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University of Chicago & Karnataka Government launch Bengaluru Innovation Challenge

The University of Chicago and the Urban Development Department of the Government of Karnataka launched the Bengaluru Innovation Challenge—an effort to improve air and water quality by crowdsourcing inventive ideas from citizens, civic leaders, academics, corporations, and other institutions across India.

The Challenge winners will receive funding support of up to Rs. 1.5 crore over two years to implement and test their ideas in the field, with guidance and input from the Government of Karnataka and leading faculty at the University of Chicago. If successful, these ideas could become policy solutions the government could implement on a large scale and may provide a valuable model for other cities to follow.

Launching the Bengaluru Innovation Challenge, Shri. K.J. George, Hon’ble Minister for Bengaluru Development and Town Planning, said, “Bengaluru is the engine of growth of Karnataka, and I am glad to announce this competition here. This Challenge collects ideas from the community, from the people who live and work here and know this city and its problems best and I think that’s a very interesting way of looking for solutions.”

Shri. KJ George, Hon'ble Minister for Bengaluru Development & Town Planning gave the opening remarks at the launch of the Bengaluru Innovation Challenge. Photo Credits: Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, India - EPIC-India

The Challenge is a project of the Tata Centre for Development (TCD) at UChicago and the Urban Development Department of the Government of Karnataka, in partnership with the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago’s India team (EPIC-India) and UChicago Energy and Environment Lab.

“The answers to the problems that modern cities face today are often found hidden by those with unique on-the-ground knowledge,” says Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics and director of EPIC and TCD. “This challenge presents a fantastic opportunity not just for the government and University of Chicago, but for students, researchers and innovative thinkers across India to share their novel ideas for solving the real energy and environmental problems of Bengaluru.”

The challenge, which is now receiving letters of interest, will screen applications over the next six months before announcing the winners in the fall of 2018.

Shri.KJ George Hon’ble Minister for Bengaluru Development & Town Planning and Ms. Aditi Mody, Executive Director, University of Chicago Trust after the signing of MoU that marked the launch of the Bengaluru Innovation Challenge. Photo Credits: University of Chicago, India - EPIC-India

“We’re excited to be partnering with the Karnataka government on this ground-breaking approach to identifying, refining, testing and scaling up new policy solutions proven to work,” says Anna Agarwal, Associate Director, Urban Innovation, UChicago Energy & Environment Lab. “Testing the ideas in advance ensures not only that the policy is designed to be successful, but also that it can be effectively scaled up and implemented.”

The Bengaluru Innovation Challenge builds on an earlier challenge that took place in Delhi in 2015-16 in partnership with the Delhi government. In that challenge, three winners were chosen from nearly 250 ideas from citizens, students, researchers, entrepreneurs, non-profit and for-profit organizations from across India and around the world.

Banner and thumbnail photo credits to University of Chicago

Cities 100: 100 Solutions for Climate Action in Cities

The Cities100, now in its third year, cements the fact that cities stand at the forefront when it comes to global climate action. From ditching fossil fuels to dedicating roads to cyclists, creating urban gardens on rooftops to launching city-wide adaptation plans, the 100 city solutions presented in this report demonstrate the innovative waysin which local governments all over the world are adapting cities and making them resilient to climate change, while at the same time creating valuable co-benefits for their economies, communities, and citizens’ health.

FIA Smart Cities Initiative: Clean Mobility for Strong Economy

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FIA Smart Cities Initiative

Cities around the world are currently rethinking their urban policies, with a focus on sustainability and mobility plays a central role in this process.

Global Covenant of Mayors and World Bank Announce Partnership to Fight Climate Change

World Bank partners with the Global Covenant of Mayors and will lend $4.5 billion USD to ensure 150 cities have the funds to implement initiatives to increase sustainability and resilience and fight climate change.

Twelve big cities to buy zero emissions buses, extend green areas

OSLO (Reuters) - Twelve major cities including London, Paris, Los Angeles and Cape Town promised to buy only zero-emissions buses from 2025 and to make major areas free of fossil fuel emissions by 2030 to protect the environment.

The 12, with a combined population of almost 80 million, said they would promote walking, cycling and the use of public transport under a joint “fossil-fuel-free streets declaration”.

Many cities are setting tougher environmental goals than governments to limit air pollution and to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

“Air pollution caused by petrol and diesel vehicles is killing millions of people in cities around the world,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a statement. “The same emissions are also causing climate change.”

The mayors, part of the C40 group of cities which is seeking to slow global warming, said they would “procure only zero-emissions buses from 2025 and ensure that major areas of their city are zero emissions by 2030.”

Other cities signing up were Copenhagen, Barcelona, Quito, Vancouver, Mexico City, Milan, Seattle and Auckland.

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, REUTERS/Charles Platiau

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti shows off a skateboard he will offer to London Mayor Sadiq Khan during a two-day summit of the C40 Cities initiative, a network of cities making plans to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions along levels agreed upon in Paris two years ago, in Paris, France, October 23, 2017. Photo Credits: Reuters/Charles Platiau

Zero emissions areas could mean more parks, pedestrian areas or roads where only electric or hydrogen-powered vehicles could enter to make cities more attractive places to live. They did not define how big “major areas” would be.

Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, for instance, said the city was aiming to add 165 hectares (408 acres) of green space in coming years, extend bike lanes and cut the number of trips by private vehicles by a fifth.

Tokyo-Governor-Yuriko-Koike-London-Mayor-Sadiq-Khan-Reuters-Charles-Platiau

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike (R) and London Mayor Sadiq Khan (L) attend a bilateral talk during a two-day summit of the C40 Cities initiative, a network of cities making plansto cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions along levels agreed upon in Paris two years ago, in Paris, France, October 23, 2017. Photo credits: Reuters/Charles Platiau

Seattle Mayor Tim Burgess said the plan demonstrated “the power of cities to lead on climate.”

C40 estimated that there were 59,000 buses of all types operating on the streets of the 12 cities.

zero-emissions-bus-mexico-reuters-edgard-garrido

An electric bus that reads 'zero emissions' is seen on a day of traffic restrictions from the Mexico City's government campaign to support anti-pollution measures in Mexico City, Mexico, May 5, 2016. Photo Credits:Reuters/Edgard Garrido

Among them, London says it has the largest electric bus fleet in Europe, with more than 2,500 hybrid electric buses made by China’s BYD and Britain’s Alexander Dennis.

In an expanding market, other makers include Volvo, Mercedes-Benz Daimler and Proterra Inc.

Caroline Watson, an expert in low-emission vehicles at C40, told Reuters the declaration was meant as “a clear commitment in writing to raise the bar and give a signal to the private sector” to encourage greener investments in cities.

Reporting By Alister Doyle; Editing by Toby Chopra

Original text here.

Banner and thumbnail photo credits: Reuters/Charles Platiau. From L to R: Mauricio Rodas, mayor of Quito, Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, former New York City Mayor and founder of Bloomberg L.P. Michael Bloomberg, Barcelona's Mayor Ada Colau and Milan's mayor Giuseppe Sala pose together during a two-day summit of the C40 Cities initiative, a network of cities making plans to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions along levels agreed upon in Paris two years ago, in Paris, France, October 23, 2017.

A Big Green House

Development of sustainable buildings is moving fast, pushing them to be energy producers rather than energy consumers. An early and futuristic example is the United Nations regional headquarters in Copenhagen, UN City, with its vast solar panel-covered roof, seawater cooling system, and rain-water-flushed sanitation.

A bird’s eye view is essential for gaining a true appreciation of UN City. From up here the building’s eye catching contour, an irregular eight-pointed star, is clearly visible. Zoom a little closer and the roof provides a first hint that it is more than the building’s design and dockside location that make it stand out. Stretching in serried ranks across the entire roof surface is more than 1400 solar panels, turning slowly to follow the sun as it arches across the sky. They meet one-third of the huge building’s energy demand. Under the panels a white membrane, fabricated from reusable plant-based materials, reflects heat away from the roof in summer and acts as insulation in winter, reducing energy used for cooling and heating.

Aerial view of the UN City in Copenhagen.

“It’s called Derbibrite; from Derbigum,” says Gry Kjær knowingly, with a nod towards the membrane. She was the building’s main architect when Danish company 3xNielsen won the bid to design it in 2011.

A different perspective of UN City.

According to the World Bank, buildings account for 19% of total carbon emissions today; they use 60% of the world’s electricity and account for 25% of water used and 50% of materials. The upside is that the building sector has the greatest potential for cutting carbon emissions at little or no cost, states the Bank.

UN City building's roof is covered by solar panels.

UN City uses roughly 45% of the energy consumed in a similarly sized conventional office block. The roof collects about three million litres of rainwater a year, used in the sanitation system. The 1300 workers, from more than 100 countries, who occupy UN City, may flush the toilets (low-flow, of course) with rainwater up to 5300 times a day. Together with low-flow and intelligent faucets throughout, the total volume of water saved in the kitchens, toilet facilities and shower rooms is 61%.

Only in public areas of the building, visited by people from all corners of the world, are the toilets not flushed with rainwater. An exception that Kjær explains with barely a twitch of a smile: “This is to prevent children and others who might drink the water from the toilet.”

Platinum performance

UN City is not alone in its sustainability efforts. It is a Danish example of a global trend in building design, from Copenhagen to Cincinnati. What the buildings share in common is the right to use one or more of a jumble of acronyms awarded in recognition of their sustainability credentials, such as LEED, BREAM, or DGNB. UN City proudly displays a LEED platinum sign, the highest accreditation achievable for this certificate. Selection for the award is based on a comprehensive points system, in which a minimum of 80 out of a possible 110 is required in categories such as material use, energy saving, water conservation, nearness to public transport, and so on. One of the UN’s demands from the outset was that the building had to contribute to the organisation’s mission to lead the way on all aspects of sustainability by achieving a platinum accreditation.

Inside UN City building in Copenhagen.

The UN could have chosen to strive for BREEAM, HQE, or DGNB certification but decided on LEED because it is the “toughest,” a statement that LEED’s competitors might take issue with. No matter which certificate is aimed for, the qualification process is demanding of human resources and costly. UN City’s construction company hired a full time employee whose sole job was to manage LEED documentation from start to finish of the building work. A fee of up to $1 million on large projects is also the norm. According to American analysts, the accreditation process adds 2% to construction costs, made up for by a 4% increase in the building’s value and savings in running costs, which often have a payback time of just seven years.

Proven to work

The desire to lead by example, as displayed by the UN in Copenhagen, lies behind the whole idea of certifying buildings for sustainability. No matter which of the four main certificate bodies asked, each points to the importance of setting a standard that companies have to meet. A sustainable operation is also good for business.

“The American construction sector understood that sustainability would be a key factor for both growth and showing environmental responsibility. LEED expresses the sector’s desire to improve,” says Jennivine Kwan from the US Green Building Council (GBC). Her words are echoed by Mette Qvist at GBC Denmark: “When Danish architects and construction companies lead the way in a space that everyone wants to occupy, I hear the sound of rattling coins.”

UN City at night.

Architects 3xNielsen must have got something right with UN City. LEED Platinum is not the building’s only accolade for sustainability. In 2012 it received the European Commission’s Green Building Award for New Buildings. Significantly, UN City was not a demonstration project; all the sustainability solutions implemented were already well known.

“The main contractor wanted proven systems. On the other hand, it was a lot to implement all in one building, at least at the time we were constructing it,” says Kjær, in a comment that directs attention to the building’s basement and yet another system rumbling along — the seawater cooling apparatus. The cold water that laps directly under five of the star-shaped building’s eight points, helps keep the structure cool, minimising energy use for air conditioning in summer months. It also cools UN City’s data servers.

Unexploited and untapped. The building sector has the greatest potential for cutting carbon emissions at little or no cost, according to the World Bank.

Intelligent walls

Between the roof and the basement, staff employed at the eight UN organisations housed in the building carry out their daily work, around the clock. A fitness centre is located on the premises and while managing the world’s crises, employees enjoy what are probably the best views on offer in Copenhagen from a building with inbuilt intelligence.

“When I go into my office the building notices. The air, temperature and window blinds take on a life of their own,” says employee Eva Egesborg. She and her colleagues can also create their own office climate using the “My Office” program installed on every computer terminal, selecting desired heat, light and other preferences.

An example of an office space inside UN City in Copenhagen.

Best of all, the UN City building is a pleasant place to be. LEED also gives points for indoor climate, green space, bicycle parking and other feel-good factors. For Egesborg, who has previously worked in the depths of the Danish Foreign Ministry, the view she has enjoyed for the past three years over the capital city’s inner harbours and the green spaces around the eight-pointed green house of Copenhagen has been a welcome daily gift. “I just love this building,” she says.

A Big Green House - FORESIGHT Climate & Energy Business

TEXT Rasmus Thirup Beck / PHOTO Adam Mørk

Source: FORESIGHT Climate & Energy Business

Tomorrow's Cities: What can be done to improve air quality?

Part two of our series "A day in the life of a city" looks at the ways in which offices are changing and how cities are coping with the ever-growing problem of pollution.

The morning rush hour is over and, if you live in a city in the developed world, you are likely to be settling down at your desk for the next eight or so hours.

However, the office block and skyscraper, which have been part of our urban landscape since the end of the 19th Century, may also soon become surplus to requirements.

Cities are at their busiest during the day - and their most polluted. Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Urban architect Anthony Townsend thinks cities need more creative approaches to how we work and is keen to reclaim the streets by creating pop-up workspaces in the parks and plazas of the financial district in New York.

Before the New York Stock Exchange, traders met under a tree on Wall Street to buy and sell shares. It is only in the last 50 years that we have taken that creative energy and sucked it up into office buildings and separated it from public space.

- Urban architect Anthony Townsend

An atrium filled with natural light and the smell of fresh coffee greets workers at Deloitte's Edge headquarters in Amsterdam, which also uses an underwater aquifer to provide ambient temperature all year round and a sensor network to monitor the use of lights - providing a better working environment while saving money.

The Edge has been dubbed one of the world's greenest offices and now many are following suit - installing sensors to monitor light, electricity and water usage, planting urban gardens and offering employees access to bike or car-sharing schemes.

When you pop out to buy your lunchtime sandwich though, it is a different matter.

Cities are huge polluters - responsible for 70% of the world's carbon emissions, according to the United Nations.

In Singapore huge man-made super-trees house a variety of flora and fauna. Photo Credits: Flickr

And, according to the World Health Organization, more than 80% of people living in urban areas that monitor air pollution are exposed to air quality levels that exceed WHO limits. While all regions of the world are affected, populations in low income cities are the most impacted.

Cities are literally getting greener - with foliage-covered walls popping up in many. Photo Credits: Patrick Blanc

To counteract this, cities are rushing out a whole series of green initiatives - from electric buses (being trialled in many cities including Perth, London and Paris), to bike-sharing schemes, such as those in Montreal, Barcelona and Amsterdam.

Some are committing to "urban greening" - London is considering a garden bridge - while in Paris, 20,000 residents have backed plans via a citizen engagement app 'Madam Mayor, I have an idea' for a 2m euro ($2.2m, £1.7m) investment in vertical gardens across the city.

Officials have found 40 potential sites and are now calling on gardeners, landscape designers, urban farmers and architects to bid for projects.

Horticulturist and designer Patrick Blanc has been creating vertical gardens since 2001 in city hotels, malls and tower blocks around the world.

The benefits are many-fold, he said. As well as acting as a natural biofilter and providing a habitat for birds and bugs, it also feeds humans' natural sense of well-being in nature, a phenomenon known as biophilia.

China is turning to machine learning to predict smog levels. Photo Credits: Thinkstock

In China, it will take more than planting trees to combat pollution. The city authorities in smog-ridden Bejiing are working closely with IBM to use machine learning techniques to analyse weather and emissions data to predict how bad air will be over the next 10 days.

According to Jonathan Batty, an IBM executive who helped set up the system, it has allowed the authorities to take short-term preventative measures.

That might mean closing factories for a couple of days or reducing urban traffic or stopping construction work.

- Jonathan Batty, IBM executive

The government also uses the data to provide a traffic light warning system for citizens - red means air pollution is high so spend the minimum time outside, while green indicates safe levels.

London provides a similar system on its city dashboard which is available to Londoners on the web.

Prof Andy Hudson-Smith, who heads up University College London's Centre for Advance Spatial Analysis, came up with the idea to share data with the wider public.

Cities now do have vast amount of information on air pollution and the data from London is all bad but it seems that citizens haven't woken up to how bad the air is. I'm surprised that people haven't kicked off. This stuff is life-threatening - if you live on a main road, it can take five years off your life.

- Prof Andy Hudson-Smith

Would you take an internet-connected gnome seriously? Photo Credits: Thinkstock

The problem with the current way of collecting air pollution data is that often people do not understand what the readings mean, he thinks.

So he has a cunning plan to "humanise IoT" (the internet of things).

He is putting around 100 internet-connected gnomes in the Olympic Park in East London.

The gnomes will talk back to people as they go around the park and among other things will tell them how bad the air pollution is.

Unlike more complex data sets, they will be more plain speaking, said Prof Hudson-Smith.

They will probably just tell you to go home.

- Prof Andy Hudson-Smith

How Can We Finance the Resilient Cities of the Future?

By 2030, without significant investment to improve the resilience of cities around the world, climate change may push up to 77 million urban residents into poverty.

Those are the findings of a new report by the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), released in advance of the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (or Habitat III). Investing in Urban Resilience: Protecting and Promoting Development in a Changing World argues that climate change and increasing urbanization may have devastating effects, and that they will strike hardest at the biggest drivers of global development: cities.

Home to 55 percent of the world’s population, cities contribute an astounding 80 percent of global GDP. So it’s good news for the global economy that cities are exploding in size. Each year, urban areas are growing by an average of more than 75 million people – greater than the population of the world’s 85 smallest countries combined.

But their high density of people and assets – precisely the characteristic that drives their economic productivity – also makes cities extremely vulnerable to disasters.

“Rapid growth, without efforts to boost resilience, is exposing cities around the world to huge risk. Population growth and human migration are on the rise, and climate change is poised to have dramatic effects, which means we’re approaching a tipping point for the safety of cities all over the world.”

— Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, the World Bank Group’s Senior Director for the Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice

If cities fail to build their resilience to disasters, shocks, and ongoing stresses, climate change and natural disasters will cost cities worldwide $314 billion every year by 2030, and 77 million more people – or more than the entire population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – will soon be living and labouring in the shadow of poverty.

The low resilience of growing cities is particularly dangerous to the urban poor. 881 million urban residents are currently living in slums, up 28 percent since 2000. These informal and unplanned settlements are often built in high-risk locations, such as slopes or floodplains, and lack basic risk-reducing infrastructure. So disasters like floods and fires strike slums more often – and when they do, they’re more destructive.

[video: https://youtu.be/BrjIL---08Y]

But there’s reason for optimism. Almost 60 percent of the areas that will be urbanized by 2030 haven’t been developed yet, which means that the world has a brief window of opportunity. There’s still time to invest in urban resilience before cities move beyond the looming tipping point, when the urban poor will face down significant threats to their livelihoods and their lives.

It will take a significant amount of funding to preventing cities from slipping over that edge. Research has estimated that, worldwide, the need for urban infrastructure investment is $4.5 trillion per year, and that making this infrastructure low-emissions and climate resilient will take a premium of 9 to 27 percent (CCFLA). Much of this demand comes from cities in the developing world.

But the funding to do it is out there: Between public, private, and philanthropic sources of funding, there is $106 trillion of private institutional capital available worldwide. Yet, right now, only 1.6 percent of it is invested in infrastructure at all, let alone in making that infrastructure resilient.

Why such a large funding gap? “Investors are struggling with a range of obstacles when it comes to investing in resilience,” said Francis Ghesquiere, Head of GFDRR. “More often than not, the capacity of municipalities to integrate risk reduction components in their programs, and to access funding, is limited. We need to find innovative ways to overcome these challenges if we are to avoid the disaster of tomorrow.”

In fact, cities face several major barriers when trying to fund resilience investments:

Lack of government capacity. Cities may struggle with political uncertainty, regulatory systems that deter private investment, and difficulties planning, financing, and implementing projects.
Lack of private sector confidence. Private-sector investors are frequently concerned about limited institutional capacity, weak governance, currency risk, and the limited benchmarking data that can be used to measure an investment’s performance.
Challenges in project preparation. The technical capacity and up-front costs to prepare projects mean that cities are able to offer few ready-to-go urban resilience projects to investors for financing.
Financing challenges. With their lack of creditworthiness and limited sources of local revenue, cities in the developing world struggle to fund their investment needs – and, at times, even their public services. Resilience investments are needed urgently and at scale, and public investment, even along with official development assistance, will not be enough.

Multilateral development banks like the World Bank, although they can’t bridge the infrastructure funding gap on their own, can help cities start to overcome these barriers and boost investment in urban resilience. The World Bank alone has invested an average of $2 billion a year in urban resilience over the past five years, working on 79 projects in 41 countries.

In Istanbul, for example, GFDRR and the World Bank helped improve the city’s earthquake preparedness, benefitting over 800,000 people by making more than 1,000 buildings – including schools and hospitals – safer. Addressing everything from emergency response to building code enforcement, the project spanned almost every sector of Istanbul’s government and economy to make the city safer and stronger.

The World Bank also aims to make a global impact on the worldwide urban resilience agenda through its far-reaching partnerships, including the 100 Resilient Cities network and the Medellín Collaboration on Urban Resilience.

These relationships will be crucial, because although multilateral development banks are uniquely suited to leveraging private funding, it’s going to take more than money to increase urban resilience. It will take a focus on the root causes of low-resilience infrastructure. That means improving the policy environment in cities so that investors are willing and eager to fund resilience projects, and boosting the capacity of local governments to implement them.

While both the public and private sectors can provide infrastructure, only the public sector can plan and regulate it.

— Investing in Urban Resilience

Making cities stronger, more sustainable, and better financed to meet their growing needs: these are the key themes that the World Bank and GFDRR will bring to Habitat III, where their participation will include an event to launch the urban resilience report, and will help forward the conversation about how to build the safe, inclusive, competitive, and resilient cities of the future.

Platinum performance

Proven to work

Intelligent walls

This blog post was originally posted here.