Anagrafe della ricerca

Urban areas are facing several challenges that are reshaping the city structure: population is growing fast, with a consequently urbanization increment, and climate changes are leading to an intensification of extreme rainfall events and a temperature increase. In this context, the European Commission is funding new Green Deal programs to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda and, coherently, Italy is diverting consistent resources of the recovery fund to increase the resilience and sustainability of urban areas, with particular attention to green infrastructures. Given these premises, which constitute the motivations of CLEVER, our aim is to explore the impacts of implementation of some Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs), with particular attention to the mitigation of urban pluvial flood in nowadays and future scenarios. More specifically, the project focuses on the analysis of potential benefits arising from the development of a network of nature inspired measures that can be easily installed in buildings or in their close proximity, such as Green Roofs (GRs), Multilayers GRs (MGRs) and Green Courts (GCs), towards the creation of more sustainable and resilient cities. Such tools offer indeed multiple benefits for the sustainable urban development: thanks to their high rainwater retention capacity, they help mitigating pluvial floods; they play a significant role in the energy flux exchanges between building and atmosphere, facilitating the thermal roof insulation; and they contribute to restore the vegetation in the urban environment, increasing the biodiversity and adding aesthetic value to the buildings and, more in general, to the city. The project activities are organized following the line from the single building to the full city. Working packages have been designed to investigate different types of NBSs capitalizing partners’ experiences and expertise. We will integrate knowledge from different fields: hydrology, ecohydrology, meteorology and disseminate results among policy makers, schools and via social media. Project analyses will be focused on and supported by the building scale assessment of rainwater retention performances at different pilot cases already available, underlining the ecohydrological processes acting within each NBS. Modelling activities will be aimed at investigating the impact of NBSs implementation at city-scale. The Research Units (RUs) involved in the project have recognized expertise on the mentioned topics. The feasibility of the proposal is guaranteed by the fact that the RUs are already equipped with three experimental GRs of different typology (including two advanced MGRs) and the installation of a GC is already ongoing. It is also worth mentioning that a Dutch SME, specialized in green roofs and other NBS design and realization, has expressed willing to cooperate and high interest in the project’s outcomes.