Environmental concern and awareness linked to the expected population growth, and with it the increase in demand for food and the need to ensure the sustainability of resources through more efficient processes has led to a change in the consumption trends.
Consumers, increasingly concerned about health and the need to look for more natural foods, are leaning towards diets with less meat consumption, and even veggie diets (vegan, flexitarian and vegetarian), which ultimately translates into an increase in the search for alternative plant-based proteins and the generation of new plant-based foods.
Spain has 5.1 million veggies, rising from 8% in 2017 to 13% in 2021, representing a 34% growth in the veggie population in just 4 years. Moreover, a 56% of consumers indicate that they have bought at least one veggie brand simply out of curiosity due to the increase in the number of these products.
It is becoming increasingly common to find alternative products made from plant-based proteins on the shelves. Plant-based products range from plant-based alternatives to milk, the well-known plant-based drinks, which top the list of the most popular products, followed by meat analogues, but also alternatives to eggs, cheese, fish and their respective by-products.
To better understand how these products are obtained, let´s take a look at the most commonly used raw materials today, which include insects, algae, microproteins, vegetable proteins (legumes and cereals), cultured meat, which can be subjected to different processes such as fermentation, extrusion or 3D printing and which are intended to replace animal.
More extended and accepted raw materials are vegetable proteins, coming from legumes and/or cereals. With these vegetable proteins alternatives, the already known alternatives to meat products are made, such as meat analogs, meat substitutes, meat imitators or meat-without meat. All these terms makes reference to food products with sensorial characteristics, taste, texture, appearance and nutritional value similar to traditional meat products.
The most widely used and accepted raw materials are vegetable proteins from legumes and/or cereals. These vegetable proteins are used to produce the well-known alternatives to meat or meat-free meat products. All these terms refer to food products with sensory characteristics, taste, texture, appearance and nutritional value similar to those of traditional meat products.
Despite the increasing supply of meat analogues, there are still limitations to their widespread use, the main one being related to sensory properties. To ensure the success of these products, the use of plant-based proteins is not enough, as consumers are not willing to sacrifice the sensory experience. This is why the food industry is constantly working to improve the production of these products, developing and optimising technologies and processes in favour of high organoleptic and nutritional qualities. In this sense, extrusion technology for obtaining alternative protein structures to meat is one of the technological lines with the greatest potential.
Extrusion is a very versatile technology based on the application of high temperature and short times, where ingredients are continuously treated and forced through a matrix that forms and texturises them, producing several simultaneous changes in the structure and chemical composition of the ingredients through the application of thermal and mechanical energy, allowing a wide range of products to be obtained.
To learn a little more about this process and how it acts on vegetable proteins, it is necessary to differentiate the two types of routes that extrusion technology offers to obtain meat analogues. On the one hand, high moisture extrusion (also known as HME, high moisture extrusion), makes it possible to obtain non-expanded fibrous products that imitate the texture and mouthfeel of meat products. Therefore, they will be the protein base for the production of a meat analogue. On the other hand, dry extrusion produces the so-called textured vegetable protein (TVP), which is characterised by its expansion and requires subsequent hydration prior to use.
Since high-moisture extrusion creates a product with a meat-like structure, let’s see what actually happens to vegetable proteins during this process called texturisation:
It could be explained as a two-stage process; firstly, the protein is in its native state, with a complex structure and without access to its functionality. When heat and shear forces are applied during cooking, a denaturation of the protein takes place, losing its native structure and leaving the binding sites for new bonds accessible, which facilitates that in the second cooling stage, the protein reorganises itself by forming new bonds, giving rise to a product of a fibrous nature.
The greatest challenge of these processes is at the innovation in the use of extrusion-texturization technology combined with different blends of vegetable proteins to obtain improved textures.
This technology involves a double challenge: on the one hand, the choice of raw materials is a key parameter, being necessary to choose the appropiate vegetable protein source capable of providing the best characteristics to the final product with a good behaviour during processing and, on the other hand, to achieve and optimise the process conditions by adjusting the variables of each of the parameters to achieve the desired texture. Therefore, to achieve a better texture in mthe following must be taken into account: the choice of raw materials, the protein source, the protein content-isolate, concentrate, flour and the choice of conditions for the process parameters.
In short, obtaining products similar to those of animal origin by incorporating alternative protein sources such as cereals or legumes, and even algae, insects or microproteins, is one of the challenges facing the food industry. Although extrusion technology allows new plant-based products to be obtained, it is necessary to continue developing this technology in order to achieve the “perfect” analogue that meets all the requirements in terms of texture, taste and nutritional properties.
At CARTIF we work to integrate and optimise the texturization process with different ingredients and their mixtures, in order to obtain meat analogues with the best properties. An example of this, is the Meating Plants projects where we research the use of legume proteins to improve the quality of meat analogues.
This phrase, which is now part of history and sounds familiar to most of us, even if we belong to a different generation, was used by the astronauts on board the Apollo 13 spacecraft after an oxygen tank on board explosion. This happened two days after the start of their spatial mission to land on the Moon, which had been launched on April 11, 1970. It was watched by millions of people around the world for days to find out what the destiny of the three astronauts on boards the spacecraft would be. Meanwhile, NASA worked against the clock to generate a digital replica using computer-controlled simulators that would replicate the conditions that were occurring in space. This model, which was true to reality, allowed them to predict how the spacecraft would behave in space in order to find the most appropriate solution to bring the crew back. This could be considered as the first approach towards the concept of Digital Twin.
There are many different definitions of the concept of Digital Twin, one of the first being given by Michael Grieves, an expert in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). The definition of Grieves was focused on the virtual comparison between what had been produced with the previous product design (produced vs designed), with the aim of improving production processes1. The field of application of Digital Twin is very broad, as are the possible definitions. In general terms, we can consider a Digital Twin as a digital representation of a physical asset, or a process or system, from the real physical world.
Digital twins are based on their fidelity to reality, to the physical world, allowing us to make future predictions and optimisations. The intention is that both ecosystems, that of the physical world and the ecosystem of the Digital Twin (with the representation of the virtual world), have a co-evolution with each other. That is, they are affected by each other in a synchronised manner. This is possible because both models are automatically connected in a bi-directional way. When there is only the automatic connection in a uni-directional way, and that would go from the real model existing in the physical world to the digital model of the virtual world, we cannot call it as such a Digital Twin. For these cases it would be called Digital Shadow. A digital model by itself could not be considered a Digital Twin if there is no automatic connection between the physical and the virtual world. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) together with Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, including Machine Learning (ML), allow the Digital Twin to learn, predict and simulate future behaviour to improve its operation.
And all this Digital Twin thing, for what’
The use of digital twins can be used in numerous fields, for example in industrial manufacturing lines, to improve production processes, or aspects such as energy and environmental sustainability, fields in which projects such as ECOFACT are currently working. Another use of digital twins could be their applications in Smart Cities, which could improve road management, waste collection, etc. At the building level, its application can be useful both at the tertiary level (those buildings dedicated to the service sector), for example an airport, where it could be used to predict and manage the building more adequately based on usage patterns associated with scheduled air traffic. It is also useful in commercial or industrial buildings, focusing in this case on the building itself, and not on the production line mentioned above. At the residential level, the Digital Building Twin (DBT) could also be of great use to us, as we could predict the thermal behaviour of the building, associated with usage patterns, in order to improve the thermal conditioning of the indoor environment and minimise the energy consumption, among other options.
CARTIF has been working for some time on the creation of Digital Models of building based on BIM (Building Information Modelling), for different purposes, such us improving decision-making when carrying out deep renovation buildings projects. In this case, the use of BIM is intended to achieve a more appropriate renovation, and to reduce the time and cost in this renovation projects, with projects such as OptEEmAL or BIM-SPEED. The use of BIM models would function as a facilitator for the integration of the static (Physical world) and dynamic (logical and Digital world from IoT-Internet of Things network data) systems of a building. In addition, the use of BIM provides control over all phases of a building’s life cycle, from design, construction, commissioning of systems, the operation and maintenance phase, as well as possible demolition.
Concept of linking the Physical and Digital world through BIM-based Digital Twins
The challenge ahead of us in the coming years, focused on achieving climate-neutral cities that are more sustainable, functional and inclusive, suggests that the use of digital twins will be increasingly used in these areas, thanks to the benefits they can bring.
It is a well-know fact how our environment has changed dramatically in the last years. This enviroment is in constant transformation, with uncertainities and aspects that are difficult to predict.
Construction sector in particular, hasn´t been oblivious to such changes. In Europe has a huge weight on the economies recovery, having a positive evolution that is expected to mantain. Nowadays we can talk about the confluence of two currents that affect to those growth. On one side, one that favours it: the stimules that receives with Next Generation funds. But on the other side, raw materials shoratge and the increase of prices to which is added the recurring problem of manpower shortage act against them. As well as was indicated in its projections at the end of 2021 the Euroconstruct report, construction sector at a european level will preserve inertia to grow in 2022 (3.65%), although for 2023 (1.5%) and 2024 (1.2%) it is considered a moderate advance.
In case of Spain, also pointed out a 8%growth in 2022. However, uncertainity has increased due to aspects like the inflation evolution and the deployment of the Recovery Plan defrayed by the aforementioned european funds. Although this funds offered a great potential for a growth of the activity, mainly in the rehabilitation case, it is also true that uncertainity wouldn´t allow reaching all the development that could be expected.
In addition to the problems that is facing the economy, the sector lso has to face huge challenges at a european level such as sustainability and digitalization. Traditionally the construction sector has not lent the same atention to innovation than other industrial sectors. Putting the focus on these aspects will allow a change on this industry, being both undoubtedly, the tracks of innovation of the sector.
It is necessary to think in a new approach, being the innovation an opportunity to create value. A way to accelerate this innovation process and improve the quality of its results pass through the collaborative research.
From the UE it is work is being actively pursued to strengthen the framework that support the focus of open innovation. The open innovation paradgime consist on “an innovation model based in a network and collaboration, in the co-creation betweent all the society actors crossing the organizational limits more over the normal collaboration schemes. This model allows reaching a great competitive advantage, as well as innovation benefits for a huge number of collaborators“.
A great example of open innovation collaborative european project is Metabuilding Labs project in which CARTIF participates and among whose objectives is the construction of an innovation system for the sector. This will include a national innovation system organized as “metaclusters” in the form of National Construction Technology Platforms. Some of those systems already exist and in other cases it will be necessary develop it as part of the project.
With its development, an open type of innovation is sought, gathering all the interesed parts of the value chain of the environment constructed in a new innovation ecosystem. All that through a sectorial digital platform and of a supranational grid of the facilities, capacities and OITB test services (Open Innovation Test Beds). This network covers 12 countries with a unique entry, the platform.
The objective of the open innovation test benches is making the new technological advances available for companies and users. This allows to advance in the introduction of compounds and elements in the market, going from the valorisation on laboratories to the prototype on indsutrial environments.
The development of the platform will allow a fluid communication and a dynamic mapping of the actives and environment resources both at a national an regional level. Innovative SMEs, will thus have access to resources, looking for involving it and giving supprot. This will achieve a critical mass taking advantage the consortium networks that allows them to develop and test new building envelope innovative solutions.
Inside these test facilities that will be offered, we can find the O3BET Building Enveloped Testbeds, The consortium will design, develop and give eight innovative test facilities for enveloped building elements. These facilites at a 1:1 scale, in real, affordable, industrialised conditions with all the sensors and needed equipment bridge the gap between laboratories tests and huge scale buildings, maintaning under control all the need interior conditions and letting that the outside conditions change in a real environment.
O3BET involved Open Source, Open Data and Open Access.
Open Source. It will be design such as an open BIM model available to all the actors, that take advantage of the maximum capacities of this methodology so partners and third arties easily replicated in all Europe.
Open Data. For any test, monitored data will be consolidated and storage in a open data platform, giving access to all and as such to reinforce open science and innovation.
Open Access. At OITB context, also applicable for O3BET. Any interested user can access to the facilities, capacities and services of the test benches, independently if it is partner of the consortium or not. Metabuilding Labs platform members will have more favourable conditions. Will be sought the way to facilitate SMEs participation considering its size and capacity to find their most suitable test facilities.
With the development of this type of collaboration a component to the traditional innovation focus is added, boosting a nearest participation to the productive and product and technology development phase and favouring the value creation. Obviously, current difficulties for new business growth (particularly in construction) will not be solved by this type of initiative alone, but they can help to consolidate its progressive and necessary transformation.
“Innovation is a risky activity whose main risk is not practising it”
On June 5th, and as all the years since 1974, is celebrated the World Environment Day. Annually, a theme is choosen to conmemorate this day, in 2022 the choosen one has been “Only One Earth”, slogan shared by the Stockholm Conference of 1972 where the United Nations Environment Programme was created (PNUMA).
REsearching all these information, I´ve stopped at the slogan of the past year, not only because of the theme but because I like words games. In 2021 the known 3R of the recycling were modified (REduce, REuse and REcicle) for making the slogan of the Environment 3R “REIMAGINE, RECOVER, RESTORE”
These 3 words are totally aligned with our daily work but what it seems to me more important, because of the difficulty involved, is the “R” of restore…
When we listen that a space needs to be restore, we tend to think in an abandoned mine, a landfill or any space that is desolated and in which we have to plant a handful of trees to make it again pleasing to the eye.
The truth is that ecosystems recover of all the alterations in a natural way, regardless of whether or not the hand of man has intervened, and even some of these changes are temporal or cyclic natural modifications. Then, when we have to act? The answer is easy, when the ecological balance that allows ecosystems to mature and maximise the services and benefits produced has been broken .
If we really stop to think in the spaces that we degradate or the ecosystems we break we will realise that behind our every steps there would have to be an environment restoration project.
For example, what occurs when we construct a road? We divide a landscape, but well, what is a line in the infinity of the castillian land? Seen like that, nor is it… However, what involvement could this line have in our ecosystem? From the point of view of biodiversity, the effects could be devastators. On which side of the road have animals stayed? And where have food stayed? And water? And shelter areas? And if we have divided a herd?
Environmental restoration projects aim to restore the environment to its original state, but this doesn´t mean that roads can´t be built or wind farms put up or a mine exploited. Environmental projects disrupt habitats for imitate the structure, function, diversity and dynamic that has the original ecosystem including also the visual integration of new elements of the landscape.
Source: www.totenart.com
As well as the restoration of work of arts, we have to take into account several factors if we don´t want that our environmental restoration projects end up being as famous as Borja´s Ecce Homo, do you remember?
For the final result to be as expected, it should be very well planified, because this is the most important and decisive stage of the restoration, and should be addressed from an integrator and multidisciplinar point of view. Ecosystems are complex system in which infinity of variables intervene, therefore the planification must be confronted from all the available perspectives: ecology, zoology, botanics, geology, hydrology , engineer…
Once realized the diagnosis of the area, studied the ecosystem , stablished the objectives that wants to reach and the focus that is going to give, should be defined the technique solutions and evaluate the viability of each one, for later design and execute it.
If we continue with the previous example, for the right execution of huge lineal infrastructures , it should have take into account the ecosystem partitioning, and part of its restoration goes through realize wildlife crossings, that not only avoid traffic accidents for collision with animals or track exists, but allows giving those continuity to the fragmented habitat and avoid the loss of associated biodiversity. Design of wildlife crossing, lower or in height, must be made adapting to the infrastructures in accordance with the existing species of the area, as the needs fot he amphibians would be totally differnt that the needs of small mammals or the ones of big mammals.
Lower wildlife crossings, can be built taking advantage and adapting drainage structures, making them more wide and luminous to avoid tunnel efect, and revegetating entries for favouring the approach of animals but do not obstruct dreinage.
Wildilife crossings adapted to elephants Source: www.paisajeo.org Railway wildlife crossings adapted to turttles Source: www.pasiajeo.org
Superior wildlife crossings, in general we know them better, although probably we haven´t noticed them and we think that they are simple bridges or tunnels over our roads. The design of infrastructures has its own technique specifications of wide, acoustic and light insulation, height of side barriers, but also about vegetal and edaphic coverage and access shape for the animals to have a broad view of output and do not perceive they are crossing a high risk area for them.
If 50 years after the creation of PNUMA we can reuse the same slogan, isn´t because we take the 3R´s of recycling to the extreme, but because we should learnt of our mistakes and restored so that this time yes or yes, let us be “ONLY ONE EARTH” #OnlyOneEarth #WorldEnvironmentDay
As already mentioned in other posts, climate change and the degradation of the environment is an existential threat and one of the main challenges Europe and the rest of the world are facing nowadays. Acting in a pretentiously ambitious way, the European Commission decided at the end of 2019 to launch the EU Green Deal that looks for the transformation of our continent into a strong and competitive economy, with the mandate to be efficient in the use of available resources and whose final objective is being the first continent with net zero carbon emissions in 2050. That is to say, European citizens must be able to avoid emitting to the atmosphere, before 2050, all the greenhouse gas emissions that our territory is not capable of absorbing.
This ambitious transition should guarantee that the economic growth generated by this activities isn´t associated to a bigger use of resources. This means changing the historic paradigm of economic evolution whereby phases of economic growth have been always accompanied by a bigger energy resources and/or raw materials use. Furthermore, solutions must follow a just transition principle, in a way that nobody or no place is left behind, favoring therefore the weakest or disadvantage in case it is necessary.
In this framework, and in parallel to this global initiative, it was launched the Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission of the European Commission, as one of the most visible instruments to reach this goal due to its exemplary nature. One of the objectives of this platform is that at least 100 European cities can achieve this pretended climate neutrality goal 20 years in advance to the rest, so that they can act as innovation hubs for the rest of the cities to come. The first contact of the cities with this cities mission was through a volunteer commitment, formalized as an Expression of Interest that was intended to pulse the motivation of cities with this so ambitious commitment. The result of this open call couldn´t be more promising. The impressive answer, mobilizing 377 cities that showed interest in participating in the initiative assures, at least, this motivation and commitment of our cities with this ambitious challenge. Focused in Spain, the unique requirement applicable to our country was that applicant cities have to count with more than 50,000 citizens. In the selection procedure, the unique selection factor was to count on with at least one city from each member state (27) among the 100 cities selected.
As expected from previous experiences, in Spain not only the mobilization has been impressive, but the results as well. Barcelona, Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia, Valladolid, Vitoria and Zaragoza have been selected by the Climate Neutral adn Smart Cities Mission of the European Commission among the total 112 selected cities (100 EU and 12 from the associated member stataes). That is to say, 7% of the selected cities are Spanish cities. Moreover, they will be supported by NetZeroCities project (in which CARTIF takes part among other Spanish partners such as UPM and Tecnalia). The first step of this transformation consists on the development of the so-called Climate City Contract, a commitment of the Municipal Government with the European Commission but more important, with their citizens, accompanied by an action plan and financial plan.
The challenge for these 7 cities is tremendous. Considering a review of Material Economics, it is considered that the transition through climate neutrallity in 100 European cities would have an approximate total cost of 96,000 million euros. The Cities Mission counts only with 1,000 million euros for all the research programme. That is to say, arpproximately only 1% of the funds will be available from the Mission.
So, through public-private partnerships up to the 99% of the remaining funds must be leveraged, a huge challenge. The 7 Spanish cities, have been organized in the so-called Spanish mirror group of the cities mission (Comunidad de Transformación de Ciudades, CitiES 2030). This group of 8 cities ( the 7 selected cities plus Soria) have signed with the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge Spanish Ministry the commitment of working together towards climate neutrality. Therefore, it is now time to give shape to all these good ideas as solid commitments of financial support, aligning European, national, regional and local initiatives so that the necessary resources can be made available to local innovation ecosystems to take the first steps of such a transformation.
We need that good intentions are transformed into tangible programs. And we needed them now if we want to have chance to reach the commitments with which our cities have committed themselves. We shouldn´t leave them alone.
Climate change and environmental degradation represent one of the greatest threats, not only in the European Union, but in the world. In fact, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that “the climate crisis is a code red for humanity and consequently an urgent and coordinated climate action is needed before it is too late”. This entails work on defining effective adaptation and mitigation strategies towards a climate neutral and resilience society, overcoming the current silo approach in favour of a systemic one for evaluating impacts, risks and interactions of climate change across sectors or systems (e.g. Climate, Energy, Land systems).
A system consists of “an integrated set of interrelated elements that works together and interact within a complex socioeconomic framework” (Hoffman and Wood 1976). In particular, the land system(terrestrial component of the Earth system), recently recognised as a “planet boundary” at risk of being exceeded, is the result of human interaction with the natural environment, so that it encompasses all processes and activities related to the human use of land, including socioeconomic, technological and organizational investments, as well as the benefits gained from land (e.g. food, materials, energy, households, etc.) and the unintended social and ecological impacts of societal activities, as for instance, the biodiversity degradation or the energy poverty among others.
In recent years, land system science has moved from a focus on observation of change and understanding the drivers of these changes to a focus on using this understanding to design sustainable transformations through stakeholder engagement and through the concept of territorial and land use planning. So that, it is clear that a better understanding of drivers, state, trends and impacts of different systems helps to reveal how changes in the land system affect the functioning of the socio-ecological system as a whole and the trade-off these changes may represent. Therefore, thanks to the interrelation among land system and the rest the critical systems on fighting the climate change, land use planning is appointed as key even critical tool in the ecological transition.
As you might imagine, Land use planning is not a new concept, regulating land use may have originated about 4,000 years ago in the mud brick cities of Mesopotamia, however from 1980s onwards, Land use planning practises shifted towards an integrated and participatory approach, involving planning experts, decision-makers and citizens.
Especially relevant in the ecological transition, is the planning of land uses in urban areas, since cities dynamics consuming unlimited resources (cities account the 75% of the natural resources consumption), is unsustainable and exceeds the capacity of some essential variables of ecosystems.
Guiding function of urban sustainability. Source: Rueda,S. (1995)
Salvador Rueda1, proposed to consider the city as an ecosystem (formed by interrelated elements among which there are biological organisms), evaluating the efficiency of such ecosystem as the relation between the consumption of resources (E), the number of urban legal entities (n) (economic activities, institutions, facilities and associations) and value of the diversity of legal entities, also called urban complexity (H).
According to this, efforts in cities planning should be focused on establishing a new urban model following the principles of ecosystemic urbanism: improving urban compacity and complexity in its land use organisation, ensuring an efficient use of resources (urban metabolism) and ensuring a greater social cohesion.
In CARTIF, we work on the development of models (at different scales) tools and solutions to support this systemic approach in the transition towards a sustainable use of land, so as to guide decision making Land Use Planning processes and the holistic evaluation of adaptation and mitigation solutions. For instance, in the eParcero project we work to support territorial and land use planning by identifying plots with potential for specific land uses (e.g. industrial development, energy production, etc.), while in the RENERMap project we are developing models for the identification of plots with renewable energy potential (e.g. wind, solar or geothermal energy) that contribute to the decarbonisation of the energy system of our region, through the integration of geospatial climate, environmental and social data in the territorial planning.
Specifically, the RethinkAction project (GA 101037104) coordinated by CARTIF, aims at delivering an Integrated Assessment Platform to simulate and evaluate land use-based solutions at local, EU and global scales over time (2050 and beyond). At local level, a methodology to develop dynamic models in the 6 case studies (representative examples of climate change impacts and land system pressures) will be delivered, by using dynamic modelling methods such as System Dynamics (SD) or Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) along with GIS tools.
