The impacts of digitalization on science and society in the quest for more sustainable futures Miramar Palace, Donostia-San Sebastián, July, 6-10, 2026   The PRAXIS research group at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS, KIT Karlsruhe) and the The Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research at RWTH Aachen University will host an International Summer School for PhD students, titled “The impacts of digitalization on science and society in the quest for more sustainable futures”. The Summer School is part of the 45th edition of the UPV/EHU Summer Courses in Donostia-San Sebastián.   The Call for Papers is open until 15th of February 2026.

Lecture and Discussion   Jürgen Kopfmüller (ITAS) presents the Integrative Concept of Sustainable Development (IKoNE), which was developed in the early 2000s as a scientifically grounded sustainability concept and an alternative to other concepts existing at the time. The presentation focuses on the motivation, core idea, and architecture of IKoNE, its positioning within key controversies of the conceptual sustainability debate, a comparison with the SDGs, and fundamental aspects of valid sustainability analyses and assessments.   Anna König and Volker Stelzer (ITAS/KAT) provide brief insights into the practical application of the concept: They present a tool for assessing the sustainability of municipal measures based on IKoNE, as well as a "best practice" seminar that illustrates the use of IKoNE in higher education teaching.   Online participation is possible. Registration is requested to: sophie.fribus9@kit.edu

The results of the TA project Biotechnology and artificial intelligence: risks from research for security and proliferation of bioweapons will be presented and discussed at this public event. The event is open to the public and will be streamed live at www.bundestag.de. Details of the programme and how to register to attend in person can be found on the event page.

Cities are hotspots for climate change – for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to impacts of future extreme weather events such as heatwaves. Cities are particularly vulnerable to heat due to high population densities, complex and sensitive infrastructure and economic activities. Generally, daytime and nighttime heat stress is increased in cities due to three-dimensional radiation effects, reduced wind at pedestrian-level, and the urban heat island - yet depending on context (shading, surface materials) there are large differences at micro- and local-scale within cities. At the same time, cities are also hubs of creativity, innovation and transformation – hence driving climate adaptation. A key challenge in the process of transforming our current built environments into more resilient cities is the assessment and optimization of responsible and effective local measures for climate adaptation, which requires high-resolution, timely and reliable information on urban climate and climate change impacts, for example heat exposure must be assessed spatially and temporally at high-resolution and for different development scenarios. The talk will highlight recent research supporting the simulation and assessment of urban heat as part of the BMU-funded “I4C-Intelligence for Cities” project, from our ERC Synergy Grant “urbisphere” and our latest EU-funded “UrbanAIR” project to develop a Destiny Earth Digital Twin for urban regions. In all three projects, we address urban heat at different scales and by integrating different technologies resolving physical as well as social science aspects. We couple high-resolution weather- and climate models with urban surface models to simulate urban energy, water and airflow dynamics. This enables precise intra-urban forecasts, warnings and climate projections of heat at the neighborhood-level. New networks of distributed environmental and weather sensors in cities provide valuable real-time data on intra-urban variability and can be used for evaluating new models. Emulating complex physical simulations with artificial intelligence can considerably speed up computationally expensive simulations of scenarios and helps to integrate them in building-resolving digital twins or combine them with mobility data to assess and opitimise different climate, planning and development options across entire cities. Future heat impact, decision and support systems can help to make cities more resilient, sustainable and equitable – and thus preparing them to face the challenges of climate change and increasing heat waves. However, in developing and combining all these technologies, meteorological and physical processes must be combined with quantitative data on urban population, mobility and in order to obtain a sound basis for decision-making, which remains challenge for integrated urban climate services.