| GENESIS - Green roofs and walls ENvironmental Economic and SocIal Savings: Modelling uncertainty and investors / users preferences in all-inclusive cost-benefit analysis of green roofs and walls |
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Coordinator -
Cristina Matos Silva
CESAM Responsible researcher - Ana Isabel Miranda Programme - Programa Operacional Centro 2020; Programa Operacional Lisboa 2020 Execution dates - 2018-10-09 - 2021-10-09 (36 Months) Funding Entity - Portugal 2020 Funding for CESAM - 13337 € Total Funding - 239812 € Proponent Institution - Instituto Superior Técnico Participating Institutions Universidade de AveiroInstituto Superior Técnico Instituto Superior de Agronomia Project Description Nature based solutions/green infrastructures will play an important role in tackling urban challenges in a multifunctional way. In this sense, green roofs/walls are one of the most promising alternatives as they can green the grey infrastructure and value it. Yet, green roofs/walls have been generally confined to specific cities or countries. An extensive use of green roofs/walls worldwide will happen when their economic merit is generally known and accepted. Today, green roofs/walls real value is not clear since most studies on their economic merit show high variability and contrasting results mostly because 1) it is a challenge to weigh environmental and social benefits with costs and 2) distinct users/investors have different preferences. The purpose of GENESIS is to develop a comprehensive and systematic model for balancing environmental, economic and social benefits of green roofs/walls with the underlying extra costs, in a life cycle perspective. The main strategy of the project is to enhance cost-benefit analysis of green roofs/walls by developing three major improvements: i) include all environmental, economic and social benefits of green roofs/walls in the analysis and convert them into monetary units to allow weighting different types of benefits and establishing a comparative basis of alternative scenarios; ii) comprise an uncertainty model to cope with inaccurate forecasting of benefits/costs modelling and climate change; iii) incorporate users/investors preferences through a multi-criteria model. This (all-inclusive) model is a step forward in life cycle costs of green roofs/walls and crucial for a wide spreading of green roofs/walls in buildings/cities. Given the trans-disciplinary nature of green infrastructure, GENESIS project will call upon a multidisciplinary research team, with complementary expertise in estimating green roofs/walls environmental, economic and social benefits and performing accurate cost-benefit analysis. The contribution of practitioners and companies involved in the design, creation and maintenance of green roofs/walls is planned. Additionally, multiple investors/owners from private and public sectors will participate in the project by providing data for benchmark case studies with strong replication and up-scaling capacity: two municipalities covering distinct realities (in Portugal and Australia), residential buildings, public schools, tourist accommodations and transport infrastructures. This multidisciplinary approach will support the proposed cost-benefit model for replication in different regions of the world and type of infrastructure. Project webpage https://www.projectgenesis-ist.com/
CESAM members on this project
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