Climate Change
UrbanTwin: seeing double for sustainability
Research
EPFL
A consortium of Swiss research institutes has begun working on UrbanTwin to make an AI driven, ecologically sensitive model of the energy, water and waste systems the town of Aigle to help boost sustainability.
Blue-green infrastructure for liveable cities
Research
Eawag
The Aqua Urbanica symposium, co-organised by Eawag, explored the question of what is needed to implement the sponge city concept. With the help of this concept, cities should be able to mitigate the consequences of climate change.
Global Warming Causes Changes in Swiss Insect Fauna
Research
WSL
How has the distribution of insects in Switzerland changed over the past 40 years? The range of many species has expanded, while that of a similar number has contracted. In particular, cold-adapted species have lost ground. These are the findings published in the journal Nature Communications.
Urban planning helps mitigate extreme weather effects in Haut-Valais
Teaching
EPFL
Olivier Lalancette, an EPFL Master’s student in architecture, has come up with some development proposals for the Brig-Visp-Naters conurbation. His suggestions, relatively modest in scope, could help these cities better withstand the droughts and heavy rainfall that are expected to intensify by 2050. Lalancette hopes his study will start a conversation about the region’s future.
COP27: Climate finance needs more transparency
Politics
ETH Zurich
The promise of industrialised countries to financially support emerging and developing countries in climate measures remains unfulfilled at the beginning of the climate conference in Egypt. Florian Egli explains what the states are negotiating at COP27 and what could help to alleviate the loss of trust.
Always following the sun
Research
Empa
Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees requires the energy system to be restructured as quickly as possible. But the speed of this transformation is physically limited. An Empa study now calculates the influence of energy storage systems on the maximum possible transition speed – and thus also on the probability of successfully mastering the climate crisis.
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