Environmental intelligence for more sustainable infrastructure investment

TY - CHAP

T1 - Environmental intelligence for more sustainable infrastructure investment

AU - Mulligan, Mark

AU - Douglas, Caitlin

AU - Van Soesbergen, Arnout

AU - Shi, Maoijing

AU - Burke, Sophia

AU - Van Delden, Hedwig

AU - Giordano, Raffaele

AU - Lopez-Gunn, Elena

AU - Scrieciu, Albert

N1 - Funding Information: The ReSET project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 FET Proactive Programme under grant agreement No 101017857. The opinions expressed in this document reflect only the authors’ view and in no way reflect the European Commission's opinions. Funding Information: The EC H2020 ReSET project (Restarting Economy in Support of Environment through Technolo)gfyundedbythe European Union’s Horizon 2020 FET Proactive Programme under grant agreement No 101017857, brings together environmental scientists, social scientists, informatics specialists and stakeholders from five European countries to develop state of the art investment policy support systems. These combine the best available earth observation, crowdsourced and field-monitored data with sophisticated spatial policy support systems for biophysical and social processes. Harnessing combined machine and human intelligence, we seek to to understand best-bet options for 'build back better' investments that maximise environmental, economic and employment benefits. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 ACM. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2021/9/9

Y1 - 2021/9/9

N2 - Intelligence is the ability to learn, understand and thus manage new or trying situations through reasoning (inferences based on facts or premises). Environmental Intelligence brings together multiple data streams (facts) from ground-based, satellite and citizen sources with cutting-edge hardware, software and analytical technology employing human reasoning and machine learning to better understand and manage the environment. The EC H2020 ReSET project (Restarting Economy in Support of Environment through Technology) funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 FET Proactive Programme under grant agreement No 101017857, brings together environmental scientists, social scientists, informatics specialists and stakeholders from five European countries to develop state of the art investment policy support systems. These combine the best available earth observation, crowdsourced and field-monitored data with sophisticated spatial policy support systems for biophysical and social processes. Harnessing combined machine and human intelligence, we seek to to understand best-bet options for 'build back better' investments that maximise environmental, economic and employment benefits. We are working at a series of demonstration sites in Europe where 'build back better' investments are active: Thames Gateway, OxCam Arc and Strand Aldwych in UK; Carasuhat Wetlands in Romania; Castilla Leon and Rivas VaciaMadrid in Spain and Bologna in Italy. Proposed investments include urban greening and traffic management to reduce air pollution and thermal extremes (Strand Aldwych, Bologna, Rivas Vaciamadrid); Natural Flood Management (Thames Gateway, OxCam Arc, Castilla-Leon), land use zoning for low impact tourism (Carasuhat) and green-grey approaches to flood and drought management (Castilla Leon). We bring together new hardware technologies enabling low-cost, distributed, IoT environmental monitoring using the FreeStation.org platform with further developments of our widely used policy support systems CotingNature and Eco:Actuary and enhanced activity and agent-based modelling in the Metronamica modelling framework. This is to better understand current environmental conditions in the areas proposed for investment and to simulate the impact of investment alternatives (business as usual grey, blended grey-green and fully green) on environment, economy and employment in the ReSET investment policy support system. Through this work, we tackle some key challenges of operationalizing environmental intelligence discussed here: • technology as an enabler of research and innovation rather than the key focus of research • live integration of complex data streams • ensuring usability and ease of use through co-design • scalability and relevance to a range of investment types and settings • reducing costs, enabling local maintenance and ensuring accessibility and legacy

AB - Intelligence is the ability to learn, understand and thus manage new or trying situations through reasoning (inferences based on facts or premises). Environmental Intelligence brings together multiple data streams (facts) from ground-based, satellite and citizen sources with cutting-edge hardware, software and analytical technology employing human reasoning and machine learning to better understand and manage the environment. The EC H2020 ReSET project (Restarting Economy in Support of Environment through Technology) funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 FET Proactive Programme under grant agreement No 101017857, brings together environmental scientists, social scientists, informatics specialists and stakeholders from five European countries to develop state of the art investment policy support systems. These combine the best available earth observation, crowdsourced and field-monitored data with sophisticated spatial policy support systems for biophysical and social processes. Harnessing combined machine and human intelligence, we seek to to understand best-bet options for 'build back better' investments that maximise environmental, economic and employment benefits. We are working at a series of demonstration sites in Europe where 'build back better' investments are active: Thames Gateway, OxCam Arc and Strand Aldwych in UK; Carasuhat Wetlands in Romania; Castilla Leon and Rivas VaciaMadrid in Spain and Bologna in Italy. Proposed investments include urban greening and traffic management to reduce air pollution and thermal extremes (Strand Aldwych, Bologna, Rivas Vaciamadrid); Natural Flood Management (Thames Gateway, OxCam Arc, Castilla-Leon), land use zoning for low impact tourism (Carasuhat) and green-grey approaches to flood and drought management (Castilla Leon). We bring together new hardware technologies enabling low-cost, distributed, IoT environmental monitoring using the FreeStation.org platform with further developments of our widely used policy support systems CotingNature and Eco:Actuary and enhanced activity and agent-based modelling in the Metronamica modelling framework. This is to better understand current environmental conditions in the areas proposed for investment and to simulate the impact of investment alternatives (business as usual grey, blended grey-green and fully green) on environment, economy and employment in the ReSET investment policy support system. Through this work, we tackle some key challenges of operationalizing environmental intelligence discussed here: • technology as an enabler of research and innovation rather than the key focus of research • live integration of complex data streams • ensuring usability and ease of use through co-design • scalability and relevance to a range of investment types and settings • reducing costs, enabling local maintenance and ensuring accessibility and legacy

KW - Green infrastructure

KW - Investment

KW - Nature based solutions

KW - Policy support

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85115364671&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3462203.3475916

DO - 10.1145/3462203.3475916

M3 - Conference paper

AN - SCOPUS:85115364671

T3 - GoodIT 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Information Technology for Social Good

SP - 225

EP - 229

BT - GoodIT 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Information Technology for Social Good

PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc

T2 - 1st Conference on Information Technology for Social Good, GoodIT 2021

Y2 - 9 September 2021 through 11 September 2021

ER -