On Friday 24 September, Dr. Mihaela Mircea (ENEA) and Dr. Sandro Finardi (ARIANET) will present the LIFE VEG-GAP project at the Novi Sad Nature-Based Solutions & Climate-Sensitive Urban Design training school.
The training school was organized by the Research Centre of Climatology and Hydrology at the University of Novi Sad, an academic centre of excellence for study and teaching established in its Faculty of Science at the Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management. The Institute's mission is to strengthen cooperation between researchers, institutions and companies in the realization of national and international projects that unite nature, people and science. For this reason, it has decided to invite a select group of PhD students to attend a series of lectures held by eminent architects, urban planners, climatology and air quality experts to stimulate their participation in the realisation of innovations in the fields of urban planning and design for more circular and sustainable cities.
In particular, the training school aims to provide theoretical, technical and operational knowledge to the trainees in order to investigate the opportunities and challenges for the implementation of Nature-Based Solutions (e.g. green and blue infrastructure, green roofs or walls) in a more climate-conscious urban design and planning.
The VEG-GAP project's contributions to the initiative will focus on the latter, providing an overview of the models and tools developed by the project for assessing the influence of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) on urban climate conditions (e.g. outdoor thermal comfort).
Furthermore, in order to improve critical thinking and increase the knowledge of the participants on the opportunities and challenges for the implementation of NBS and their contribution to the creation of sustainable and smart cities, the VEG-GAP representatives will test the advanced version of the project platform during the initiative and thus gather new and useful feedback for the improvement and implementation of its products.
In this way, the participants of the training school will be able to discover in a first preview the functionalities of the platform for urban planners, researchers, scientists and technicians, such as the consultation of VEG-GAP maps on the entire calculation domain, and not only on a single urban area, taking into account and comparing time analyses on different points for the same variable or for different variables (such as PM25, humidity, precipitation, wind, etc.).