As the digitization of society has bestowed cities with an immense amount of data, cities are using data to inform, monitor, evaluate and measure their performance towards policy objectives. However, it was found that monitoring frameworks are biased by the perspectives of monitor developers, making their viewpoints and opinions dominant in shaping policies and public perception. Next to this, the aggregated metrics of monitoring frameworks overlook the experience of outliers thereby masking and excluding local differences and issues. These limitations lead to a gap between monitoring systems and the reality of lived experiences of citizens. With data-driven decision making being increasingly adopted by policymakers, it is imperative to investigate how these disparities can be minimized.
Literature suggests including citizens in the development of urban monitoring systems can positively contribute to aligning monitoring frameworks with the lived reality of citizens. The goal of this thesis was therefore to explore how citizen engagement with monitoring frameworks can be effectively achieved. In doing so this thesis explored two main components, being 1) how citizens can be effectively engaged with monitoring frameworks and 2) how their local knowledge can be incorporated in monitoring frameworks. This was done through a case study for the Ideal(s) City monitoring framework, developed by the AMS Institute and the City of Amsterdam.
The project took a participatory research-through-design approach where through the testing and evaluation of design interventions practical learnings about citizens’ local knowledge and participative capabilities were combined with theory. Besides, expert interviews and interviews with municipal stakeholders, such as a policymaker and a monitor developer, were conducted to gain a better understanding of the context of urban monitoring and policymaking. By combining the insights of these design interventions, interviews and literature, a process for citizen engagement with accompanying guidelines were developed and the potential role of local knowledge was identified.
It was found that local knowledge of citizens can play three roles in monitoring frameworks: 1) Identifying missing indicators in the current monitoring frameworks to minimize disparities between citizen perspectives and urban monitors, 2) providing new connections among (existing) indicators and 3) assigning weight of importance to indicators to reflect the diverse concerns and experiences of citizens. including this local knowledge can support policymakers in making more informed policy decisions and trade-offs, considering the diverse needs of the local context.
The thesis concludes with presenting a guidebook depicting a process for citizen engagement with monitoring frameworks targeted at monitor developers. Through actionable steps and guidelines, this guidebook aims to support AMS and other monitor developers to set the first steps in aligning urban monitors with the lived experiences of citizens. To ultimately monitor what matters to the city and her citizens.

While technological development, people began to pay extensive attention to climate issues and reduce the impact of human life on the planet through actions. House-hold energy as one of the main energy consumption is considered as an important direction to improve energy problems. Greenchoice as a green energy provider is willing to contribute to sustainable development through its efforts to help all people make their green choices. Involve the younger household starters from 20-30 as a new target group and expanding their market is their next step of development. This research project aims to find factors that can influence the decision-making related to household energy of the target group and translated these factors into opportunities for Greenchoice to attract these people.
Desk research is done to explore the trends in the development of household energy. Besides, how do other researchers analyse the attractive factors for people to choose household energy-related products or services is explored to support this research project in building the structures.
The target group research is built based on the personas of current customers and a previous project on understanding the meaning of sustainable household energy for the target group and their lifestyle. To further measure the priority of the factors mentioned in these two data, quantitative research is built. More potential factors are selected and the lifestyle of the target group is mapped by 3 personas.
To apply these factors to suitable products or services to attract the target group, a workshop based on a decision-making process is designed to discover the need of the target group and their desired solutions. For each group of participants their needs, possible solving process and reasons related to their lifestyles are collected.
Finally, data from workshops is summarized as design opportunities for Greenchocie to attract younger household starters by providing products and services to satisfy their needs. These opportunities and the strategy for Greenchoice to achieve its vision through products and services are visualized by a roadmap with three steps (horizons). In the end, the limitation of this research and related recommendations are presented to support with future development of the result.

This research addresses the critical issue of the poor implementation of sanitation and its effect on community and environmental health in the Global South. To overcome the social, cultural, technical, and financial complexities underlying poor sanitation, the participation of local community members in sanitation planning processes is deemed crucial for the successful development and implementation of sanitation systems.
To engage local stakeholders as decision-makers and improve design freedom, it is proposed to engage stakeholders in determining their demands, needs, and priorities by combining the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Focus Group Discussions (FGD) as a participatory decision-making method. The applicability and suitability of this method are assessed through a case study in Hagonoy, the Philippines, in which two parallel design cycles are carried out: one with only local sanitation experts as decision-makers and one with only local community members as decision-makers. A systematic literature review of design criteria applicable to sanitation design processes was conducted to overcome selectors' bias regarding the decision criteria assessed in the FAHP and the FGD. The FAHP data was collected among 60 community members evenly distributed over six neighbourhoods in Hagonoy and six local sanitation experts. Three FGDs were held with local community members, whilst one FGD was held with local sanitation experts. The design cycle based on the defined design scope was limited to the development of a conceptual design, proposing a treatment train capable of treating the produced domestic wastewater such that the effluent satisfies the local General Effluent Standards, specifically for the parameters water volume, Total Phosphorus (TP), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Ammonia (NH3), and Nitrate (NO32-). Wastewater treatment technologies aligning with the demands and needs specified by the stakeholders were obtained from scientific literature, which were combined into a sanitation system configuration that could treat the water sufficiently.
The completion of a sanitation design process without predefining the possible solutions, but by integrating the FAHP + FGD in the systematic derivation of the design scope, demonstrated how a demand- and need-driven design approach allows increased flexibility and sensitivity for the context in the development of a design. The parallel design cycles showed how the FAHP + FGD method could be applied as a systematic procedure to understand how design criteria in sanitation design are preferred and interpreted differently between local community members and local sanitation experts and how this can influence the conceptual design. Altogether, this research contributes to the body of knowledge in community-engaged sanitation design by demonstrating the effectiveness of the FAHP and FGD method in engaging community members in a need-driven design process, overcoming selectors’ bias for technologies and trade-offs, and producing relevant design proposals. However, acknowledging that the FAHP + FGD method was limited to engaging stakeholders only in defining the needs and demands, verification of the designs’ alignment with the perspectives of stakeholders and continuous engagement throughout the entire design process is essential to be further researched in the future.