Since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic, countries and cities had been forced to adopt social isolation measures very quickly. For more than a year, the world is stopped by COVID-19 pandemic. Scientists from many fields tend to notice effects of that in everyday life of ordinary people – not only emotional, but also physical and financial.
Vilnius city, together with Vilnius Tech university at this moment are working on the MICROBE project, which, hopefully, will help to reduce the side effects of the pandemic. Team of scientist and municipality specialists are working not only on creating unique and individualized MOOC models, which can be used by scientists, but also measuring negative emotions around the city and counting how Vilnius city residents are feeling during COVID-19.
“I am honoured to be a part of the MICROBE project, which should be carried out transnationally to solve the above international needs. One of the possible solutions to these problems is improvement of education in minimizing the influence of coronavirus and negative emotions in a built environment by behavioural change (hereafter MICROBE education). So, our team is working hardly and with passion to develop world-wide innovative MICROBE System, which can help not only people of Vilnius, but soon people of the whole wide world,” – says Dr. Dalia Bardauskienė, one of the leaders of the project.
Currently, all partners are working on the first intellectual output “Personalized MOOC Modules on minimizing the influence of coronavirus and negative emotions in a built environment by applying behaviour change (MICROBE)” and the first result of it was the development of MICROBE cooperation for innovation and strategic partnerships for higher education framework.
“The main challenge is to consolidate a variety of diverse activities in education quality improvement, such as the delivery of extensive educational programmes and cooperation for innovation and strategic partnerships for higher education, the continued knowledge sharing, etc. To progress, it is necessary to build the cooperation for innovation and strategic partnerships for higher education and an associated network of experts and institutions,” – adds Bardauskienė.
Project’s team believes that participation in MICROBE is not only a possibility to share practices and get feedback from international audience, but also to get contemporary know how and practices on city’s sustainable development issues. With the help of the scientific team, project will contribute to tackle actual problems in the city and increase Vilnius citizens satisfaction (happiness index) by receiving real-time emotions and COVID-19 indices, also increase citizens participation, democracy by developing better resilience for climate change and pandemics.
Project‘s coordinator – Vilnius Tech University, Lithuania.
Project’s partners:
Vilniaus city municipality, Lithuania
Institute for Training of Personnel in International Organizations, Bulgaria
Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
University of Granada, Spain
Foundation for Urban Innovation, Italy
Municipality of Bologna, Italy
