Concepts for a sustainable urban environment
Towards Adaptive Circular Cities Concepts for a sustainable urban environment
Interdisciplinary research for multifactorial urban challenges
In collaboration with the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, the leading Dutch institutes for applied research Deltares, TNO, Wageningen UR and ECN combined forces in the 2015 project Adaptive Circular Cities. The project addressed major challenges for urban areas:
- Implementing climate change mitigation
- Adaptation to climate changes and sea level rise
- Sustainable use of natural resources and ecosystems
- Finding alternatives for valuable resources
- Transition to circular economies.
And last but not least, the project investigated and experimented with methods for interdisciplinary research and development to tackle multifactorial challenges.
Striving for concepts that boost both mitigation and adaptation and resource efficiency, all at the same time
The objective of the Adaptive Circular Cities project was to investigate and develop solutions with significant added value, using new combinations of the state of the art expertise, tools and models that the institutes have to offer. Optimal combinations should simultaneously contribute to climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation and resource efficiency. Also, the business case for this combination had to be sound and an attractive alternative to ‘traditional’ sectorial investments.
Ambitious, representative real world cases
Using real world cases, three major and closely related subjects were analyzed in an integral manner:
- Water, food and energy
- Safe and healthy urban living
- Construction and the subsurface.
The project delivers tailor made advice for these cases. But because of the representativeness of the chosen cases, project results are also generically usable for other cases, in other cities. For example as building blocks in the resilience strategy of a city.