Environment Category Archive

Smart Pedestrian Crossings

Leave a reply Jonny Hankins

Climate Neutral and Smart Cities

As readers might remember, TechnologyBloggers has a partnership with the Bassetti Foundation. The Foundation participates in several European Union funded projects, and as I was learning about one of them, I discovered a connection with the city of Utrecht where I live.

One of the projects (MOSAIC) is funded through the EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities (Cities Mission), which aims to deliver 100 climate-neutral and smart European cities by 2030, while paving the way for remaining European cities to become climate-neutral by 2050. It works on a bottom-up approach which requires the participation of the entire local ecosystem and support from all governance levels.

It turns out that another project funded through the same mission is called IRIS, and one of the IRIS Project pilot Cities is Utrecht where I live, and so I went to see one of them, a smart pedestrian crossing with sound, air quality and traffic speed monitoring. Not only that but the white strips in the road actually light up as you approach and lights on the tops of the poles change colour according to the traffic situation creating the bright lit up crossing area in the photo above.

The crossing project takes in more of the area around it, with new street lights that can be dimmed or brightened and collect more data on the weather etc. The project was developed with the local population, the idea being that the local governance and urban management systems work with the people who live in the area to build and maintain the infrastructure that they feel they need.

From the MOSAIC website:

The mission presents a unique and unprecedented approach to the goal of climate neutrality. This new demand-led approach brings together all key stakeholders within a city, as well as the respective national/regional governments and the European Commission to work towards the same goal. The Climate City Contract provides a novel tool to ensure that all key actors – local authorities, private sector, academia, citizens/civil society – will work together towards the same ambitious goal via a joint strategy. The multi-sectoral and multi-actor dimensions will be key for the mission’s success.

The Cities Mission is therefore ideally placed to engage European citizens and stakeholders in the pressing global challenge of impending climate change, as it focuses strongly on the places where most Europeans live, work and move. While the overarching ambition of the mission relates to the issue of mitigating climate change, achieving success within this mission requires not only significant technological innovation but also a paradigm shift within the public sector, on local, regional, national and European levels, regarding the inclusion of the general public.

Check out the links in the article and the photos and video. A Rainy night in Utrecht.

Following the Fungus

Leave a reply Jonny Hankins

As regular readers might know, I have had an interest in fungus for several years. It all began when I came into contact with Maurizio Montalti and his works.

Montalti uses fungus to make artistic objects that demonstrate possible uses for this material form. He also uses this art to provoke conversation and discussion about how developments in the technology and processes used in his field allows us to replaces oil-based materials with natural ones.

In recent years the field has grown. Montalti and friends now have a production plant in Italy where they grow insulation materials. I say grow, and this is how this industry can be seen. Materials are grown into forms rather than shaped or cast.

Synthetic biology techniques allow the grower to adapt the material, which can then be finished and made into products. The example in the photo above tells the story, some shade from the sun and a circular garden house all panelled with fungus materials.

Take a look at the video linked above and this further discussion on the Bassetti Foundation website for lots more information.

Last month I attended the Floriade Expo and Dutch Design Week (both in the Netherlands) and came across a host of interesting growers and grown products. The environmental advantages of such approaches seem clear: objects can be grown, they are natural and so biodegradable. And also extremely versatile, as different densities and properties make for different uses.

But as pictures can paint a thousand words, I leave you with a gallery.

Acoustic insulation from Montalti’s production facility in Italy
Cycling Helmets
Design Lamp

Computing Within Limits

2 Replies Jonny Hankins

LIMITS

I have just attended LIMITS 22, the eight annual workshop on computing within limits.

As the name suggests, the workshop addresses the role of computing in human societies affected by real-world limits, for example limits of extractive logics, limits to a biosphere’s ability to recover, limits to our knowledge, or limits to technological “solutions”.

Very much tied to the interests of the TechnologyBloggers website, this collection of researchers and practitioners aim to reshape the computing research agenda, grounded by an awareness that contemporary computing research is intertwined with ecological limits in general and climate- and climate justice-related limits in particular.

This was a virtual distributed workshop, with many participants joining hubs so that they could avoid travel but still attend a social event. I touched upon this as a model in my post about conferencing a few weeks ago.

I attended one of such hubs in Rotterdam (Netherlands), held at Varia, a space for developing collective approaches to everyday technology. There were a dozen people there, computer programmers, university lecturers and students and the likes, which made for interesting discussion during the break-out sessions and a very nice social mix.

I won’t go into the individual presentations too much, but would like to highlight a few of the questions addressed and point readers towards some resources.

What is the carbon footprint of streaming media?

Researchers estimate that streaming media accounts for about 1% of global carbon emissions. These emissions are created throughout the chain, with only a small percentage visible to users (the electricity that appears on their household bills), the vast majority hidden as it is produced during data storage, cooling, delivery, maintaining back-up systems and during a miriad of other processes (not to mention construction, mining of raw materials, etc).

This website offers lots of information, beginning with the startling revelation that ICT in general is estimated to use about 7% of all electricity used, so may contribute (depending how the electricity is produced) to up to almost 4% of global greenhouse gasses.

So the actual carbon footprint is very difficult to measure, with a range offered for watching a streamed film as equivalent to burning between 1.2 and 164 kilos of coal (depending on your calculations and not the film).

The large data centres providers often claim that they use clean energy for their centres, but this was also questioned as their mass use of this energy has been shown to monopolize access, at very least having an enormous effect on the local networks and sometimes resulting in others having to use fossil fonts,. Their green claims were described as cherry-picked.

Digital platforms

Well we all love a digital platform don’t we? Facilitating car sharing, what could be better than that? Well even here a critical perspective appears, as we have to add ICT emissions to real emissions if calculating the possible environmental implications. And not only that! For example, using one car instead of two halves the emissions for analytical purposes, but on top of this we should add the ICT emissions (which as we know are difficult to work out). But we can come up with an estimate. Then behavioural change might also come into play. People might drive further because they are sharing, some will share a car and leave the bike at home or not take the usual train. It all becomes rather murky.

Other discussions

Other questions arose: what are the implications of framing the discussion in terms of limits, rather than abundance? Could such a reframing bring in an ethics of care? Can we discuss the relationship between humans and nature and its ties to capitalism? What role can religion take? How important are imaginaries of the (technological) future? Does the public have the information required to understand the environmental implications of their choices?

As you can see, it was very stimulating.

Check out this website for a perspective.

And the Chaos Computer Club for another.

The papers are all available here so fill your boots.