GREEN ENGINEERING NEWS - eDesign Dynamics

Conference of the Parties, Brian Christopher Deese, senior advisor to President Barack Obama, Deborah Markowitz, Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, and the Diane Holdorf, chief sustainability officer and vice president of environmental stewardship, health and safety for the Kellogg company.

15 Nov 2016

Dr. Montalto is at the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22)

First positive message about US situation I've heard so far!

I'm sitting in a special side event sponsored by the US government to talk about the state of climate mitigation and adaptation in our country. The panelists are Brian Christopher Deese, senior advisor to President Barack Obama, Deborah Markowitz, Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, and the Diane Holdorf, chief sustainability officer and vice president of environmental stewardship, health and safety for the Kellogg company.

Essentially the message was this: economic development and green house gas emissions are now officially decoupled, with business, states, and cities acting on their own. Deese started the session off by citing statistics: since 2008 economic growth is up 10%, carbon emissions are down 9%, and petroleum production is down by 2%. He claimed that it's the market and state and local leaders that are driving this "structural shift."

Beech was followed by Markowitz, who explained how this happened. In the years when Bush wouldn't participate in the Kyoto agreement, and when a republican congress wouldn't allow the US to lead at Copenhagen, states and local leaders filled the gap. Action was local despite inaction at the federal level, and that same trend will continue now. Currently 1 in 20 jobs in Vermont are in the solar industry. Markowitz reminded us that because the US has a federalist system, the states have quite a bit of autonomy and this works in our favor in the context of climate action. States and local governments have acted and will continue to do so.

Markowitz was followed by Holdorf, who said that her global company needs to compete in the global economy. Even if the US takes a hiatus in leadership at the federal level, Kellogg has its own internal benchmarks to meet, and global markets in other countries to consider. Her company has pledged to reduce its emissions by 65% by 2050, for example. To do that they need to consider their entire supply chain. And as a food producer, Kellogg is concerned with agriculture, with major impacts on water, energy and materials cycles. So from the business side, there's much more to consider than what one administration in one country is saying.

All three speakers ad the same fundamental message: the changes we need to meet our NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) are already underway and it's not because of the Clean Power Plan (which wouldn't go into effect until the 2020s anyway. The Western Climate Initiative and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative are already acting completely independent of the federal government.

In response to one attendee who said "well Vermont is here, but Texas isn't. Are we going to have a two speed system' in the US?" Keech jumped up and pointed out that Texas is leading the country in wind power right now! Climate action is happening and will continue to regardless of current change in administration!

21 Oct 2016

Habitat III, UN Conference in Quito, Ecuador

Last week, Dr. Franco Montalto was introduced as the new Director of the North American Hub of the Urban Climate Change Research Network. The announcement took place at Habitat III, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Urban Development held in Quito, Ecuador October 17-20, 2016.

The Urban Climate Change Research Network
is a network of more than 750 researchers from around the world studying the impacts of climate change in cities. The newly formed North American Hub will promote collaboration between UCCRN researchers and city leaders across North America. At Habitat III, Dr. Montalto presented preliminary ideas developed with other colleagues regarding the new Hub's structure and mission.

HABITAT I, HABITAT II AND THE HABITAT AGENDA

The United Nations General Assembly convened the Habitat I Conference in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976, as governments began to recognize the need for sustainable human settlements and the consequences of rapid urbanization, especially in the developing world. At that time, urbanization and its impacts were barely considered by the international community, but the world was starting to witness the greatest and fastest migration of people into cities and towns in history as well as rising urban population through natural growth resulting from advances in medicine.

The Vancouver commitments were reconfirmed 20 years later, at the Habitat II Conference in Istanbul, Turkey. World leaders adopted the Habitat Agenda as a global plan of action for adequate shelter for all, with the notion of sustainable human settlements driving development in an urbanizing world.

Forty years later, there is a wide consensus that towns' and cities' structure, form, and functionality need to change as societies change. Cities have continued to expand outwards beyond their peri-urban areas, often due to weak urban planning, poor urban management, land regulation crises, and real estate speculation factors. It is now well understood that slums and related informal settlements are a spontaneous form of urbanization, consisting of a series of survival strategies by the urban poor, most borne out of poverty and exclusion.

Habitat III, and the New Urban Agenda as a result, represents an opportunity to make concrete the ideals of Habitat II in designing policies, planning urban spaces for all, and providing affordable urban services and utilities by looking to the cities as an incredible force of global development and facing the challenge of how to manage the urbanization process to improve citizens' lives

Build Landscapes, URBAN AND METROPOLITAN PARKS, eDesign Dynamics

17 Oct 2016

Build Landscapes – Biannual Event in Turin, Italy

URBAN PARKS was the theme of the Biennale Create Landscapes 2016The urban park project is a key environmental renewal, urban and social tool through which you can rehabilitate degraded areas of the city and take action with respect to environmental hazards.It also has the ability to affect the quality of life of citizens, providing them with open spaces in response to social and cultural questions.Within metropolitan cities it is vital to ensure the environmental and recreational functions of the green, in the form of parks, it plays a very important role in spatial planning.In light of these considerations, one wonders, during the Biennale, how to implement and manage systems supra green spaces, with what new features you have to equip them and what new parameters should be developed to insert the green between services for the metropolitan population.

Sustainable Water Resource Engineering, CAEE Professor Dr. Franco Montalto, P.E. was a trainer at World Water Assessment Program (WWAP) in Venice, Italy.

10 Sep 2016

CAEE Professor Montalto Gives Training in Italy

Dr. Franco Montalto, P.E. was recently a trainer at UNESCO World Water Assessment Program (WWAP) headquarters in Colombella, Italy. The training was entitled “Capacity Development on Water and Sustainable Development,” and was a follow up to the WWAP’s 2015 report "Water for a Sustainable World." It was attended by 20 water professionals from 14 different African countries.

Dr. Montalto kicked off the program with a group role play exercise inspired by Garrett Hardin’s seminal 1968 Science article, Tragedy of the Commons. The goal of exercise was to explore the challenges associated with implementing the UN’s recent Sustainable Development Goals through a “fishing game”. Dr. Montalto also taught the portion of the training that focused on Urban Water Planning and Management.

10 Jul 2016

Professor Montalto’s Sustainable Water Resource Engineering Class in Venice

From June 8-18, 2016, CAEE Professor Dr. Franco Montalto, P.E. brought a group of 13 student to Venice, Italy as part of his Sustainable Water Resource Engineering class.

The theme of this year's class was Water and Jobs, the name also given to the 2016 World Water Development Report produced by World Water Assessment Program (WWAP). Since it is estimated that 3 out of 4 global jobs are water dependent, new approaches to water management can help to foster new forms of sustainable development. The group explored this theme with a focus on historical and contemporary water management strategies in Venice, a city of water.

After an introductory presentation by Dr. Angela Ortigara from WWAP, the trip began with a tour of the controversial Venice MOSE storm surge barrier project, followed immediately by technical presentations by some of its most vocal local critics.

The students then joined researchers from the University of Padua who are exploring strategies for engaging unemployed fisherman, refugees, and others in wetland restoration and river corridor restoration projects as part of the EU’s LIFE Vimine Project. The Drexel students collected water quality samples at the inlet and outlet of a tidal wetland in the Northern Venice lagoon in an effort to quantify its potential for improving water quality.

Other excursions included to Lazzaretto Nuovo, the city’s historical quarantine, to traditional fish farms in the Po Delta region, and to one of the region’s most historical flood control districts il Consorzio di Bonifica Delta Po Adige.

The project capstone was independent research conducted by the Drexel team on how various nature-based water management strategies could be incorporated into regional climate change adaptation planning in and around Venice. This work was presented to students and researchers at the IUAV University in Venice, an institution with which Drexel has an Erasmus + agreement to promote academic exchange on climate proofing cities. Water Resource Engineering

13 May 2016

“Science of the Living City” Seminar for Green Infrastructure

Dr. Franco Montalto, President and Principal Engineer at eDesign Dynamics, was recently featured for the NYC Urban Field Station. Dr. Montalto spoke at the Arsenal for the "Science of the Living City" seminar series.

"Reducing Water Pollution in a Dynamic World: The Critical Role of Green Infrastructure Investments in Enhancing the Resilience of Urban Landscapes" explored the potential role that multifunctional green infrastructure (GI) systems may be able to play in promoting urban resilience.

In the U.S. context, green infrastructure is primarily funded as a stormwater reduction measure. For this reason it must provide the service reliably, at a minimum. Research confirms that green infrastructure systems can reduce runoff at the site, block, and watershed scale, but much less is known about the other services these systems may provide in urban ecosystems, when they are strategically conceived, sited, and designed.

Because (GI) programs are typically being implemented in the context of adaptive management, the opportunity for practitioners, researchers, regulators, and community leaders to work together to pilot, monitor, and verify new green infrastructure configurations is upon us. Doing so requires flexibility, creativity, and the institutional willingness to attempt new things.

The New York City Urban Field Station “Science of the Living City” programs encompass all our educational efforts, affiliated partners, and special events. Affiliates include scholars-in-residence, fellows, and interns. Events include seminars, brownbag lectures, workshops, and symposia.

Science of the Living City engages diverse partners across the city, speaks to a wide professional and public audience, and addresses a variety of pressing issues related to urban social ecology and quality of life in cities. The goal is to explore new knowledge and the applications and implications of this knowledge in the urban context as well as to expand overall environmental literacy.

See more about the Field Station, and their seminar series HERE >

8 Mar 2016

ASLA New York 2016 Design Award Winners

ASLA New York 2016 Design Award won by Siteworks, the Trust for Public Land and eDesign Dynamics for green playground design!

eDesign Dynamics is honored to have worked on such a tremendous project, transforming an asphalt lot to a state-of-the-art playground for NYC's Hells Kitchen community. The school, in an area almost devoid of parks, serves 600 kids, pre-K through 8th grade. Designed with help from the school's students and built in partnership with New York City, the one-acre playground will include green infrastructure components that will allow the space to capture up to 700,000 gallons of stormwater runoff each year.

Congratulations to Siteworks, the Trust of Public Land and the P.S. 111 student consultants!

See the full list of winning projects HERE >

ROOFS ARE SPROUTING GREENERY

Across the city, the tops of buildings and parking lots are sprouting greenery like never before. The number of green roofs in Philadelphia has tripled since 2010, according to the Water Department, which tracks the roofs because they absorb storm-water runoff.

The city now has 111 green roofs, roughly 25 acres’ worth. An additional 64 roofs are in the queue. The completed ones range from a tiny poof of greenery atop a bus stop shelter - installed at 15th and Market Streets as an attention-getter in 2011 - to one of the latest and biggest, one-acre-plus of greenery at Cira Centre South in University City.

…

The region’s universities have not only been installing roofs, but also avidly studying them.

Among questions Drexel associate engineering professor Franco Montalto and his colleagues are pondering: Can we grow food crops, use native species (instead of desert-adapted sedum species), or create more biodiversity on green roofs in the urban Northeast? How differently do green roofs constructed on steeply sloped roofs perform? Can we adjust the design of the green roof to maximize its habitat value, such as attracting pollinators?

Read the full article at philly.com HERE >

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