Faced with intensifying heat waves and the creation of urban heat islands, particularly in densely populated urban areas, Robin Monnier has focused his work on health risks and thermal comfort within buildings.

As a research engineer at the CES of Mines Paris-PSL, he worked on integrating the assessment of heat wave impacts on occupant health into life cycle assessment tools.

Objectives:

A life cycle assessment (LCA) of a building assesses various environmental impacts, including a DALY indicator for health (Disability Adjusted Life Years). At present, DALYs take into account impacts on a global scale, such as those generated by the manufacture of materials, building construction or energy and water consumption over the entire building life cycle. The main aim of Robin Monnier’s research is to quantify a local impact, linked to overheating in buildings, in order to limit health risks for occupants during heat waves. To this end, a new indicator has been developed, the Overheating DALY, enabling a precise assessment of the risk of death during periods of extreme heat.

Publication :

Article – Etude prospective sur la résilience des bâtiments face aux canicules

Article – Integrating effects of overheating on human health into buildings’ life cycle assessment

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Patrick Stella, Senior Lecturer at Agro ParisTech, will explain the urban heat island phenomenon and ways to mitigate it. Various approaches will be presented such as the use of new materials, urban reorganisation and revegetation.

This talk is organised by Leonard in partnership with the environmental research lab as part of the “30 minutes pour demain” talks.

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The urbanisation of surfaces significantly modifies wind flows, as well as convective and radiative exchanges between the surface and the atmosphere. These changes generate modifications in the microclimate, the best known being the urban heat island phenomenon, which reflects higher temperatures in urban areas than on the outskirts of towns. These higher temperatures have numerous environmental (increased heat waves), health (discomfort, heat stress, mortality) and economic (energy consumption, medical care) consequences. In addition, coupled with emissions linked to urban activities (road traffic), they contribute to episodes of atmospheric pollution. The scientific community has identified several mitigation solutions for this phenomenon, including the establishment of vegetation in urban areas. In fact, the latter influences radiative exchanges, heat, air flows and, in addition, has the advantage of representing a sink for many atmospheric pollutants.

Objectives

The thesis aims to understand to what extent the greening of the urban environment (in the form of trees, green roofs and walls, etc.) can help regulate the urban microclimate and improve air quality. The originality of the thesis will be based on factoring ecophysiological processes into the modelling in order to precisely represent the interactions between the urban climate and plant functioning, as well as on the quantification of the role of atmospheric pollutant sinks provided by vegetation.

Read her paper “Coupling the TEB and Surfatm Models for Heat Flux Modelling in Urban Area: Comparison With Flux Measurements in Strasbourg (France)”

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Let the urban and the rural, the mineral and the vegetal, interact

Our wish is that the making of the city in the city makes it possible to preserve the existing agricultural and natural areas, that nature flourishes in the city, on the ground as on buildings, and that roofs become reservoirs of biodiversity, rainwater storages, urban heat island mitigation zones, social link catalysts, fruit and vegetable production areas.

Roof terraces are an under-exploited area in the city and yet of key importance: they can represent up to 32% of the horizontal surface of a city. Urban agriculture on rooftops is therefore an opportunity for local authorities to optimise built-up areas to integrate nature in the city, to participate in the climate resilience of cities, to recreate places where residents can meet and share while creating local jobs by offering functional and easily usable sites. Planners, developers and builders will see it as an asset for urban developments with high environmental and social added value, in line with the growing need of city dwellers to reconnect with nature.

Why a practical guide for those involved in the making of the city?

Developing urban agriculture on rooftops is not just greening the building, it is integrating a project, led by specific stakeholders, with its own operating model, its flows to manage, its needs to be anticipated. It is about understanding the challenges and diversity of urban agriculture, consolidating various skills to carry out the project, mastering different regulations, forging partnerships.

It is therefore to bring these different elements together within a single operational tool that we have written this guide, in the framework of the lab recherche environnement programme.We hope that our book will help local authorities, planners, developers, landlords, builders and managers of property assets to further develop urban agriculture on rooftops, in all its diversity, whether in the form of a shared garden, urban micro-farm, restaurant’s vegetable garden or productive urban farm.

 Order the book in paper or digital format

Structure of the practical guide

To this end, the book provides a review of current knowledge and practices, as well as a forward-looking vision of the building of tomorrow.

Then, all the criteria related to the layout of the rooftop for urban agriculture, whether technical, regulatory, related to flow management, project management, etc. are presented in a precise manner and accompanied by practical tips.

Finally, we offer methodological support to deploy these projects as well as summary sheets for each form of urban agriculture projects and for each production system. Twelve fact sheets presenting practices and feedbacks from rooftops in Paris, Lyon, Brussels and Besançon make it possible to adopt best practices.

Methodology – A guide designed with the players in the making of the city

To create this guide, we have:

• Analysed regulatory documents specific to rooftops or urban agriculture;
• Listed 170 agricultural rooftop projects around the world and analysed 70 French projects;
• Audited twelve sites in Paris, Lyon, Brussels and Besançon to better understand the constraints and present the details that make the difference in a project;
• Met many experts such as personnel from the technical departments of local authorities, construction and development stakeholders, project leaders and researchers;
• Led collaborative workshops on technical subjects;
• Benefited from the feedback of many contributors;
• Monitored urban agriculture projects during the construction phase.

Table of contents

Urban agriculture settles on the rooftops

1. Urban forms of agriculture
2. The advantages of making rooftops fertile
3. The peculiar ecosystem of the fifth facade
4. A shift towards “circular buildings”

Implementation guidelines

1. Getting to know the project area and defining it
2. Identifying the main elements of the roof structure
3. Identifying the necessary flows for a rooftop farm
4. What equipment for more functionality?
5. Anticipating the project management

Project methodology and fact sheets

1. The main project stages for a new or an existing building
2. Regulation and reference documents
3. Fact sheets presenting different forms of urban agriculture
4. Fact sheets presenting practices and feedbacks from rooftop agriculture projects
5. Bibliography

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Consideration of the city-nature link concerns many levers of action: the greening of neighbourhoods and buildings (on the façade or on the roof); the permeabilisation of soils, the configuration of buildings and the properties of plant cover, which play an essential role in controlling urban heat island phenomena. These analyses must also factor in the relationship that city users enjoy with nature, whether in the context of setting up shared gardens or green and blue belts or concerning perception of biodiversity.

AgroParisTech takes a general interest in living things in urban, suburban and rural spaces. The work carried out by its teams within the framework of the lab recherche environnement has focused on controlling the ecological impacts of transport infrastructures and the implementation and monitoring of compensation measures. Projects have also concerned the implementation of indicators of the state of biodiversity in a neighbourhood and have resulted in a tool that is accessible to practitioners, dubbed Biodi(V)strict®.

Ecosystem services provided by nature in cities are another topic of research, which concerns the effects of the greening of neighbourhoods and buildings on the regulation of the internal temperature of buildings and the reduction of the urban heat island phenomenon.

Finally, another line of work concerns the development of technical systems for urban agriculture and has led to the publication of a guide for the development of vegetable gardens on roofs. A particularly interesting study concerns a technique for recovering urban waste for the manufacture of growth substrates that are suitable for rooftops.

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