Track: A

Date: 31.08.2018

Time: 11:00am- 12:00pm

Room: Brandenburg Gate

Session 10: Assessing Regional and Urban Sustainable Development Projects

Presenter: XUEZHOU FAN, The University of Kitakyushu

Co-Authors: Toru Matsumoto

Urban inundation is always happening in many Chinese cities recently. The problem with climate change is one reason why that is always happening, but the industrialization and the changes of urban land usage, which used lots of bad permeability material, are also crucial reasons. Considering renew urban sewer pipe is a big project with lots of environmental impact on the cities, the water sensitive urban design is a better way to mitigate water logging problem for Chinese government, which is also called Sponge City Construction in china. However, there is no enough research about the effectiveness analysis of this urban design until now. This paper proposed to build a framework to evaluate this urban design by simulating it in a district with GIS software and doing the Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in life cycle perspective.
In order to calculate the cost and the benefit which accompany with this urban design, we built a frame work to do the Cost/benefit analysis in this paper. Construction cost, maintenance cost and environmental pollution cost in construction are mentioned on the cost list, and wading insurance value, water saving value, carbon fixation value and oxygen release value are mentioned as benefits. Then, we compare the two objects in life cycle. Nangang District in Harbin city, Northeast china was chosen as a study case.Finally, we have come to the conclusion that in first decade years the cost is bigger than the benefit, but from the eighteenth year, the benefit becomes bigger than the cost.
The purpose of this study is to propose the measuring method for Sponge City Construction project’s cost and benefit analysis in life cycle perspective.

[1] Shanghong Zhang, Baozhu Pan: Journal of Hydrology,
517, 2014, 260-268.

[2] 石赟赟,万东辉,陈黎,郑江丽: Water Resources and
Power, 32, 2014, 57-60.
[3]Chunlu liu, Yan Li, Jun Li: Computers, Environment and
Urban Systems, 64, 2017, 321-3

Presenter: Kavya Madhu, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

Co-Authors: Stefan Pauliuk

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) are two widely used tools to assess the environmental impacts of their respective functional unit, which is usually a product in the case of LCA and a construction project in the case of EIA. As both the tools work on different scale, system boundary and assess varied environmental impacts, the benefits from their integration have been widely discussed in the literature. However, there was not much evidence found on the practical application of the integration, especially at city level. The aim of the study is to analyze the relationship between EIA and LCA and to integrate the results of both the tools in order to provide a holistic view of the on-site and off-site impacts of a development project on the environment. The study further aims to apply the integration to the walled city in Abu Dhabi called Masdar city.
In the study, LCA of buildings, infrastructure and vehicles, present in the geographical boundary of the first development phase of Masdar city (DP1), along with the operational energy of DP1 for one year was done. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis of the current energy mix of DP1 with two future scenario was also done. The results of EIA was directly taken from the EIA report of DP1. The life cycle impacts of DP1 along with the impacts assessed during EIA were studied as a combined impact on natural resources, ecosystem, human health and socio-economic impacts.
The overall assessment show that the integration of both the tools give a more holistic view on the on-site and off-site environmental and socio-economic impacts of the project. The development of DP1 did not put a lot of environmental burden on its immediate environment. However, some of the environmentally taxing processes were identified in the supply chains associated with construction and development of DP1. It was observed that the total impact on DP1 on natural environment will be lowered if renewable sources of energy are used at all stages of its development and not just the operation phase. Sensitivity analysis show that with the increase of renewable energy in the energy mix of DP1 increases its ecotoxic impacts but lowers the GHG and particulate emissions. Furthermore, it is anticipated that integration of EIA and LCA can help the stake holders and decision makers to decide on the trade-offs associated with the development projects.

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Presenter: Tianran Ding, IGEAT(ULB)

Co-Authors: Wouter Achten, Stephane Bourrelly

Context. This research project attempts to question the analytical power of life cycle thinking for sustainable regional land-use planning. The main reasoning of this project resides in the territorial management of agricultural parcels. When planning makers allocate functions among agricultural parcels (i.e. specific land use types); it would be interesting to take into account the life cycle sustainability performance of the land use planning (among several possible scenarios).

Research Question. How to automatically conceive sustainable life-cycle land-use planning scenarios, which spatially optimize the allocation of socio-economic functions while minimizing the environmental impacts of land uses – at territorial scales?

Thematic aspect. Such approach would become very relevant in the context of a transition to a low-carbon society, to a bio-based and circular economy in which the spatial allocation of agricultural functions will play an important role. Next to its continued role to produce food, feed and fibre, the agricultural fields are expected to provide us biomass for energy, and increasingly for bio-based products (e.g. bioplastics, fine chemicals) in order to reduce GHG emissions of territories.

Purpose. The goal of this project is to design a territorial life-cycle meta model giving the ability to conceive sustainability optimized land use planning scenarios. The idea is to link Spatial Analysis, Territorial LCA and multi-objective optimization.

Methods. The first step consists to build package (e.g. in R of Python) to perform Spatial Territorial LCA from life-cycle spatial datasets. These life-cycle spatial data sets can be created by combining available European spatial data and LCA databases (with GIS and LCA software). The second step is to build a second package that handles the outputs of the first one, to feed a spatial multi-objective optimization algorithm.

Results. By increasing the Spatial differentiation of the Territorial LCA framework we will increase the decisional power of the TLCA framework (originally conceived by Loiseau et al. 2013) on the issue of land-use allocation. Then by implementing a multi-objective optimization step; we will automatically conceive land use scenarios, of which the allocation of functions are spatially optimized at territorial scales. In this way, we expect to facilitate the decision making – instead the classical approach of performing iterative scenario conception and evaluation steps. In the presentation, we will present our approach and the preliminary Spatial Territorial LCI of the agricultural land-use planning of the Walloon Region (Belgium).

Presenter: Galyna Medyna, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke)

Co-Authors: Sirpa Kurppa, Ira Bhattarai

The Finnish bioeconomy has historically made a large contribution to the local economy and is expected to grow, as calls are made to wean off fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources. This growth must be achieved in a sustainable manner in order to protect the environment and population well-being for current and future generations. As part of efforts to foster sustainable innovation through a systems approach, a multi-disciplinary research team has been assembled that aims to study the networks surrounding specific bioeconomy products, evaluate the impacts on sustainability of the nodes (actors, stakeholders and influencing factors) and links among them, and propose innovation pathways based on the analysis of the systems. Each network is built through literature review, expert input and discussions with companies.

Two main innovation pathways emerge that companies can act on. First, a detailed study and quantification of a company’s network (nodes and links) allows inefficiencies to be highlighted. While many companies already address inefficiencies that result in lost revenue, there are system inefficiencies that cause subpar results in environmental and social terms and need to be addressed to further the sustainability of the bioeconomy. Second, the building of a detailed network map, which not only covers the actors along and across the value chain but also actors in close geographical and activity proximity, shows areas where there are missing direct links and missing chains of links. Prior efforts have mostly focused on the creation of industrial symbiosis between two entities to mitigate environmental impacts and were not explicit in promoting positive collaborative chains or considering the different facets of sustainability beyond the environment. Bringing to life these missing links often leads to the building up of new business models and the development of new services that create added value in the bioeconomy.

The first illustrative case study for the proposed approach deals with the Finnish forestry and, more specifically, construction wood. As forests cover over 70% of the land and with calls both to increase felling rates and maintain sustainability, companies are looking for ways to guarantee that they are responsible in their harvesting while also creating maximum added value from the biomass and the land that supports its growth.

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