On 29th and 30th November, the last meeting of the consortium of the project “LIFE-myBUILDINGisGREEN” for the implementation of Nature-Based Solutions in public education buildings took place.
On the afternoon of the 29th, a visit was made to the Falcão EB1 School, the pilot building intervened in the city of Porto in the framework of this project. Three types of green roofs have been installed in the recently refurbished school, covering a total area of about 700 m2, and a green façade has also been installed to protect the classrooms from excessive exposure to the sun, thus making the building more adapted to climate change. A rainwater harvesting structure was also created for the project, which will be channelled to a pond located in the nearby Horta da Oliveira. The visit also revealed that the municipality is building a nature park, designed by URBINAT, right next to the school, so these two projects are interconnected and mutually beneficial.
Participants at the meeting during the school visit © Município do Porto
The coordinator of Escola EB1 do Falcão, who was also present at the beginning of the visit, said that “thanks to this project and the implementation of green roofs in this school, the students have received training, we have worked on the concepts and they are already very aware of sustainability issues. We also have a lot of visitors; we open the school to parents”.
At this meeting, the team from the Municipal Environmental Management Division explained that the aim of this project is essentially to test it, to see if it works, and even to extend the project to other schools in the municipality, which manages them up to the third cycle.
During the visit, some of the problems posed by the NBS implemented at the school were also highlighted, such as the need for regular maintenance due to the rapid growth of the plants, as otherwise they could, for example, bore holes in the ground, and also the difficulty of monitoring the actual effects of increased biodiversity on the site, among other things due to the rainy and colder climate of Porto at this time of the year. However, it was also mentioned that a metrological installation has been set up with temperature and humidity sensors, equipment that will be used to study the before and after of the implementation of the green roofs, and thus to know the concrete results of these prototypes.
Overhead shot of the meeting © Município do Porto
The following day, the same group, formed by the LIFE monitor and several members of the project consortium team, met to present the implementation of the actions of the NBS prototypes, the actions of follow-up and monitoring of their impact, the actions of communication and dissemination of the results, as well as the actions of governance and dissemination of knowledge of the project, in the three cities where the project was implemented – Porto, Evora and Solana de los Barros.
At the end of the presentation of the results of LIFE-mBiG, co-financed by the LIFE programme of the European Union, the monitor valued positively what was demonstrated by the three cities involved and considered that the most important thing about this project is its capacity for replication and expansion to other buildings.
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