News

New publication in “Urban Climate”

27 September 2022

Title: How do street trees affect urban temperatures and radiation exchange? Observations and numerical evaluation in a highly compact city / Street trees are an important driver of street microclimate through shading and transpirative cooling, which are key mechanisms for improving thermal comfort in urban areas. Urban canopy models (UCM) with integrated trees are useful tools because they represent the impacts of street trees on neighborhood-scale climate.

New publication in “Climate”

19 July 2022

Title: Exploring Methods for Developing Local Climate Zones to Support Climate Research / Meteorological and climate prediction models at the urban scale increasingly require more accurate and high-resolution data. The Local Climate Zone (LCZ) system is an initiative to standardize a classification scheme of the urban landscape, based mainly on the properties of surface structure (e.g., building, tree height, density) and surface cover (pervious vs. impervious).

URBAG presentation at the 13th International Conference on Air Quality

11 July 2022

Alba Badia gave a talk on “How green infrastructures impact urban air quality over Barcelona” in which she discussed the air quality changes between the reference scenario and the scenarios that have been designed by the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB)’s office of urban planning.

URBAG presentation at the Industrial Ecology Gordon Research Conference

8 July 2022

Gara Villalba gave a talk on "Urban Green Infrastructures: Opportunities for Circularity of Resources and Resilience" in which she discussed the work done by the URBAG project, more specifically on energy-water-nutrients nexus of peri-urban agriculture using the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona as a case study.

URBAG participation at EGU22

3 June 2022

Two presentations from URBAG members have been shared in the latest EGU's annual General Assembly EGU22, hosted in Vienna, Austria. Thanks to the hybrid format, over 14,000 attendees from 116 countries have shared each work throughout the week-long conference from 23-27 May 2022.

Publicació d’Alba Badia a la revista Investigación y Ciencia

29 April 2022

La revista Investigación y Ciencia ha publicat l'article "Los beneficios ambientales del teletrabajo", de la ma d'Alba Badia.  L'article presenta els resultats del treball publicat a la revista Urban Sustainability, que analitza les concentracions de NO2 durant el període de confinament provocat per la Covid-19 i proposa possibles escenaris futurs.

Bojos per la ciència

8 April 2022

URBAG ha participat de nou aquest any en el programa Bojos per la Ciència de la Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera. On conjuntament amb el Departament d’Enginyeria Química, Biològica i Ambiental de la UAB imparteixen el programa Bojos per la Terra.

Green roofs in Oslo: results from a co-creative and participatory approach for its evaluation

23 March 2022

Green roofs provide a good opportunity for creating new green spaces in urban dense areas and offer a wide range of benefits. The city of Oslo has ambitious plans for improving its environmental performance in aspects such as energy consumption, water management and greenhouse gas emissions.

Gara Villalba és entrevistada per la XEAB

17 March 2022

Hem de començar, perquè ja fem tard, a aplicar adaptacions que millorin l'eficiència en la distribució d'aigua. Aquest és el títol de l'entrevista realitzada per Gara Villalba des de la Xarxa d'Equipaments Ambientals de Barcelona (XEAB) i publicada a La Fàbrica del Sol.

URBAG participation at COP26

16 February 2022

Dr. Gara Villalba participated at COP26 through the session "How we can make cities both healthier and carbon neutral". This session talked about the current problems, discussed solutions and demonstrated how climate action, urban and transport planning and health go hand in hand to create carbon neutral, healthy and liveable cities.

Tallers a les escoles. Mesurem el CO2!

3 February 2022

Des de l'Institut de Ciències i Tecnologies Ambientals de la UAB (ICTA-UAB) estem realitzant tallers pedagògics en els quals l'alumnat de primària aprendrà més sobre el CO2 i els seus efectes al planeta Terra. L'alumnat es convertirà en explorador per millorar el món, ja que el CO2 és responsable de l'escalfament de la Terra i les ciutats en produeixen molt.

Publication in Science of The Total Environment

31 January 2022

Title: Mapping direct N2O emissions from peri-urban agriculture: The case of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona / Geographically explicit datasets reflecting local management of crops are needed to help improve direct nitrous oxide (N2O) emission inventories. Yet, the lack of geographically explicit datasets of relevant factors influencing the emissions make it difficult to estimate them in such way.