Sofia Aivalioti - Bax & Company

Sofia Aivalioti joined Bax & Company as a consultant in July 2018. Her focus areas are nature-based solutions, biodiversity, climate change adaptation and healthy cities.

She has 12 years of experience in various interdisciplinary roles, working in four different countries (Greece, Scotland, the US and Spain). She has extensive experience in EU-funded programmes including Interreg, URBACT and Horizon Europe mainly on the topics of green and healthy cities. In the past years, she was immersed in various innovative topics working on projects for smart cities, citizen science, air quality monitoring, eHealth, and robotics.

Sofia is a Lead Expert for the URBACT Programme, supporting a network of 9 cities, and integrating the One Health approach into their policies and actions.

Sofia holds a Masters in Environmental Studies for Cities and Sustainability which is an Erasmus Mundus Joint European Master delivered by the University of Aalborg, the University of Aveiro and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. During her studies, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. She researched climate change resilience and adaptation of urban infrastructures. She is also a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, with a Master in Environment and International Development.

In her free time, she likes to practice yoga, explore nature, attend concerts and travel. Sofia speaks Greek, English, and Spanish, and is also learning Catalan.

Partnerships with Friends of the Park – Enfield Council has created wetlands in Firs Farm park, which can be used to collect surface water. A local community group – Friends of Firs Farm – has taken over the daily maintenance of the BGI. Members of this community meet weekly and the park has become an important community hub with plenty of activities. This can also be seen on the Friends’ lively group page on Facebook.

Click on the image to learn more about Firs Farm Wetlands, London

Engaging communities through new service designs – Students from the Royal College of Arts developed, together with municipality partners in the UK, new service designs to encourage communities to contribute to and take some ownership of their environment, and specifically new BGI. To illustrate, a new service design included an online platform which demonstrates how BGI schemes are planned, helping the public understand the decision-making process. A Community Garden Club was developed that helps connect children and parents with nature through gardening, but also provides opportunities for local authorities to set tasks that help maintain public space.

Rain Gothenburg – With the launch of the Rain Gothenburg campaign, the Sewage and Water Department of Gothenburg City Council has emphasised the human dimensions of rainwater. Gothenburg is one of the rainiest cities in Europe, and the City Council would like to use this fact as an asset for urban development and city branding. The creation of new BGI is combined with art installations and outdoor classrooms. As a result, communities have become more familiar with both the challenges and pleasures related to urban rainwater and the potential of BGI. Moreover, communities can feel a sense of pride in how their city is dealing with rainwater in a positive, rather than a negative way.

Exploring rain in Jubilee park (Jubileumsparken)

Aberdeen’s engagement with adjacent landowners – Through engaging with a housing developer on an adjacent site, Aberdeen City Council secured funding for the construction of a “safe route to school” foot and cycle-path through the site of the Maidencraig Flood Management Wetland Scheme. The private developer was willing to invest in this route, because the scheme would benefit its development. This route is providing an enhanced route to school for children living in the new housing development and a new and improved link between communities separated by the site.

Aberdeen’s new ‘safe route to school’

Enfield’s Private investment for BGI – Private funding is available for BGI-related projects, yet often unknown to local authorities. Enfield Council and The Rivers Trust secured private investments from the Coca-Cola Foundation and WWF for the construction of wetlands in Broomfield Park that will reduce pollution in the nearby Pymmes Brook. Coca-Cola and WWF have established a water stewardship partnership, which grants financial support for small-scale projects that enhance water quality or quantity in local communities.

Coca-cola funded the construction of wetlands

Dordrecht’s blue-green vision – The City of Dordrecht has developed a blue-green vision that demonstrates the multiple benefits of BGI for the city including climate adaptation, biodiversity, health and recreation. By not limiting the scope to only climate adaptation measures, Dordrecht City Council has succeeded in creating broad support and interest in the blue-green vision and two proposed blue-green zones in the city. The first area, the Dordtwijkzone, is aimed at integrating a patchwork of sports parks, fields and parks into a healthy and robust blue-green zone accessible for every local resident. The second area, the Wantijzone, will be a green corridor from the city centre right to the entrance of the Biesbosch National Park.

Click to learn more about Dordrecht’s Blue-Green vision on the BEGIN website

Bergen’s Lightrail development with opportunities for BGI – Large-scale urban developments such as transportation investments offer opportunities to include BGI. One of the major transformations in Bergen is in the industrial Mindemyren district that will be turned into a residential area. The construction of a lightrail from the city centre to Mindemyren is the first stage of development. Comprehensive planning of Bergen City Council ensured that infrastructure development is combined with other improvements such as BGI, resulting in the opening up of the canal that runs through the neighbourhood. The lightrail construction becomes more attractive with the provision of a linear blue-green space running through the area, which can be used for individual transport, including cycling, as well as for floodwater storage.

Antwerp’s CityLab Sint-Anneke Plage – Antwerp City Council started an Urban Living Lab as part of the redevelopment of Sint-Anneke Plage. The city aims to heighten the dykes for flood protection against sea level, to create more tidal nature, and to re-design the public domain with a key role for blue-green spaces and solutions. The lab brought together several experts, local landowners, NGOs, and residents to jointly develop a vision for the area with a key role for blue-green spaces and solutions. The City of Antwerp facilitated this process through its CityLab2050 department and external facilitators. The lab developed innovative ideas and inspiration for the design of public space and created a better understanding among local stakeholders and a willingness to act. The lab also improved interdepartmental cooperation within Antwerp City Council.

Dordrecht’s Blue-green Department – After the local elections in 2017, the City of Dordrecht defined a few city-wide challenges. One of these was to become a climate-adaptive, blue-green city, utilising BGI. To this end, a new organisational unit was established with limited financial resources. Therefore, the unit had to interact with other departments and bring together different disciplines in order to be able to deliver the planned BGIs. Meetings were often organised at the SpuiLab210, a location separated from the City Council in order to appeal to more stakeholders. The team successfully created a large network both inside and outside the City Council to mainstream BGI solutions and strategies to the entire municipality.

SPUILAB 210

Bradford’s Department of Place – The establishment of the Department of Place in Bradford Council facilitated interdisciplinary working, since all disciplines that were involved in the physical environment are currently located in the same department. For the restoration of the Bradford Beck, landscape architects, highway planners, engineers, biodiversity and health officials currently work together more easily, compared with how it used to be when the urban drainage department was in the lead.

Bergen’s stronger positioning of BGI because of more interdepartmental cooperation – The fifteen years of experience in Interreg projects has led to increased interdepartmental cooperation in Bergen City Council. To illustrate, BGI plays a central role in recent strategic plans, so new urban development should incorporate BGI. Interdepartmental cooperation also works on the project level. Several municipal departments contribute their expertise to the urban regeneration project in Mindemyren, in which for example lightrail development, real estate development and environmental management act in concert. As part of the BEGIN project, a dedicated working group was formed in which the different municipal disciplines come together monthly. The discussions in this group led to a new design for the planned BGI in Mindemyren. The new structure consists of both an open channel on the surface and a buried channel designed to handle flooding.

Kent’s opportunity mapping through B£ST –The B£ST-tool assisted Kent County Council to maximise the benefits of the investment in sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) aimed at flood risk reduction of twelve properties at Bell Road. Although flooding was the main driver for the project, the tool considered life-cycle costs of the SuDS with consideration of other benefits including biodiversity, air quality, and health and wellbeing. As a result, local beneficiaries beyond the properties were identified, such as the local school, hospital and local council. This approach facilitated relationships, which will enhance an ongoing stewardship and involvement of local stakeholders with the open space at George V Park.

Read all about Kent’s experience with BGI pilots in BEGIN’s Blue-Green Cities in the Spotlight series.

Co-designing with communities

Ghent’s Green Climate Axes – Ghent City Council is working towards the creation of eight blue-green corridors – so-called “green climate axes” – that connect the city centre with the outskirts of the city. The axes are meant to link smaller blue-green areas with each other in order to promote ecological values and climate adaptation measures (such as infiltration and retention). As these blue-green corridors will run through each neighbourhood, they will be easily accessible for all residents. Moreover, the corridors will be complemented with comfortable de-paved hiking and cycling paths for promoting active modes of transportation.

Vision for realising 8 green climate axes: system for the city

Antwerp’s Water Plan – The Water Plan aims to create a water-sensitive city that can only be delivered by its government(s), businesses and community organisations collaborating. The document combines a hydrological and spatial blueprint with pragmatic BGI solutions. Several co-design workshops with a mix of stakeholders took place, in which design proposals for different locations in Antwerp were hydrologically calculated, spatially visualised and openly discussed. Consequently, the Water Plan is widely embraced by various stakeholders and sectors and acted upon.

Current research on this topic is still in its infancy. Future developments look into multi-sensing approaches compatible with the battery environment that ideally can be integrated into existing battery components. By measuring various relevant parameters (including temperature, volume expansion, intercalation strain, cell pressure and other optical and acoustic parameters) that are linked to the degradation mechanisms (such as dendritic growth, metals dissolution and interface dynamics) the state of the entire battery and its components can be deducted.

Special focus will be on the miniaturisation and integration of these stable sensing technologies in a cost-effective way, compatible with the current manufacturing processes. Finally, efficient communication between the BMS and the sensors needs to be established, which will act upon the readings. Approaches currently being investigated are wireless sensors, which don’t add to the weight but add the wireless communication redundancy, or optic fibre cabling, which adds to the weight slightly, but typically has higher reliability.

Self-healing materials can be intrinsically self-healing, meaning the material itself recombines networks through reversible chemical bonds, or extrinsic, where the self-healing capability depends on healing agents such as pre-embedded microcapsules into the material.

Current research is looking into both autonomous (automatic activation of self-healing capabilities) and non-autonomous or on-demand self-healing functionalities (activation of self-healing capabilities through external trigger from the BMS). The implementation of these self-healing functionalities in the battery can be achieved in multiple ways:

Modifying existing electrodes or separators to accommodate microcapsules that include self-healing additives e.g. using surface grafting.
Developing new electrodes and separators with elements that provide inherent self-healing functionalities
Developing protective layers or coatings for electrodes or separators that contain self-healing functionalities.
Development of new electrolytes incorporating self-healing functionalities e.g. using glyme and ionic liquid-based electrolytes