Climate Change
Green Infrastructure can help to reduce the imapacts of climate change in two ways. One way is adaptation, to change our environment and increase resilience.
An example of this is planting trees that increasee shade in hot summer months. The second way is mitigation, to reduce the levels of green house gases in
the atmosphere. An example of this is that trees use CO2 to grow and thereby remove some from the air.
Most importantly, building green infrastructure can only be truly sustainable and thereby not add to greenhouse gases or other excessive consumption by
paying attention to the entire life cycle, from production to the end of life, of the materials involved.
What are the research questions?
Two main research questions are answered through the UT Field Lab - Green Infrastructure.
The first concerns the quantified energy and water tradeoffs of GI.
To answer this we aim to quantify the potential climate resilience benefits:
- reduced urban floods and runoff peaks
- reduced heating/cooling
- carbon sequestration
and quantify the potential tradeoffs:
- CO2 emissions during production, maintenance (for irrigation and pumping), and end of life
- required irrigation and stored precipitation
all through continuous monitoring and modeling.
The second research question is how a supposedly sustainable measure as green infrastructure can be constructed in a most sustainable way,
that is to say,
not just be sustainable during its use phase, but also during material selection, construction, and end-of-life. To answer this, both
Life Cycle Analysis modeling and intense cooperation with designers and construction companies are implemented.