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The sustainable energy renovation of historical buildings and listed heritage is a challenge for Belgium and other European countries. These are crucial for urban and rural development and for the future of old buildings. This is the context of the ‘P-RENEWAL’ research project. It aims to develop a methodological tool for retrofitting historical Walloon dwellings built before 1914, to enhance their heritage values while implementing relevant energy measures. The originality of this research is to consider energy, environmental and heritage aspects in a complementary way, in order to help designers achieving a goal of greater sustainability. According to the listed heritage administration, dwelling types built before 1914 represent approximately 25 % of the Walloon stock. This project is related to the research work carried out under the Task 59 of SHC ‘Renovating Historic Buildings Towards Zero Energy’. The methodology used to achieve the research objectives is articulated in various steps. First, a typological analysis of buildings from the interest era is completed. Then, based on on-site studies performed on representative case studies, the evaluations of heritage values and performance are conducted. Finally, dynamic energy models are run to support the proposition and validation of retrofitting strategies.

Podeu consultar la versió en català a: http://hdl.handle.net/11703/113943 Podeu consultar la versió en anglès a: http://hdl.handle.net/11703/113945

Podeu consultar la versió en castellà a: http://hdl.handle.net/11703/113944 Podeu consultar la versió en anglès a: http://hdl.handle.net/11703/113945

Podeu consultar la versió en català a: http://hdl.handle.net/11703/113943 Podeu consultar la versió en castellà a: http://hdl.handle.net/11703/113944

Presentació dels resultats de la recopilació de dades i d’informació sobre el context de resiliència urbana de la ciutat de Barcelona amb la finalitat de mostrar la situació de la ciutat i la informació sectorial més rellevant.

International audience; Climate change is a product of the Anthropocene, and the human-nature system in which we live. Effective climate change adaptation requires that we acknowledge this complexity. Theoretical literature on sustainability transitions has highlighted this and called for deeper acknowledgment of systems complexity in our research practices. Are we heeding these calls for 'systems' research? We used hydrohazards (floods and droughts) as an example research area to explore this question. We first distilled existing challenges for complex human-nature systems into six central concepts: Uncertainty, multiple spatial scales, multiple time scales, multimethod approaches, human-nature dimensions, and interactions. We then performed a systematic assessment of 737 articles to examine patterns in what methods are used and how these cover the complexity concepts. In general, results showed that many papers do not reference any of the complexity concepts, and no existing approach addresses all six. We used the detailed results to guide advancement from theoretical calls for action to specific next steps. Future research priorities include the development of methods for consideration of multiple hazards; for the study of interactions, particularly in linking the short- to medium-term time scales; to reduce data-intensivity; and to better integrate bottom-up and top-down approaches in a way that connects local context with higher-level decision-making. Overall this paper serves to build a shared conceptualisation of human-nature system complexity, map current practice, and navigate a complexity-smart trajectory for future research.

International audience

International audience; The quality of science and technology communication has become more challenging due to the fact that access to information has hugely increased in terms of variety and quantity. This is a consequence of different factors, among others the development of public relations by research institutes and the pervasive role of digital media (Bucchi 2013; Trench 2008). A key question is how can we objectively assess science and technology communication? Relatively few studies have been dedicated to the definition of pertinent indicators and standards (Neresini and Bucchi 2011). This research aims to understand how communication strategies, addressed to the general public, can opti-mise the impact of research findings in hydrology for resilient cities and how this can be assessed. Indeed urban resilience to extreme weather events relies both on engineering solutions and increased awareness of urban communities as it was highlighted by the FP7 SMARTesT project and the experiences carried out in the framework of TOMACS (Tokyo Metropolitan Area Convective Studies for Resilient Cities) and CASA (Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptative Sensing of the Atmosphere, supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation). Communication assessment should be included in an alternative approach to evaluate urban resilience to weather extremes. Various qualitative and quantitative methods to monitor communication exist. According to this study, resilience indicators shouldn't only consider communication infrastructures but should also assess communication processes and their interactions with other resilience drivers; furthermore quantitative variables are considered as particularly relevant. Last, but not least, interesting inputs are provided by those case studies that exploit resilience assessment campaigns as an opportunity to practice participatory communication. This research is being led in the framework of the Chair Hydrology for Resilient Cities, co-founded by Veolia, Fondation des Ponts, and École des Ponts ParisTech.

Climate change is a product of the Anthropocene, and the human⁻nature system in which we live. Effective climate change adaptation requires that we acknowledge this complexity. Theoretical literature on sustainability transitions has highlighted this and called for deeper acknowledgment of systems complexity in our research practices. Are we heeding these calls for ‘systems’ research? We used hydrohazards (floods and droughts) as an example research area to explore this question. We first distilled existing challenges for complex human⁻nature systems into six central concepts: Uncertainty, multiple spatial scales, multiple time scales, multimethod approaches, human⁻nature dimensions, and interactions. We then performed a systematic assessment of 737 articles to examine patterns in what methods are used and how these cover the complexity concepts. In general, results showed that many papers do not reference any of the complexity concepts, and no existing approach addresses all six. We used the detailed results to guide advancement from theoretical calls for action to specific next steps. Future research priorities include the development of methods for consideration of multiple hazards; for the study of interactions, particularly in linking the short- to medium-term time scales; to reduce data-intensivity; and to better integrate bottom⁻up and top⁻down approaches in a way that connects local context with higher-level decision-making. Overall this paper serves to build a shared conceptualisation of human⁻nature system complexity, map current practice, and navigate a complexity-smart trajectory for future research.

International audience; High resolution, long and reliable rainfall time series are extremely important to assess reliable statistics, e.g. the Depth-Duration-Frequency curves that have been widely used to define design rainfalls and rain- fall drainage network dimensioning. The potential consequences of changes in measuring and recording techniques have been somewhat discussed in the literature with respect to a possible corresponding introduction of artificial inhomogeneities in time series. In this paper, we show how to detect another artificiality: most of the rainfall time series have a lower recording frequency than that is assumed, fur- thermore the effective high-frequency limit often depends on the recording year due to algorithm changes. This question is particularly important for operational hydrology, because we show that an error on the effective recording high frequency introduces biases in the corresponding statistics. We developed a simple automatic procedure to assess this frequency period by period and station by station on a large database. The scaling analysis of these time series also shows the influence of high frequency limitations on the scaling behaviour, leading to possible misinterpretation of the significance of characteristic scales and scale-dependent hydrological quantities.

International audience; The Community strategy against pollution of surface water control policy was set out by the European Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC which lays down new procedures for the identification of substances and development of control measures. After the decision n° 2455/2001/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 November 2001 setting out the first list of 33 substances or groups of substances that have been prioritized for action at community level, the Commission adopted on 17 July 2006 a Directive setting environmental quality standards for the priority substances which Member States must achieve by 2015, to ensure a "good chemical surface water status". Prior to achieve this objective by identifying possible reduction measures, an accurate knowledge on these substances at the different stages of the urban water cycle is required. Though some studies were launched to identify the occurrence and the significance of priority pollutants (PPs) in wastewaters (Rule et al., 2006ab; Palmquist and Hanaeus, 2005), no study focused on the quality of wet weather flows and combined sewer overflows (CSOs) within combined sewers, more especially for a heavily urbanized area such as Paris (France). Due to the lack of available information on the PP levels within combined sewers during wet periods, the OPUR research program (Observatory of Urban Pollutants in Paris, France) launched this study. Its objectives are i) to assess the priority pollutant concentrations, ii) to compare these concentrations to those observed in wastewater and runoff, and finally iii) to compare the measured concentrations to the Environmental Quality Standards (EQS). This survey constitutes one of the first studies in Europe to report data for a variety of priority substances in CSOs. A large range of PPs in CSO was observed, and most of them present concentrations in the μg.l-1 range, or even up to 10 μg.l-1. These results are of critical importance since the data generated for a predetermined number of hazardous substances may be used in the future to identify PPs of potential significance and to elaborate strategies for new monitoring programmes for both CSOs and receiving waters.