Holistic Management of Brownfield Regeneration
At the heart of HOMBRE is the ambition to create a paradigm shift to ‘Zero Brownfields’ where Brownfields become areas of opportunity that deliver useful services for society, instead of derelict areas that are considered useless. This ambition will be met by looking at how synergies between different types of services might leverage change where none was possible before.
Each Brownfield has its own potential for delivering useful combinations of services and hence new opportunities. For example, synergies between services like development + water improvement + renewable energy. An intelligent and holistic suite of technologies, management measures and land use is the key that can unlock this potential. HOMBRE is centred on the identification of synergies and the design of the approaches needed to achieve them.
An overarching assessment of opportunities and services lets stakeholder(s) choose how these are taken into account for the possible re-uses. The HOMBRE shift in thinking relates not only to the redevelopment itself, but also to gaining better understanding in early recognition and prevention of land that might become a Brownfield in the future, and how to monitor this as part of the land use cycle.
A visual decision support tool the Brownfield Navigator is being developed by HOMBRE to guide stakeholders showing synergies between services and the opportunities these create at the different stages in the land use cycle. The goal is to enable better communication between stakeholders about opportunities and inspire them to find better solutions with higher benefit. HOMBRE will illustrate what might be possible with a number of case studies where implementing suites of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ technologies, has facilitated cost-effective, timely, and sustainable Brownfield regeneration along with broader services to the environment, economy and society.
News:
was held as a joint event with the CABERNET network and the EU FP7 projects "GLOCOM", "Greenland" and "TIMBRE".
More information on the conference programme and the presentations is available here.
