SIPRIUS+ : A sustainability monitoring tool specifically designed for urban brownfields regeneration projects

One of the relevant strategies to limit the sprawl of post-industrial European cities is the regeneration of urban brownfields. This type of projects concentrates new development within already urbanized areas and contributes to their revitalization. Despite this, projects developed on urban brownfields are not automatically sustainable. It is explained by their inherent complex nature, due to the specificities of the site, the project process and the sustainability concept itself. Focusing on these challenges, SIPRIUS+ is an operational monitoring tool using an interdisciplinary approach. It supports a search for global quality, tailored to urban brownfields regeneration projects and integrated into the project dynamics. This new generation tool is a hybrid between a sustainability indicator system adapted to issues raised by brownfield regeneration and an user-friendly, web-based monitoring software. SIPRIUS+ assists practitioners in their decision-making: it facilitates the integration, assessment, and follow-up of sustainability indicators during the transformation of urban brownfields into new environmentally friendly and socially inclusive neighborhoods, respectful of future generations. This paper gives a description of the different steps of the tool’s design and an overview of its functionalities. Then, the main features of SIPRIUS+ are presented through a test application on a case study located in Yverdon-les-Bains (Switzerland).

Towards sustainable regeneration of disused urban areas : a monitoring tool to integrate assessment into the projects dynamics

Martine Laprise, Sophie Lufkin

Regeneration of disused urban areas, such as industrial brownfields or abandoned infrastructural zones, has received considerable attention in the context of post‐industrial European cities. Due to the inherent complexity of these projects, a holistic integration of sustainability objectives is far from being an automatic process. It depends upon a proactive search for global quality, integrated in a participative way in the project dynamics and a structured and continuous assessment of environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainability, tailored to the specificities of such projects. Specifically focusing on these challenges, the ongoing research presented in this paper aims at developing a monitoring tool entitled SIPRIUS+. This new generation tool is a hybrid between a sustainability indicator system adapted to the issues raised by the regeneration of disused urban areas and a user‐friendly, web‐based monitoring software. SIPRIUS+ is designed to provide a strong basis to key stakeholders involved in the management of these projects and facilitates communication and participation with various public or private actors. This paper gives an overview of these objectives and a description of the steps of the tool’s design. Preliminary findings leading to future adaptations are presented through a case study: the Gare‐Lac neighborhood, a large disused urban area located in the city of Yverdon‐les‐Bains (Switzerland).

2015

Towards sustainable regeneration of disused urban areas : a monitoring tool to integrate assessment into the projects dynamics

Martine Laprise, Sophie Lufkin

2015

Implementation of a sustainability monitoring tool into the dynamics of an urban brownfield regeneration project

Martine Laprise

Within the context of post-industrial European cities, the regeneration of urban brownfields contributes to limit urban sprawl by increasing cities density while revitalizing neighborhoods. Yet because of their complex nature, urban brownfields regeneration projects (UBRP) are not automatically sustainable. To foster the integration of sustainability objectives into these projects dynamics, an operational monitoring tool was created. Entitled SIPRIUS+, this tool is a collaborative web-based software combining sustainability indicators adapted to UBRP issues and several management functionalities. Test applications conducted on case studies and presented to the related stakeholders gave positive insights about the potential of SIPRIUS+ to provide decision-making support. However, because of the long duration of UBRP, some aspects inherent to monitoring were not verified and the tool not piloted in real conditions. In order to confront SIPRIUS+ with the reality of the practice and its end-users, the tool is now being implemented for an 18-month period in the Gare-Lac neighborhood project located in Yverdon-les-Bains (Switzerland). The paper investigates how SIPRIUS+ is actually implemented into the project's ongoing urban planning procedure. Then, we analyze preliminary feedbacks to measure the level of adoption of the monitoring approach by the different stakeholders and to identify points of improvement.

2019