Innovative technological platform to improve management of green areas for better climate adaptation (LIFE URBANGREEN)

The aim of LIFE URBANGREEN is to provide an innovative technological tool for a more efficient management of Urban Green Areas (UGAs). The knowledge gained and the tools developed through the LIFE URBANGREEN project will facilitate the understanding of urban green infrastructures and how to maximise their benefits for citizens.

In the project, the existing platform GreenSpaces, already in use in over 200 cities all over the world, is optimized to monitor and improve the management of ecosystem services of UGAs with new innovative tools aiming at:

1. optimising water consumption, providing water only when and where needed;
2. reducing the carbon footprint of maintenance activities by organising a more efficient working plan;
3. quantifying ecosystem services provided by green infrastructure;
4. monitoring health parameters in trees by using remote sensing data;
5. increasing citizen participation in urban green management.

The integrated platform is implemented and tested in two pilot cities, Krakow, Poland and Rimini, Italy. One of the most important results is the public portal that displays the main benefits of urban trees in real time, for example, how many kilograms of particulates all trees located in a specific site remove from the atmosphere per year. This information can also be viewed for an individual tree per year or per day. Citizens can search for botanical descriptions of common species and their environmental benefits. Another important result is a smart and integrated management system, which monitors and governs all activities related to urban green areas management. The management system maximizes ecological benefits and helps municipalities to efficiently plan and monitor maintenance activities. The platform allows users to report environmental costs as well as internal costs for the municipality and costs of external contractors, allowing limited resources to be managed efficiently. The ultimate goal of LIFE URBANGREEN project is to support administrations to take decisions that will help cities better adapt to the effects of climate change.

More information can be found in this report and watching this video.