RESTORE Newsletter with already over 230 subscribers. All Working Groups published their own printed booklet and our ACTION concludes with a peer-reviewed Final Book. The presentations on December 3rd will report on these and other dissemination activities, findings and conclusions and will finally answer the basic question, if the RESTORE vision on a paradigm shift has already started moving forward.
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