The Mediterranean library of knowledge
Explore the ENI CBC Med Programme's library of deliverables: a comprehensive digital repository of diverse resources tailored for the Mediterranean region. Discover in-depth studies, innovative strategies, and practical tools spanning tools addressing key environmental, economic, and social issues. The library is your go-to source to find valuable knowledge to inspire new collaborative projects driving fair, sustainable and inclusive development across the Mediterranean.
Guidelines on the energy renovation of university buildings in the Mediterranean
Guidelines were developed and designed based on the main outputs of the project including the Living Lab approach adopted for the co-creation of the renovation process, the main results of the pilot actions implemented (energy generated and saved, CO2 emissions avoided, savings in €..), lessons learned and recommendations for replication and scaling-up.
These guidelines will facilitate the replication and scaling-up of the innovative renovation actions implemented, leading to a wider impact.
Decision aid tool for evaluation of optimal renovation measures in university buildings
A decision aid tool (Tool 1) is developed to support the energy management staff, in collaboration with students and researchers, in identifying and implementing the best options for building refurbishing and improving operation control for achieving significant energy savings, while maintaining the occupant's comfort.
A simplified tool (Tool 2) was also proposed for target groups with no advanced technical knowledge on building energy performance.
The interactive tools serve as a multi-objective decision models for the optimal ranking/trade-offs analysis between retrofit options, based on relevant decision criteria.
Cross-border Living Lab for the co-creation and co-innovation of university buildings renovations
The core concept of the Mediterranean Cross-border Living Lab (MCbLL) under the Med-EcoSuRe project is that working with stakeholders can produce more effective innovative solutions. Physical and virtual tools were developed to stimulate participatory processes, supporting university’ building managers with predictive tools and enhancing their capacity to plan and implement sustainable energy mix strategies and technologies in the different Mediterranean climatic contexts.
The MCbLL is an international network of people with knowledge and know-how on eco-solutions, connected through a platform and operating on local pilots, related to the renovations of university buildings in the Mediterranean area.
For the establishment and management of the Living Lab, the following was created:
- Guidelines for governance & management, Exploitation & valorisation of results (including different types of agreements)
- Guidelines on stakeholders’ management
- Action plans for Local Living Labs
A series of webinars was organized to launch MED beX.live (University Buildings as a Living Experience), the virtual counterpart of the Mediterranean Cross Border Living Lab (MCbLL).
Covering interconnected themes on eco-sustainable university renovations in the Med-Area investigated by the Med-EcoSuRe project, five webinars answered to the following questions:
- How to implement sustainable policies with a cost-effective approach for construction and building renovation?
- How to perform energy efficient renovation of school buildings and its integration into education programs and education environments?
- How may technology, especially BIM Methodology, accelerate growth and competitiveness in the building sector?
- How to implement the techno-economic assessment of on-grid solar PV systems?
- How can cost-effective energy efficiency and high-tech renewables take place in isolated zones/towns?
Energy audits performed in Mediterranean University Buildings
A structured methodology to carry out the energy audits, in the identified pilot sites, was adopted in order to define the resource planning, establish an energy audit team (including technicians, engineers, and students), organize instruments and timeframe, collect and analyze utility data.
Energy audit reports were elaborated including the data collected and recommendations for potential solutions and opportunities for improving energy efficiency and renewable energy applications.
An online training course transferring knowledge on how to perform an efficient energy audit in university buildings was organized targeting over 50 students across the Mediterranean. The students analyzed case studies and proposed renovation solutions to meet nearly zero energy buildings requirements, of the university buildings analyzed.
Energy Renovation Reports of Mediterranean University Buildings
The project team succeeded in implementing an innovative and eco-sustainable energy renovation process for selected university buildings in Tunisia, Italy and Palestine enabling to reduce the energy demand, decrease operational costs of the universities and ensure a sustainable, reliable, safe, and cost-effective electrical energy supply. The proposed renovation measures were based on recommendations drawn from energy audits and through surveys (for emerging solutions), workshops and courses, while exploiting a set of tools developed as a decision support to efficiently design, plan and evaluate the renovation process.
Based on the obtained monitoring data as well as numerical simulations, the total reduction of CO2 emissions is 509,93 t CO2/y, and the total savings are 148 k€/y
The implementation of the actions took more time than foreseen due to the lengthy administrative procedures and the permissions processes to intervene on buildings , especially in case of historical buildings.
Guidelines were developed highlighting the renovation process implemented and listing the best practices and recommendations drawn.
Strategic plans for university building energy renovation
A total of four renovation strategies were delivered with the goal of proposing recommendations for the adoption of EE and RE practices in university buildings that will enable to contribute to national and regional strategies objective. A range of possible future pathways were generated for the long term renovation of the university building stock in the Med while bringing together the technical and economic appraisal with the review of local policies.
These strategies were officially adopted, through agreements, by seven university and national decision makers. Based on these findings, the team is planning to continue the work beyond the project lifetime by increasing the scale from buildings to university campus.
Toolkit for innovative and eco-sustainable renovation processes
The Toolkit is a guideline to support university building and energy managers on planning and implementing sustainable retrofit measures within university buildings based on a collaborative approach enabling the co-creation and co-innovation of the renovation process. The process involves the university community of innovators, users, and stakeholders in exploring, experimenting and evaluating the best retrofit scenario for their university building. Two additional products are provided inside the Toolkit, supporting the central design phase with Best Practice of innovative projects in university buildings, and the Abacus guiding the selection of the most appropriate retrofit strategies, technologies and materials for the Mediterranean area.
AQUACYCLE My Autobiography - Part 2 Exceeding on expectations
The manuscript “AQUACYCLE My Autobiography” brings an account of the project’s journey through the ‘eyes’ of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system.
It is foremost intended to share the project’s aims and objectives and the progress towards achieving these objectives in an easy-to-understand manner. It is hoped that readers, including society at large will thus gain access into the functioning and purpose of the components that make up the treatment system: an anaerobic digester, one or more constructed wetlands and a solar raceway pond reactor.
Along the project’s journey, AQUACYCLE meets up not only with his ‘creators’, i.e. the research teams in the ENI CBC Med funded project but also with water stakeholders, including farmers from around the Mediterranean Region who are alerting to the dire water situation they are facing and how junior high school students amaze their teachers with their intimate knowledge also of EU regulations concerning treated wastewater reuse and more.
This second tome, published in October 2023 brings the sequel to My Autobiography: Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance, published in February 2022. The latter collects the chapters prior to the construction of a first pilot demonstration unit of the treatment system in Spain, hence the title ‘Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance’.
In this sequel, the reader is informed how the project reached all of its originally foreseen objectives ... and much more ! ... hence the title ‘Exceeding on expectations’.
AQUACYCLE My Autobiography - Part 1 Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance
The manuscript “AQUACYCLE My Autobiography” brings an account of the project’s journey through the ‘eyes’ of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system.
It is foremost intended to share the project’s aims and objectives and the progress towards achieving these objectives in an easy-to-understand manner. It is hoped that readers, including society at large will thus gain access into the functioning and purpose of the components that make up the treatment system: an anaerobic digester, one or more constructed wetlands and a solar raceway pond reactor.
Along the project’s journey, AQUACYCLE meets up not only with his ‘creators’, i.e. the research teams in the ENI CBC Med funded project but also with water stakeholders, including farmers from around the Mediterranean Region who are alerting to the dire water situation they are facing.
This first tome, published in February 2022 collects the chapters prior to the construction of a first pilot demonstration unit of the treatment system in Spain, hence the title ‘Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance’.
AQUACYCLE Capitalization Plan
The AQUACYCLE Capitalization Plan takes stock of the ENI CBC Med funded project’s achievements from two complementary perspectives.
The first chapter collects the Project Legacies – which have been aggregated under no less than 10 different headers – together with the targeted recipients and informs on how public access to these legacies will be ensured beyond the project lifetime. Consequently, further details are presented on each of these respective project legacies.
The second chapter informs about the project’s Capacity Building Achievements, the recipients and the quantified targets reached in terms of the number of Certified APOC users, i.e. the number of persons who received training of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system, abbreviated to APOC system; the number of tertiary degree awards to women in Tunisia for their research related to the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system, and a multitude of women researchers who have been highly instrumental in the successful outcomes of the project’s research activities and for making the outcomes accessible to a wider public, including society at large.
The final, third chapter reiterates on the Project Key Performance Indicators, which sustains the subtitle of the second volume of AQUACYCLE My Autobiography: Exceeding on Expectations.
AQUACYCLE In-depth analysis of local water and sanitation governance framework
The present document brings the analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of the local Governance Framework in the three countries where pilot demonstration units of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system have been constructed, i.e. Lebanon, Spain and Tunisia.
The first chapter places the scope of the present SWOT analysis in the context of the overall aim and the specific objectives of ‘Preparing for participatory decision-making’.
Chapter 2 elaborates briefly on the rationale for the SWOT analysis to be based on a desk review of available reports and assessment studies and interviews with representatives of the public authorities involved at the national, regional and local level. This is followed by a detailed description of the roles and involvement of the main stakeholders’ groups in Chapter 3, while Chapter 4 brings an overview of the regulatory framework for sanitation, wastewater treatment and reuse in agriculture in the respective countries. Chapter 5 informs on the semi-structured questionnaire that was elaborated for the purpose of interviewing the main stakeholders in each country and reports on the outcomes of the 15 stakeholder interviews that were conducted.
Chapter 6 presents the outcomes of the SWOT analysis of the eco-innovative wastewater treatment technology brought by AQUACYCLE, (for technical details on the technology see Output APOC technical guide). In turn, these outcomes provided a solid basis for the elaboration in Chapter 7 of forward looking strategies for the Mediterranean Region as a whole and for the targeted case study countries in particular. Finally, overall conclusions and recommendations are provided in Chapter 8.
AQUACYCLE Technical guide on project's eco-innovative wastewater treatment system
This technical guide has been designed to provide guidance to staff of public and private entities needing info on the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system (abbreviated to APOC system) design, operation and maintenance.
The acronym APOC stands for “Anaerobic digestion”, “Photocatalytic Oxidation” and “Constructed wetland”, the three components of the eco-innovative wastewater treatment system promoted by the AQUACYCLE project. Anaerobic treatment and constructed wetlands are two mature and commercialized technologies with wide applications in the wastewater treatment market, that are combined with a novel solar disinfection/photocatalytic oxidation process towards the treatment of municipal wastewater at a level that satisfies the most stringent standards for reuse. The distinctive features of APOC technology make it eco-friendly, efficient and cost-effective as it is based on natural systems, it uses less chemicals, runs on renewable energy (solar irradiation), produces biogas, fertiliser and a clean water for reuse in agriculture, in domestic, industrial or other applications, and the constructed wetland thrives as a habitant, an ecological tourist attraction aside from being a climate change mitigation measure.
This guide has been prepared by a cross-border multidisciplinary scientific interaction. Specifically, AQUACYCLE partners which hold expertise in the three different components of the APOC system have provided the necessary technical information and data sheets for the scope of this manual.