PRESENTATION & OBJECTIVES

Low energy educational buildings are becoming the standard for new buildings in European and Mediterranean partner countries. Meanwhile, the potential of efficient renovation of existing buildings continues to be a development focus in these countries. Technical solutions are continuously proposed by universities for ecosustainable building renovation, but there is still a gap between designed models and real world application.

Past projects implemented in Mediterranean context mainly targeted towards bringing together industry elements to provide packaged solutions. However, several barriers inhibit the buildings’ renovation invigoration in Mediterranean climates, for instance:

-Insufficient collaboration between involved actors aimed at stimulating cost-effective renovations

-Inefficient suitable tools for public sector to achieve the developed solutions.

MedEcoSuRe (Mediterranean University as Catalyst for Eco-Sustainable Renovation) project is rooted in the key role that Mediterranean universities have to contribute to environmental development and combating climate change. It brings together researchers and stakeholders to build a common understanding of the eco-sustainable building renovation issues and aims to empower regional knowledge-to-action process. It is setting a collaborative learning scheme to value innovative energy renovation solutions and foster sustainable science and policy progress gradually, starting by the university’s immediate neighborhood, which is the university building in the framework of a “Living Lab” : MED beX.live.

The Living Lab has been launched in the framework of Med-EcoSuRe project by creating a core collaborative network of the project partners:

• Mediterranean Renewable Energy Centre, Tunis – Tunisia

• National Engineering School of Tunis, Tunis – Tunisia

• Department of Architecture of the University of Florence -, Florence – Italy

• University of Seville, Seville – Spain

• An-Najah National University, Nablus – Palestine

• Neapolitan Energy and Environment Agency, Naples – Italy

• Spanish Solar Energy & Energy Efficiency Cluster, Barcelona – Spain

• University of campania luigi vanvitelli, Naples –  Italy

• University of Naples Federico II, Naples – Italy

• Smartech Cluster – The Cluster of Smart Technologies, Barcelona – Spain

This “Living Lab” will propose energy renovation solutions to buildings’ energy managers based on decision-support tools that include well-constructed models to address policy relevant issues with input from stakeholders, and which integrate social, economic and environmental factors.

By being the core of the project activities, the involved researchers and stakeholders will not only produce scientific solutions adapted to real situations, but also will monitor and scale-up induced improvements.