Large 18 months meeting of DESSIN in Germany

After a year and a half of work, about 40 European DESSIN partners met to present the first results and to confirm that the project flows according to the path taken at the beginning of 2014. For two days in June, project partners from Adelphi, Amphos21, Bruine de Bruin, CETaqua, DHI, Ecologic Institute, Emschergenossenschaft, EYDAP, Inrigo Water, IWW, KWR, LKI, National Technical University of Athens, SEGNO, SINTEF, TELINT, UFT and the University of Duisburg-Essen (plus a member of the Project Advisory Committee) gathered near Dortmund in Germany.

The meeting successfully helped to identify the possible interactions between the demo sites, despite the differences of the technologies researched and used in each. One of the main objectives was also to clarify and discuss the methodology of Ecosystem Services (ESS) in order to make the concept less abstract for those not involved into its development. ESS is going to be applied in the different demo sites to provide a tool for the valuation of ecosystem services as catalyzer for innovation.

In addition, the meeting was used to visit DESSIN’s Emscher demo site as well as the restoration project being carried out in the Emscher region, which began in 1990, including the re-naturalization of open wastewater canals and the transformation of an industrial area into a residential area (Lake Phoenix), among other things.

The next large project meetings will take place in Westland, Holland in March 2016, in Barcelona, Spain in January 2017 and in Hoffselva, Norway in June 2017.

Participants of the DESSIN 18 months meeting