On 20 April, Athens and Gwangju settled down to discuss Green Modeling & Risk Assessment during their second bilateral meeting. Athens shared about the 3 Pillar Plan and risk assessment tools to prevent further natural disasters in the city. Meanwhile, Gwangju extended their presentation from the last meeting by sharing the Green Remodeling Program implementation examples and the outcomes of this plan in 2022.
Athens started with a presentation containing statistical data, comparing data between 2000 and 2020. The number of flood incidents in 2020 alone exceeded the number of total incidents from 2000-2019. Based on the data, floods have become a number one threat to many cities, although this is just among other natural disasters. One of Athens Risk Assessment examples was BEYOND’s Flood HUB 2017, created by software simulation. Using the software and optimizing the critical points on the map, the city was able to predict the flood incident area with high accuracy, which helped minimize the overall flood’s impact in 2017. Furthermore, the city also follows data from wildfires. It creates fast-track studies to estimate flood extent, depth, water velocity, and landslide susceptibility to detect burnt river basins, which helps stakeholders obtain accurate information for risk management and decreases the possible impact of floods in the city of Athens.
Gwangju continued their presentation from the last meeting by sharing knowledge in green remodeling projects. For this project, Gwangju targeted public kindergartens, healthcare centers, and medical facilities, specifically ones over 15 years old.
Through this project, the city not only reviewed energy performance on older infrastructure but also applied active, passive, and renewable implementation solutions. An example of an active solution was replacing equipment such as changing ventilation and better lighting equipment. Passive solutions focused on structural changes, such as window frames, external walls, and rooftops. Lastly, the city used photovoltaic implementation as an example of renewable solutions. In 2021, the total reduction in GHG emissions was 1,107 tons of CO2, which is equivalent to planting 136,765 pine trees with a lifespan of 30 years each around the city. Gwangju is continuing this project, and the city is currently working on 139 ongoing remodeling projects just in 2022.
Through the questionnaire section, both cities showed a great interest in each other’s presentations, such as an interest in remote sensing, verification processes and validating information from natural disasters.
In a couple of weeks, Gwangju will visit Athens through the ICP-AGIR programme’s study visit. In the second week of June, both cities will observe discussed best practices in person. They plan on continuing to share their interest in each other’s policies and practices.
