Green infrastructure | EPFL Graph Search

Green infrastructure or blue-green infrastructure refers to a network that provides the “ingredients” for solving urban and climatic challenges by building with nature. The main components of this approach include stormwater management, climate adaptation, the reduction of heat stress, increasing biodiversity, food production, better air quality, sustainable energy production, clean water, and healthy soils, as well as more anthropocentric functions, such as increased quality of life through recreation and the provision of shade and shelter in and around towns and cities. Green infrastructure also serves to provide an ecological framework for social, economic, and environmental health of the surroundings. More recently scholars and activists have also called for green infrastructure that promotes social inclusion and equality rather than reinforcing pre-existing structures of unequal access to nature-based services. Green infrastructure is considered a subset of "Sustainable and Res

An urban ecohydrological model to quantify the effect of vegetation on urban climate and hydrology (UT&C v1.0)

Paolo Burlando, Matthias Roth

Increasing urbanization is likely to intensify the urban heat island effect, decrease outdoor thermal comfort, and enhance runoff generation in cities. Urban green spaces are often proposed as a mitigation strategy to counteract these adverse effects, and many recent developments of urban climate models focus on the inclusion of green and blue infrastructure to inform urban planning. However, many models still lack the ability to account for different plant types and oversimplify the interactions between the built environment, vegetation, and hydrology. In this study, we present an urban ecohydrological model, Urban Tethys-Chloris (UT&C), that combines principles of ecosystem modelling with an urban canopy scheme accounting for the biophysical and ecophysiological characteristics of roof vegetation, ground vegetation, and urban trees. UT&C is a fully coupled energy and water balance model that calculates 2 m air temperature, 2 m humidity, and surface temperatures based on the infinite urban canyon approach. It further calculates the urban hydrological fluxes in the absence of snow, including transpiration as a function of plant photosynthesis. Hence, UT&C accounts for the effects of different plant types on the urban climate and hydrology, as well as the effects of the urban environment on plant well-being and performance. UT&C performs well when compared against energy flux measurements of eddy-covariance towers located in three cities in different climates (Singapore, Melbourne, and Phoenix). A sensitivity analysis, performed as a proof of concept for the city of Singapore, shows a mean decrease in 2 m air temperature of 1.1 ∘C for fully grass-covered ground, 0.2 ∘C for high values of leaf area index (LAI), and 0.3 ∘C for high values of Vc,max (an expression of photosynthetic capacity). These reductions in temperature were combined with a simultaneous increase in relative humidity by 6.5 %, 2.1 %, and 1.6 %, for fully grass-covered ground, high values of LAI, and high values of Vc,max, respectively. Furthermore, the increase of pervious vegetated ground is able to significantly reduce surface runoff.

2020

Designing a neighbourhood energy infrastructure: Applying a novel framework to Lisbon

Louis Alexandre Jewell

This thesis introduces a novel framework for the fundamental design of energy systems for neighbourhoods. The framework is based on the sequential integration of three software tools: QGIS, City Energy Analyst (CEA) and Urbio. QGIS is used to build the buildings database (construction standards, occupancy types and schedules). CEA is used to model the neighbourhood energy services (heating, cooling, domestic hot water and electricity for other uses, including EVs). Urbio is used to design in an optimized manner the energy infrastructure that supplies the neighbourhood. This framework was successfully used in the case study of the Vale de Santo António, a neighbourhood to be built by the Municipality of Lisbon within the scope of the Renda Acessível (Affordable Rent) program. The results show that the different software can be easily combined, thus demonstrating a flexible approach for planning neighbourhood energy infrastructures.

2020

Architecture Without Content 8: Places Of Accumulation: Temporary Residence

Jelena Pancevac, Giovanni Piovene Porto Godi, Dries Rodet, Andrea Zanderigo

Another Short History of Architecture without Content The second iteration of Architecture without Content at EPFL is the eighth incarnation of a studio that started three years ago at Columbia University. Back then it was intended as a study of the Big Box, a big industrial building that can contain many things. Over time, Architecture without Content came to represent an idea of a possible architecture of the perimeter, a pragmatic kind of architecture that remains radical and precise. The first incarnation of Places of Accumulation — entitled Machines — concentrated both on places of production and places of storage. Buildings that concentrate the very essence of our contemporary infrastructure. In most cases they are not considered as possible sites for an architectural project. Machines thus investigated the possibility to accumulate formal knowledge in buildings that do not deserve a specific architectural treatment. We claimed: “Their presence is all they have, but perhaps that is enough.” Temporary Residence is in many ways the inverse of Machines . Site and territory are the defining factors for the architectural type. As much as each of the designed buildings are considered autonomous, it is precisely their performance ‘on site’ that was considered. At first, the project tackled fifteen sites of a wider series of temporary detention centres for migrants in contemporary Greece. As with the Machines , these buildings play a role on a global scale and regulate flows in the even covered field. The sites sprawl around in the entire territory of the country, and are more densely distributed close to the Turkish border and around Athens. During the studio, we drifted away from that initial thought. The buildings in Temporary Residence accumulate people, not machines or data. The temporary residences designed here are to be objects that permanently mark and deal with the specificity of a given territory whilst being able to accumulate transient fluxes of people — now temporary detention centres for immigrants, in the future something else. Ultimately, Temporary Residence considers inhabitants a temporary fad. The ambiguity towards its user is the code of arms of this ignorant piece of architecture. As a true Architecture without Content it turns the inhabitant into its alibi.

2014

An urban ecohydrological model to quantify the effect of vegetation on urban climate and hydrology (UT&C v1.0)

Paolo Burlando, Matthias Roth

2020

Architecture Without Content 8: Places Of Accumulation: Temporary Residence

Jelena Pancevac, Giovanni Piovene Porto Godi, Dries Rodet, Andrea Zanderigo

2014