My own green infrastructure research in the news

The local (Dutch) newspaper Tubantia had an item on the UT Field Lab which featured summaries of three of the 17 other projects on site, and mine was mentioned first! It reads: "Cooling in the city - green roofs and walls. Heat waves are a growing problem in cities. This experiment studies the extent that green roofs and walls can bring cooling, but also reduce water nuisance and even make solar panels more efficient."

 

  

The local TV station also had an item on the UT Field Lab and I got 4 seconds of background fame while bringing all materials to the site (around 1.24 min into the video). Can't wait for next year's event where we can have people actually on the roof and the sensors all in place. Kudos to the organizing team for reaching out to so many media!

Opening of the UT Field Lab

Today the UT Field Lab, formerly Living Innovation Lab (LILa) was formally opened. It was great to see so many people visit the site and learn about our experiments. I even got several prospective building occupants to agree to help out with our upcoming measurements. Speaking of upcoming, what does our part of the site look like now? Part one of construction is completed! The roof now has a fall protection barrier installed. We are still waiting for the staircase, but as it is steel, it requires drilling into the ground for anchoring which takes somewhat more time to arrange. For now, here is the new roof. And our new UT FIeld Lab jackets!

 

The terrain also had some last day upgrades with new signage and QR codes to link to more information.

My setup was rather empty as the outside of the building, but I brought in as much visualization as possible. There were touchable layers of a green roof, examples of all the exterior sensors, and a simplified 3D Lego demonstration of the different types of roofs and walls to examine. Along with slides, this gave a better representation than merely the barren walls existing now. 

The event was well attended. I only wish there was more time for us to visit each other's research sites.