PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Climate change is recognised as one of the most serious environmental, social and economic challenges facing the world. The IPCC's Fifth Report (2014) highlighted that many of the most endangered areas from climate change are found in urban centres. Implementing measures that enhance resilience and enable sustainable development can accelerate adaptation to climate change.
Over the coming decades climate change will increase the pressure on Europe's schools and colleges as well as its social service centres. The impacts of climate change, such as heat waves and changes in annual and seasonal rainfall, are already affecting the health and well-being of children and elderly people who are the main users of these types of centres.
OBJECTIVES
The overall objective of the LIFE-myBUILDINGisGREEN project was to contribute to increasing the resilience of social service buildings and educational centres by implementing nature-based solutions as prototypes of climate adaptation and improved wellbeing.
Specifically, the project aimed at:
- improving knowledge on the development, assessment and monitoring of vulnerability to climate change of buildings by devising and testing a common, ready-to-deploy method in the southern, western, central and northern European regions
- analysing and verifying the impacts of nature-based solutions as measures to adapt to climate change in three pilot buildings
- promoting sustainable ecosystem-based adaptation measures and increase the capacity to apply such knowledge in practice through dissemination and demonstration workshops
- promoting the governance of regional authorities, directors and building managers, and the construction sector to integrate nature-based solutions as part of measures to promote sustainable adaptation in buildings
- contributing to the development and implementation of a common EU policy on adaptation to climate change by transferring best practices and knowledge to target groups and stakeholders.
RESULTS
The project has increased climate resilience in 3 educational buildings in Spain (Solana de los Barros, Badajoz) and Portugal (Évora and Porto) by implementing Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) as climate adaptation tools.
To achieve its general objective, the project worked on the following specific objectives:
- improving the knowledge of NBS at building level
- analysing the cost-benefit of NBS as climate adaptation tools
- promoting governance actions to improve the transferability of the implemented solutions by facilitating their inclusion in local, regional and national regulations
- transferring and replicating the prototypes of NBS implemented and tested in this case study, through capacity building initiatives for specialised staff.
The proposed NBS consisted of a series of green roofs, green façades and other NBS aimed at shading and water harvesting. These served in:
- keeping indoor temperatures low during hot periods and thus minimise energy use for cooling
- creating shade
- improving water retention around buildings by minimising rainwater run-off.
The project has had an impact on 13 642 m² of surface area across three schools, increasing green areas by 3 911.61 m².
The solutions implemented in Solana de los Barros (Spain) have achieved a reduction in the building envelope of more than 20ºC when comparing gravel roofs with green roofs. Inside the buildings, during the hottest months of the year, the NBS-related measures helped to reduce the temperature below 27ºC (maximum comfort temperature according to the Regulation of Thermal Installations in Buildings, RITE). Moreover, notable energy savings have been achieved, with an 11.2% reduction in electricity consumption for cooling and up to 30% reduction in diesel consumption for heating.
In addition, the beneficiaries observed a significant increase in flora and insect diversity associated with the NBS measures implemented by the project. In particular, 14 months after the implementation of the NBS, the green covers have been colonised by 16 additional autochthonous vegetable species. Regarding animal species, 77 additional species have been identified.
As far as loss of rainwater is concerned, the initial results showed a better infiltration of rainwater in soil and less amount of water going to depuration systems. This is especially relevant during spring and autumn. Overall, a 10% of reduction has been registered.
In Porto (Portugal), the monitoring has been carried out only in a six months’ timespan and the remaining 18 months will be assessed during the After-LIFE period. The preliminary results from this short period show a reduction of more than 5ºC when comparing surface temperatures between green roofs and roofs without interventions. A 31% of reduction has been registered for the loss of rainwater and more than 25 new species have been found in the Porto building compared to before the implementation of NBS.
No information is available for Évora (Portugal) because the installation of the NBS were completed in the last month of the project and the monitoring of the performance will be carried out during the After-LIFE period.
The project has allowed the beneficiaries to identify several practices that are particularly useful when implementing NBS. With this, beneficiaries elaborated a Best Practices Guide to compile the lessons learnt during the project, to identify positive points of the solutions implemented, difficulties encountered and how they were resolved, and to highlight problems that still need to be addressed.
