More green
VUB has large, green campuses that are already cool refuges in the city. We want to highlight these strengths even more in the future. We are working on healthy, comfortable, and integrally accessible campuses that are prepared for a more extreme climate. We are making our surfaces permeable and allowing rainwater to infiltrate it. In this way, we reduce the amount of runoff into the sewer system and combat dehydration. We are mitigating the urban heat island effect by appropriate planting that also enhances the ecological value of the campuses.
Blue-green Living Lab makes campus more climate proof
The VUB campus is a reflection of the innovative character of the university and the research that goes on there. That is why we continue to plan and build the campus of tomorrow. The expansion of the educational palette and the extensive research at VUB has recently resulted in more buildings on our campus. That is why we are ambitiously working to make our buildings future-proof and create a climate-adapted, contemporary, inclusive campus. We call that project the blue-green Living Lab.
Preparing an overview
The blue-green Living Lab is investigating and defining the first climate adaptation measures for VUB. We are outlining our vision, developing new tools, and monitoring our progress. Our interdisciplinary research team is joining forces with the infrastructure department to draw up a map of the hydrological and ecological system on the campus. Together, they make recommendations for the development of a sustainable and future-proof campus. For our students, the campus is also an excellent case for a thesis. Master students in Hydrology, for example, helped to map out the sewer system. And biology students carried out terrain studies on VUB Main Campus, which turns out to be home to some 900 species!
Water management
VUB has good reason to increase its knowledge of the hydrological system of the campus. Although long-term decisions are urgently needed, this knowledge is currently insufficient to take such decisions. Our country - and thus also VUB - is facing a series of structural challenges in the field of climate and the environment.
In the coming years, among other things, we must address our water management, improve the retention of rainwater, and optimise our sewer systems. The infiltration of rainwater is becoming problematic due to all the compaction and solidification, and the current sewer system is proving inadequate. In addition, the future will bring even more extreme weather conditions. Another point is that our campuses have important ecological functions: they form an ecological link on a metropolitan scale and combat the urban heat island effect.
