Increasing urbanization and the effects of climate change will bring new challenges for cities, such as energy saving and supply of renewable energy, preventing urban heat islands and water retention to deal with more frequent downpours. A major urban surface, the surface of roofs, is nowadays hardly exploited and could be used to make cities more ‘future proof’ or resilient. Many Dutch municipalities have become aware that the use of green roofs as opposed to bituminous roofs positively contributes to these challenges and are stimulating building-owners to retrofit their building with green roofs. This study aims at comparing costs and benefits of roof types, focused on green roofs (intensive and extensive) both on building- and city scale. Core question is the balance between costs and benefits for both scales, given varying local conditions. Which policy measures might be needed in the future in order to apply green roofs strategically in regard to local demands? To answer this question the balance of costs and benefits of green roofs is divided into a public and an individual part. Both balances use a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats framework to determine the chance of success for the application of green roofs, considering that the balance for green roofs on an individual scale influences the balance on a public scale. The outcome of this combined analyses in the conclusion verifies that a responsible policy and a local approach towards green roofs is necessary to prepare the city sufficiently for future climate changes. http://dx.doi.org/10.13044/j.sdewes.d6.0225
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This paper describes a project to explore the possibilities of virtual worlds in educating Green IT. In the project a virtual world has been created with various assignments which are meant to create awareness on sustainability aspects of IT. The world (and the assignments) will be incorporated in a course for first-year IT students. In order to measure the effects of the course, a questionnaire has been developed which can be used before and after the course to measure the attitude towards green IT.
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MUSE supports the CIVITAS Community to increase its impact on urban mobility policy making and advance it to a higher level of knowledge, exchange, and sustainability.As the current Coordination and Support Action for the CIVITAS Initiative, MUSE primarily engages in support activities to boost the impact of CIVITAS Community activities on sustainable urban mobility policy. Its main objectives are to:- Act as a destination for knowledge developed by the CIVITAS Community over the past twenty years.- Expand and strengthen relationships between cities and stakeholders at all levels.- Support the enrichment of the wider urban mobility community by providing learning opportunities.Through these goals, the CIVITAS Initiative strives to support the mobility and transport goals of the European Commission, and in turn those in the European Green Deal.Breda University of Applied Sciences is the task leader of Task 7.3: Exploitation of the Mobility Educational Network and Task 7.4: Mobility Powered by Youth Facilitation.
Aeres University of Applied Sciences has placed internationalisation as a key driver in its overall strategy. By prioritising the internationalisation of education and educational consultancy the university has created solid opportunities for students, lecturers, and partners at regional, national, and international levels. Currently, more strategic development on internationalisation in applied research at Aeres is needed. There is an opportunity to utilise highly proficient researchers, state-of-the-art facilities, and an impressive national research portfolio, and for this, there is a need to develop international research agenda, a key priority for AeresResearch4EU. To address this need, Aeres University of Applied Sciences aims to strengthen its internationalisation efforts with its research activities, opening the door to many opportunities, and most importantly, creating an international research agenda spanning the university's three locations. The main objectives of AeresResearch4EU are to analyse the existing research strategy and professorships and develop them towards a global research agenda for the European Union. By focusing on international research projects, Aeres can further enhance its reputation as a leading institution for applied research in agriculture, food, environment, and green technologies. AeresResearch4EU aims to create new partnerships and collaborations with researchers and institutions across Europe, allowing Aeres to contribute to developing innovative and sustainable solutions to global challenges. With its strong commitment to internationalisation and its focus on applied research, Aeres University of Applied Sciences is poised to become an essential player in the European research landscape.
Chemical preservation is an important process that prevents foods, personal care products, woods and household products, such as paints and coatings, from undesirable change or decomposition by microbial growth. To date, many different chemical preservatives are commercially available, but they are also associated with health threats and severe negative environmental impact. The demand for novel, safe, and green chemical preservatives is growing, and this process is further accelerated by the European Green Deal. It is expected that by the year of 2050 (or even as soon as 2035), all preservatives that do not meet the ‘safe-by-design’ and ‘biodegradability’ criteria are banned from production and use. To meet these European goals, there is a large need for the development of green, circular, and bio-degradable antimicrobial compounds that can serve as alternatives for the currently available biocidals/ preservatives. Anthocyanins, derived from fruits and flowers, meet these sustainability goals. Furthermore, preliminary research at the Hanze University of Applied Science has confirmed the antimicrobial efficacy of rose and tulip anthocyanin extracts against an array of microbial species. Therefore, these molecules have the potential to serve as novel, sustainable chemical preservatives. In the current project we develop a strategy consisting of fractionation and state-of-the-art characterization methods of individual anthocyanins and subsequent in vitro screening to identify anthocyanin-molecules with potent antimicrobial efficacy for application in paints, coatings and other products. To our knowledge this is the first attempt that combines in-depth chemical characterization of individual anthocyanins in relation to their antimicrobial efficacy. Once developed, this strategy will allow us to single out anthocyanin molecules with antimicrobial properties and give us insight in structure-activity relations of individual anthocyanins. Our approach is the first step towards the development of anthocyanin molecules as novel, circular and biodegradable non-toxic plant-based preservatives.
