Urban delta areas require innovative and adaptive urban developments to face problems related with land scarcity and impacts of climate change and flooding. Floating structures offer the flexibility and multi-functionality required to efficiently face these challenges and demands. The impact of these structures on the environment, however, is currently unknown and research on this topic is often disregarded. This knowledge gap creates a difficulty for water authorities and municipalities to create a policy framework, and to regulate and facilitate the development of new projects.Monitoring the effects of floating structures on water quality and ecology has been difficult until now because of the poor accessibility of the water body underneath the structures. In this work, a remote controlled underwater drone equipped with water quality sensors and a video camera was used to monitor dissolved oxygen near and under floating structures. The collected data showed that most water quality parameters remain at acceptable levels, indicating that the current small scale floating structures do not have a significant influence on water quality. The underwater footage revealed the existence of a dynamic and diverse aquatic habitat in the vicinity of these structures, showing that floating structures can have a positive effect on the aquatic environment. Future floating structures projects therefore should be encouraged to proceed.
Videoverslag waarin de aanpak, maatschappelijke relevantie en belangrijkste uitkomsten van het RAAK Onderzoek 'Making GREEN Energy Sources Greener' worden besproken. In dit onderzoek is op verschillende drijvende zonneparken gekeken naar effecten van de installaties op waterkwaliteit en ecologie. De resultaten hiervan vormen aanleiding voor vervolgonderzoeken die inmiddels zijn gestart
YOUTUBE
Many delta cities worldwide are dealing with the same kind of problems: rising of the sea level, land subsidence, scarcity of land and illegal housing. Multiple land use is one of these solutions that will help to reduce flooding and scarcity of land. An example of multiple land use is a floating community. This research used Semarang as location for the research into the social acceptance of floating houses. The data in this study were obtained through literature study and survey among inhabitants. The social acceptance of the inhabitants is determined with 35 respondents that have been done in the area of Kemijen, Semarang. In order to determine the social acceptance of floating houses, there are elements used, namely: knowledge of floating houses, perception of risk, urgency, implementation, chose for a floating house, requirements, positive and negative elements, self-sufficient system. According to the result of research, the social acceptance of the inhabitants is quite low, but there is potential because they see positive elements in a floating house. Low social acceptance is caused by the fact that the concept of floating houses is not well known in this community. With raising awareness on the challenges and informing the community on the possibilities on floating infrastructure will result in higher social acceptance.
Sea Lettuce, Ulva spp. is a versatile and edible green seaweed. Ulva spp is high in protein, carbohydrates and lipids (respectively 7%-33%; 33%-62% and 1%-3% on dry weight base [1, 2]) but variation in these components is high. Ulva has the potential to produce up to 45 tons DM/ha/year but 15 tons DM/ha/year is more realistic.[3, 4] This makes Ulva a possible valuable resource for food and other applications. Sea Lettuce is either harvested wild or cultivated in onshore land based aquaculture systems. Ulva onshore aquaculture is at present implemented only on a few locations in Europe on commercial scale because of limited knowledge about Ulva biology and its optimal cultivation systems but also because of its unfamiliarity to businesses and consumers. The objective of this project is to improve Ulva onshore aquaculture by selecting Ulva seed material, optimizing growth and biomass production by applying ecophysiological strategies for nutrient, temperature, microbiome and light management, by optimizing pond systems eg. attached versus free floating production and eventually protoype product development for feed, food and cosmetics.
Klimaatverandering en zeespiegelstijging zet de schaarse ruimte in Nederland verder onder druk. Klimaatrobuuste drijvende ontwikkelingen kunnen hiervoor een oplossing bieden maar kunnen nog niet op de benodigde schaal worden toegepast. Hiervoor is meer kennis nodig over de techniek en governance van drijvend bouwen en ook over de ecologische effecten. Het Floating Future project richt zich op de multidisciplinaire uitdagingen van drijvende bouwen op het vlak van bestuur en regelgeving en technische en ecologische uitdagingen. Hiermee bieden we een klimaatbestendige oplossing voor ruimtegebrek in de Nederlandse delta voor wonen, duurzame energie en logistiek. Dit unieke multidisciplinaire consortium heeft de capaciteit om de resterende barrières te doorbreken.
The global market for the industrial manufacturing of recombinant proteins (RPS) is steadily increasing and demand will keep rising in years to come. Currently, RPs are already an integral part of disease therapeutics, agriculture and the chemical industry and RP manufacturing methods rely heavily on host systems such as prokaryotes and, to a lesser extent, mammalian, yeast and plant cells. When comparing these host systems, all have their specific strengths and weaknesses and numerous challenges remain to improve protein manufacturing on an industrial scale. In this project, GLO Biotics proposes an innovative plant-based RP expression platform with the potential of significantly reducing costs and process requirements compared to the current state-of-the-art systems. Specifically, this novel concept is based on the use of coconut water as a natural, cell-free ‘protein production factory’. Coconut water in nuts aged 4-6 months is composed of free-floating cell nuclei devoid of cell walls, and it has been demonstrated these nuclei can express foreign proteins. Compared to existing platforms, the relative ease of delivering foreign protein-coding genes into this system, as well as the ease of recovery of the produced protein, potentially offers an innovative platform with great commercial attractiveness. In summary, the aim of this project is to provide a proof-of-concept for coconut water as a novel and competitive RP production platform by demonstrating the production and recovery of several commercially available RPs. To this end, GLO Biotics intends to collaborate with Zuyd University of Applied Sciences (Zuyd) and the Aachen Maastricht Institute for Biobased Materials (AMIBM) in demonstrating the potential of the ‘GLO-Conuts’ expression system. As a consortium, Zuyd and GLO Biotics will utilize their shared experience in molecular engineering and DNA vector technology and AMIBM will bring their expertise in plant-based RP production and recovery.
