Oddly enough, old age is a relatively new phenomenon in western society. Since the XIX century when, thanks to the progress of the industrial and scientific development, increases the number of old people and their life expectancy, but at the same time increase the discrediting of old age. As the number of elderly people in society increases considerably, they attain a higher level of social representation that gives them public and political significance. And an important point is that, if we have luck, ´ and I wish to every one that read this post, we are going to live a long old age.
The society in which we live currently pressures and marginalises socially people with good physic and intelectual conditions on the basis of numeric age, and however exolts youth. On the one side,demands the elderly being dynamics, but at the same time demands them a moral code and clothes obligations, the appereance and repression in the sexual field.
Life models have been developed for the elderly that have not been fully taken on board by them, and they have not been involved in their design.
In spite of what is happening in nowadays society at a global level, there are areas on the planet in which being a elderly it is consider as a source of knowledge and that can bring value to society. In these parts of the world, people live longer in a simple way, realizing greatfull physic activities as walking or gardening, waking up with a sense of purpose every day, choosing wisely the food that they are going to eat and maintaining a solid and narrow relationship both with family and friends. These regions of the planet are calle “Blue Zones”, these regions were identified by cientifics and demographs who have found that the specific local characteristics and the practices give rise to a high incidence of longevity1 cases.
The five regions identified to be fulfilled with these requirements are:
Cerdeña, Italy (specifically Nuoro province and Ogliastra).
Okinawa island, Japan.
Loma Linda, California, researchers studied a group of Seventh-day Adventists, who are among the longest-lived in the United States.
Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica.
Icaria, island from Greece near the Turkish coast.
Researchers who have been studying these zones have summarised the factors that determine their existence in two ways:
The health: the inhabitants of these areas practice moderate exercise regularly, they eat a high amount of plant base products, drink alcohol, but not excessively, and practice Hara Hachi Bu, japanese concept which involves eating until you are 80% satiated.
The social sector: the inhabitants of the blue zones realize rituals for reducing the stress, pray, naps, tee ceremonies. They have reasons for standing up every morning, they participate in colective activities with environments that promote healthy habits. Also, they construct and maintain healthy links with people of their family and communitary environment and developed colective spiritual or religious practices.
Inside the area of Health and Wellness of the CARTIF technology centre, our purpose is in line with the aim of helping older people to be able to choose to live in a full and autonomous way as long as possible while still being able to contribute value to the community.In this way, older people can stop thinking of them as a burden, and enable new concepts in which older people became a social active. From this purpose arise in CARTIF the active participation in different entities in which we work aligned with this objectives, such as the participation in the Innovative Solutions for Independent Life Cluster (SIVI Cluster), Castilla y León Health Cluster (Biotecyl Cluster) and the active participation in the Digital Innovation Hub in Silver Economy of Zamora (DIHSE) which is going to present as a candidate to join the european grid o European Digital Innovations Hubs.
This initiative is important because the Silver Economy Digital Innovation Hub (DIHSE) seeks to be the “unic window” through which, SMEs, start-ups and other public or private entities could access to the information, services and facilities who need to address with success their processes of Digital Transformation aimed at promoting a Silver Economy (citizenship over the age of 50 years) efficient.
The mission of DIHSE is to help SMEs of the care sector, Silver Tourism and agri-food, as well as the local public adminsitrations, of our castellano-leonesa community; in their digitalization processes and offer access to the last knowledge and technologies, being also a link between, a door to collaboration between different regions for the digital innovation.
We are conscious that actually the basic biological needs of the old people are largely satisfied thanks to the advances in science and medicine and with this labour we can be certainly proud, but for giving sense to life the biological needs aren´ t enough.
Help the proliferation of blue zones to other parts of the planet it must be one of the objectives to take in count by the society, the basic investigation and the applied investigation can do their bit in this respect.
From CARTIF we are working on the development of solutions that add value to people´´ s quality of life at the same time while integrating them into social and health care processes involving professionals. A new technological development that is not integrated in the processes in a functional way or that interoperates digitally with other solutions is an island that add a reduce value or it is not sustainable in time.
To be a little more specific, the Wellness and Health area, counts with two investigation lines that pursue improving different quality aspects in the support of the clinic decision and other lines that focus on robotics with different aims.
Support to the socio-care decision of the professionals and users through (biomedic signal processing, Machine Learning as well as Support to the management decision (interoperability based in standars, discrete modelling in processes or Digital Twin) with projects as ISA (study of a framework of socio-care interoperability), IDEALNET (Cross-border innovation network on early diagnosis of leukaemia for healthy ageing).
Social Interaction Robotics, in projects such as AIROSO and UNO MÁS that are in execution. We are working on the development of the companion robotics. In strength interaction of men-robot (rehabilitation, tonification) with projects such as THERMES (study of technologies for the development of rehabilitation robots), SHAREM (development of modular mechatronic solutions of accessible cost for rehabilitation and tonification) and IDET (development of a therapy development environment for professional therapists without extensive knowledge of software development).
Development of technical solutions that allow improving the authonomy capacities of the people at their homes. In the PROCURA project we develop an intelligent walker and a technological assistant for the use of the toilet.
Our commitment is strong and we hope at some point to be able to replicate the blue zones for the wellnes of our elders.
The education that people receive during all his life it´ s been influenced by the environment in which we live. When we are young and we start to be conscious about the world, the society usually provide us with the models and with the level of knowledge that it is consider, in general, necessary. The families, the neighbourhood, health professionals and the school maybe are the ones that more influence exercise because from the adult society it is believed that they are the ones that can help us the most to teach the level of minimal culture that it is considered, as standard, necessary. Without entering into the discussion of the more appropriate educative model, the right thing is that nowadays we give a lot of emphasis to the type of education that it has to be offer in schools and in other education centers.
From the project LIFE myBUILDINGisGREEN, in which CARTIF takes part, we want to explore how incorporating healthy and re-naturalized spaces in schools, can help to, in addition to adapt the buildings to the climate change effects, to form people and to increase the culture in childhood.
Schools have a huge importance in girls and boys, as it is where they spend most part of their childhood and the new generations also begin to develop as individuals. On one side, they begin to acquire basic knowledge that is part of the colective culture and that in different degree humans are using. It is also where they begin to acquire values and reference models.
On the other side, the school building and its design it also has a huge influence in the learning, as it affect to the environmental conditions where lessons are developed. The humidity and temperature levels in the classes are relationed with the learning capacity 1,2,3,4. High temperatures could have a significative impact in the students efficiency, inhibit learning and generate stress. The interior thermic conditioning and the air renovation levels is a theme that was not taken into account in the construction of most of the schools that are nowadays in use and, in consequence, the environmental conditions of the education centers most of the times are not adequate. Should not be accepted that lessons can be develop with temperatures and air relative humidities below or beyond the range that it is established in the actual regulation (as it is the RITE5 case in Spain). Maybe, because of the singularity and importance of the schools, the standars should be even more restrictives that those considered by the regulation. In this sense, using natural solutions can be exploited the principles of the bioclimatic architecture to improve the thermal comfort of people inside the buildings. Moreover, these type of natural solutions also allow to improve the conditions in the outdoor play and physical activity areas, improving the quality of the learning environment.
But in this sense, from LIFE myBUILDINGisGREEN wants to go further and saw that the actual design of the buildings and playgrounds where dominate hard materials, in which it hasn´ t take into account bioclimatic architecture solutions and in which it seems that the comfort of the propper users it has been sacrified in pursuit of other aspects such as the reduction of the maintenance cost or seeking to keep children´ s soling to a minimum, it is not the most propper from different points of view.
The fault of natural ground, the low presence of trees or bushes and of other vegetation makes schools places in which frequently the presence of nature is avoided. From our point of view, this conception of education spaces drives away the new generations from nature and can influence in the perception of how urbanised spaces should be.
However, the current knowledge tell us that society has to go the other way if it is to solve long-term problems or at least if we want to adapt us to the consequences of the climate change. If we don´ t start teaching child the coexistence and the respect to the nature, the propper management of the resources and to modify most of the behaviours we carry out, it will be more difficult to deal the challenge that we have in front. Society has to act from a lot of points of view, but we can´´ t forgot that those that nowadays enjoy their childhood are the ones that would have to face this challenge in the next decades. From LIFE myBUILDINGisGREEN we believe that increasing the contact of child with the nature and making it participants of their beneficial effects will allow us creating a future society more prepared to face the challenges that are coming.
We leave for another day talking about how it also affects the education in the society, not only in the childhood, the type of urban spaces we live in. Have at its disposal of parks and green areas near our houses or work areas, the presence of green infrastructures and biodiversity in the streets and the management of social challenges using natural solutions instead of using always “hard” solutions and that they only have an athropocentric view of problems. This anthropocentric vision also tends to forget the weakest, or those who complain the least.
5 The operative temperature recomended by the RITE is: In summer: between 23ºC and 25ºC (front 23ºC and 27ºC by the INSHT). In winter: between 21ºC and 23ºC (front 17ºC and 24ºC by the INSHT). The relative humidity marked is between the 45-60% in summer and between the 40-50% in winter.
We all know that roads are necessary but normally we only remember them when they found them in bad conditions. We take it for granted that must always be available and in perfect condition, but this requries a great effort in terms of personnel, time and material resources. The spanish roads give support to the 86% of the inland transport of goods and to the 88% of the passenger transport. This high load of vehicles using the roads, together with the weather and environmental conditions cause a high level of wear with the consequent loss of properties of the road.
This cause to the users a series of severe inconveniences: the primary one is that it means a reduction in road safety, but also leads to a decrease in travel comfort, an increase of the fuel consumption of vehicles with the consequent increase of polluting gases emissions.
It is evident that the rehabilitation, preservation and maintenance of the road infrastructures is of fundamental importance, although we all know how annoying is founding roadworks. In Europe, in particular in Spain we have a good road grid, quite dense and good conected but certainly aged because of the decrease of the expenditure in preservation of the last years. It should be remembered that it requires a high level of investment in road maintenance; it is estimated, according to ACEX, that the annual maintenance cost of a motorway is of 80,000€, that of a conventional road of 38,000€ and that our country carries a preservation deficit of 8,000 million euros. This deficit, without going any further, it seems that will mean the approvement of tolls on motorways as of 2024. Therefore, these economic aspects and the need of a high level of service in roads demanded by the logistic and tourism sector, but especially the need of having safe roads, make the application of new technologies that can provide innovative solutions in road maintenance are in high demand.
The modern management of roads involves planning the maintenance actions to be carried out before the appearance of very serious or irreparable damage. This approach allows to undertake the interventions in the most adequate moment, causing as little inconvenience as possible and maintaining the fucntional capacity of the road and its economic value without allowing the network to be ruined and decapitalised. It is true that exist traditional solutions for the road preservation that are effective but it doesn´t make a optimus use of the available resources and it doesn´ t take in count the expected frime developments for planning the optimal time for action. To act effectively, is fundamental in first place to know the status of the road network as accurately and objectively as possible. This knowledge generally is obtained through road inspection equipments that make possible the evaluation and measurement of the corresponding parameters. In this way it achieves a large quantity of data related with the road status that it is necessary to manage and interpret to be able to prioritise the maintenance and preservation activities to be carried out. The problem that then arises is the processing of a massive quantity of information that makes impossible the manual evaluation.
One of the most difficulties, therefore, is the extraction of useful information of numerous data sources, For some type of data, exist software packages capable of extractinf global index that are useful for knowing in a general way the actual status of the road, but these tools often lack the capcity of predicting the road status evolution and its future degradation.
The artificial intelligence is becoming more and more present in a lot of areas of our environment and, often, without being conscious of it. The application of these artificial intelligence techniques can mean also a strong impact in the road maintenance because it allows the extraction of precise information of different data sources and identify relationships between them that otherwise could go unnoticed with the techniques applied until now. The processing and analysis, through the convolutional neural networks, of all the available data (data from the road auscultation equipment, climatological data, of traffic intensity…) allows obtaining unachievable data with the traditional methods. When training and adjusting those networks using massive quantity of data can be obtained, for example, highly reliable pavement degradationmodels that allow accurate estimation of the most appropriate maintenance actions.
In this context, CARTIF and the company TPF actively collaborate in the development of these type of tools that can make a major breakthrough in improving road maintenance. Also there are other innitiatives that nowadays work in similar applications as Roadbotics (a spin-off of the Carneige Mellon University), the spanish company ASIMOB, Waterloo University in Canada, the finnish company Vaisala or the american company Blyncsy.
These tools will not eliminate the need of urgent repairs, as they can have many and varied origins, but it does have a significative impact on preventive and predictive interventions by making it possible to anticipate road deterioration and thus significantly reduce maintenance costs, reduce the time the road will be unavailable ad improve the degree of road comfort perceived by road users.
There are, finally, other interesting examples on how the artifical intelligence tools can help in the maintenance and improvement of the road safety, as for example the work of the MIT for predicting the road points in which it can occur traffic accidents and acting in consequence or the innitiative AI for Road Safety that use the artificial intelligence for reducing the number of road accidents.
In conclusion we can say that, thanks tot he help of these aritificial intelligence tools, in the next years we are going to have more safe and oeprative roads at the same time that we will notice that we found less works in our trips.
As a Technology Centre devoted to R&D&I and at the head of projects whose main goal is the innovation, in CARTIF we have been active in the clear evolution of the challenges or objectives that the European Commission has set to our cities and urban environments.
During this journey, our cities have transitioned over different concepts or topics from which we can highlight the next ones: they have been asked to be efficient, be smart, be circular, develop districts with positive energy balance and, more recently, to be climate neutral.
In this post, we intend to put in order all this evolution and clarify the reasons for all these ambitious objectives.
The beginning: near zero-energy buildings, districts and urban areas
The departure of our trip started with the last calls of the 7th EU Innovation Framework Programme (known as FP7). During this period, in between 2010 and 2013, the Commission recognised in their policies as the Directive 20/20/20, the EPBD or through the decisive impetus to support successful initiatives such as the Covenant of Mayors, that the European cities, being huge consumers of energy, could help to alleviate, mitigate and even compensate, the growing energy needs that the member states were suffering.
This high and increasing need of energy supply was mainly due to daily direct or indirect business activities developed in the cities and began to raise a clear problem of stability of the European energy system, highly dependent of a fossil-based energy generation, increasingly exhausted and expensive, as well as highly polluting.
The EU innovation programmes were of course not disconnected to this problematic. Among the main objectives of those, in that moment incipient calls, some new urban transformation projects where launched. The Commission challenged us to make the buildings of our cities more efficient and smarter, to use clean energy sources and also, to work on the energy systems preferably at a district scale, considering a district or neighbourhood as the perfect representative of a fully functional urban unit and the perfect environment for the implementation of a range of solutions capable to provide a higher impact. And finally, to reach these objectives in a reasonable but short period of time.
These incipient calls for innovation projects were complemented with regulatory aspects, such as the request of individual metering systems of energy consumption to promote energy savings in common energy systems or the need of implement digital systems in the construction sector (such as BIM technology) with the objective of reaching a more efficient and error-free construction process (first in public buildings and later in the rest). These concrete measures tried to accompany, as enablers, the necessary transformation of the construction sector, the energy sector and therefore our districts and cities, increasing the low renovation rate. With regards to smart and efficient mobility, incipient projects promoting the electro-mobility or intelligent transport systems in urban areas completed these firsts (and certainly far now in time) initiatives.
The next step: urban regeneration and renaturing
The next stop of our journey met with the beginning of the recently finished innovation framework programme, the very well-known Horizon2020 or H2020, operational since 2013 and that called for projects until 2020. Although several projects are still in its full execution regime, there will be no more calls for projects under this programme. The Commission continued this process through the whole H2020, emphasizing the need to deploy large-scale pilot projects in a more systematic and holistic way of transformation: the so-called urban regeneration and lighthouse projects approach. These projects meant a real (r)evolution due to the need to avoid working in silos, integrate different stakeholders of the local innovation ecosystems around the cities and with a clear leadership of the municipalities and of not from the industry providers. Therefore, the integration of solutions belonging to different economic sectors, such as the retrofitting of the built stock, efficient new construction, clean energy systems, ICT solutions (including urban decision-support platforms), electro-mobility, new governance models and urban planning strategies were promoted in these projects. To meet such ambitious goals, the municipal leadership in this process in co-creation with the citizens was absolutely essential.
Obviously, this clear “jump” towards a holistic urban regeneration concept led to more systemic and ambitious projects, in a public-private financial scheme tailored to the local business ecosystem when possible and with the objective to be potentially scalable and replicable at different contexts but always with the main focus on the benefit of the citizens.
Moreover, the European Commission also raised us the need of returning the nature to our urban environments, as a main element to create healthier and more friendly urban spaces for the citizens, improving their life quality direct and indirectly as well as their perception of their urban environment.
The penultimate step in the way: positive energy districts
A new twist of the screw to this concept of urban transformation came up in the last calls of H2020. The design and deployment of the so-called positive energy districts (PED). These initiatives, that started in 2018 towards 2020, were more specific, proposed us to transform existing districts or complete neighbourhoods in urban units that generate an energy surplus in its annual balance. This means that after balancing the energy flows between exported and imported energy from and to the district in a complete annual basis, our district should consume less energy of the one it generates. The underlying objective under this incipient, ambitious and ground-breaking concept is to implement this PED concept in the neighbourhoods that have a better potential of implementing fossil-fuel free clean energt systems and, therefore, reducing drastically the global energy needs of the city. Thus, this surplus of some PEDs in a city could compensate other neighbourhoods in which, because of their characteristics, a high level of energy reduction is not feasible.
This simple-to-explain but extremely-complex-to-implement concept requires the deployment of innovative business models, such as the energy communities, to ensure that the surplus of energy is managed and shared among the different actors involved, that can range from individual owners or tenants of residential buildings to large companies owning big shopping malls or offices buildings. This model has to face difficulties, not only due to technical requirements but also due to the existing local, regional or national normative or regulation.
All these projects have enabled our cities to reach a first and important stage in the process of transformation of our cities, generating a huge amount of experiences both positive and lessons learned.
Particularly focused on CARTIF experiences, we could highlight the case of Valladolid, Spain. CARTIF has successfully accompanied Valladolid in this transition, through the deployment of a relevant number of innovation projects already in place. Projects such as R2CITIES, CITyFiED, REMOURBAN and UrbanGreenUp have transformed our city and province.
In Valladolid, the journey started with several buildings of the Cuatro de Marzo neighbourhood that were energy retrofitted. The trip continued with the FASA district that benefitted from a complete regeneration accompanied by the deployment of multiple mobility actions across all the city (45 electric vehicles, 22 recharging points, 5 electric buses). This trip was complemented by the renaturing of diverse urban spaces that they are still on the move across the whole city area. A parallel trip was carried out in the Torrelago neighbourhood in Laguna de Duero, a very close to Valladolid village, that was transformed into a more efficient and sustainable, being also in their moment, the biggest energy retrofitting intervention in Europe.
The last and definitive challenge: the climate neutrality
However, despite providing great individual results, all this (r)evolution hasn´t been enough to cope the most important challenge we have faced in our existence as human beings: the strong need to mitigate the effects of climate change. It is necessary a second twist of screw to deal with it with decision and optimism.
In line with the recent approved Green Deal in which the European Commission established as an objective for Europe to be the first climate neutral continent in 2050, our cities have to progress on the same way to be climate neutral. But, with their exemplary power and potential, they have to be as soon as they can.
Again, the EU innovation programmes are aligned to these global policies and as a result of it, the brand-new innovation programme Horizon Europe has created in their words “a new way to bring concrete solutions to some of our greatest challenges”, the innovative Horizon Europe Missions.
The Missions are multi-disciplinary actions launched with the aim of reaching an ambitious and at the same time quantifiable objective (the mission). Moreover, they have to be deployed in a specific timeframe and with the final goal of achieving a big impact in the society. Inside the 5 missions recently launched by the European Commission, it appears the Climate Neutral and Smart Cities mission, totally aligned with the objectives raised by the 2030 Agenda, the SDG and the EU Green Deal.
This Cities mission has raised as an objective to reach an extremely ambitious and complex goal: speed up the necessary transformation process and reach, at least, “100 climate neutral cities in 2030, by and for the citizens”. These 100 cities shall be pioneers and exemplars for the rest, leading the way of the necessary process of systemic transformation. The pivotal element of this process is the Climate City Contract (CCC), a new planning, governance and financial element that will regulate the objectives, stakeholders’ involvement and governance processes that will allow reaching those climate neutrality objectives in the cities that adhere to the process. The development of CCCs requires a deep understanding of the local contexts, the development of a good planning structure to try to secure the necessary funds, which does not have to come only from public funds. Most on the contrary, the access to private capital is essential.
CARTIF is part of the consortium of NetZeroCities1, the EU Cities Mission Platform that will support the Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission in the process of co-creation, co-design, implementation and evaluation of the climate city contract in EU cities. In NetZeroCities, CARTIF will make available all the experience gained throughout the participation in city regeneration and transformation projects to the cities participating in the initiative. CARTIF will collaborate in the concrete definition of the contents of the Climate City Contract, will define the technological solutions necessary to realize the systemic transformation and, also, will participate in the definition of the indicators framework that will allow to follow the evolution of the initiative and the degree of accomplishment to the objective of reaching 100 pioneer cities being climate neutral in 2030.
In CARTIF we are ready to be part of this process, ¿ARE YOU READY?
1 Horizon2020 Green Deal topic 1.2. Grant agreement number: 101036519
The theme that the World Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has given to the World Food Day of this year 2021 is “Our actions are our future”.
And so it is, like everything in life, each step and each action that we undertake, determines our future. We,all of us, are an active and responsible part of a complex, living and moldable system called food system.
FAO defines food systems as a set of actors and the relationship of the set of activities established between all of them through the different interrelationships that make possible the production, transformation, distribution and consumption of the food.
The elements that make up food systems are multiple and integrate both aspects of the production, storage, processing, packaging and logistics as well as issues related to quality, nutritional, safety and price related aspects, even issues such as information and behavior of the consumers. Given all these factors- and many others!- and their interrelationship, it is not unreasonable to think that food systems are of crucial importance to many of the challenges and goals we must address globally, inlcuding the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Among these objectives, and particularly two of them, are those aimed at achieving “Zero Hunger” (SDG2) and “End Poverty” (SDG1) on which we must place special emphasis today.
Most of the current food systems are not capable of adapting, anticipating or being resilient to stressful situations or of supplying the present needs, in some cases, or to anticipate the needs of a growing population.
There is a clear need to transition to more inclusive, resilient and sustainable food systems
A sustainable food system integrates varied and sufficient, nutritious and safe food with a fair price for all, where there are no forms of malnutrition and no hungry. Policies and strategies are necessary, but also our personal contribution as active members of the system. Every time we choose foods, we make mutiple decisions and do our part towards our healthy, but also, more sustainable diet, which contributes to the restoration of natural resources. Towards an equitable trade, leading the way towards the eradication of poverty and malnutrition, thus protecting human rights.
On World Food Day, every October 16 since 1979,the collective action of a large number of countries is promoted to carry out events, communication and dissemination activities with the aim of promoting the need to eradicate hunger and guarantee healthy diets for all the members of this planet.
We must address challenges related to world population growth, climate change, diet-related diseases, depletion of natural resources and associated specific situations such as pandemics or natural disasters.
Each October 16 since 42 years ago, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations promotes the celebration of World Food Day.In this case under the slogan “OUR ACTIONS ARE OUR FUTURE”
The European Union proposed to address the challenge of food security and nutrition through research and development policies aimed at guaranteeing the future of our food systems so that they turn into more sustainable, resilient,responsible, inclusive, diverse and competitive within the FOOD 2030 strategy and it is intended to provide solutions to four major general priorities of the food systems:
NUTRITION: ensuring healthy and sustainable diets.
CLIMATE: achieve climate-smart and sustainable food systems that adapt the climate change.
CIRCULARITY: reducing the use of resources and improving the efficiency of food systems, including zero food waste.
INNOVATION: fostering sustainable and accessible food sharing for all communities, cities and rural areas, developing data-driven food and nutrition systems that meet societal needs.
At CARTIF we work in different pathways of intervention that allow us to advance in this direction, such as the shift to more sustainable and healthy diets, the identification and use of new sources of protein, reduction of food waste, food security or urban food systems.
In this sense, FUSILLI project (Fostering the Urban Food System transformation through Innovative Living Labs Implementation, funded by the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme) general aim is achieving an integrated and safe transition towards food systems in pan-European cities and their peri-urban areas by creating a sustainable urban food plan, with environmental, social and economic aspects that integrates actions in the four pillars of the FOOD 2030 strategy.
Yes, we hold the future of food in our hands. Each step that each of us takes in the right direction ensures food and nutrition for healthy and sustainable diets while maintaining the environment, our health, equity and social inclusion, and the economy. Be part of the change that you want to see.
It is well know that more than a third of the total final energy consumed in the European Union is consumed in residential and tertiary sector buildings. For this reason, in recent years, various directives and calls for proposals have tried to promote the renovation of buildings under energy efficiency criteria.
One of the directives in this field is the EPBD (2018/844 Energy Performance of Buildings Directive). This standard is the main European directive aimed at helping to reduce energy consumption and increase energy efficiency in buildings. This directive introduces the energy certificate as an official document that includes objective information about the energy characteristics of a property or building (you can learn more about energy certificates in our post ” Are energy performance certificates really useful?”). The information provided by these certificates (mainly energy demand and consumption, as well as associated CO2 emissions) is a valuable source of information to know the state of the buildings and thus be able to propose appropriate measures for the improvement of these buildings. Certification tools validated by a certification body are used to generate these certificates. You can check the tools validated in the case of Spain and technical documents that have been recognised by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge and by the Ministry of Development in Spain and that can be used to support the building energy certification process. In these tools, the building information is introduced and the certification values are automatically calculated.
In addition to the validated energy certification tools on the market, there are many tools for modelling and simulating the behaviour of buildings. This is the starting point for the design of building renovation projects, since before the selection of the measures that could improve their consumption and emission parameters, a quantitative assessment of the building stock as realistically as possible is necessary. However, most of the tools available on the market works on a small scale (building,house,premises,etc.) and the generation and simulation of models for grouos of buildings (districts or cities) is a huge task. Undoubtedly, the problem of scale is one of the weak points of current tools when analysing districts or cities.
In CARTIF, for years, we have been working on the automatic generation of models to be able to characterise as automatically as possible the buildings of a certain location (district, municipality and even region) by calculating demand and consumption values using public information sources (cadastre and catalogue of constructive elements mainly) and different calculation engines. In addition, it has been proven that one of the fundamental aspects is certainly the addequate presentation of the results in an attractive, interactive visualisation that is able to provide all relevant information.
As a result of several projects in this line, CARTIF has designed and developed the visualisation tool GIS4ENER that offers the visualisation of several approaches:
(1) The estimation of demand calculation based on the automation of the CE3X certification tool for the calculation of large-scale buildings (neighbourhood or city)
(2) The generation of estimated values of demand, consumption and CO2 emissions through the application of automatically generated typologies with the study of the results reflected in real Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). It also allows the results of both approaches to be compared with these EPCs.
You can access to a demo of the GIS4ENER tool. In this demo the functionalities of the tool are presented with results obtained for the municipality of Tordesillas in the province of Valladolid (Spain).
At the moment the tool has been tested in several municipalities but it has the potential to be applied in any municipality in Spain, except those located in Navarra and the Basque Country.
There are many user groups that could benefit directly from this tool. Among them: regulatory bodies; public administrations; consultancies and energy companies; engineers, architects and urban planners; and construction companies. Our tool would allow to obtain a mapping of energy demand and consumption (as well as CO2 emissions) associated with buildings in a district or region, in much shorter time compared to obtaining the same with conventional methods. Undoubtedly the simplification of this step could bring a great benfit to al these users in their energy planning processes at various scales, development of strategic and business plans in certain districts or cities.
From CARTIF, we will continue to work on the research and development of tools that can continue to help reduce the impact of human beings on the environment.
