Moving Toward Green Climate-Resilient Business Parks
Community Manager for Creating 'Blue-Green' Business Parks
PROJECT STORY
The Challenge
There is often a requirement for business parks to become climate-adaptive and biodiverse, but owners and occupiers can lack sufficient knowledge of how to approach this change.
The Solution
Arcadis helped to create and manage a new community of interested parties to share best-practice experiences and knowledge of green and climate-resilient solutions for business parks.
The Impact
Companies, employees and visitors alike benefit from sustainable and well-planned blue-green business parks.
€26 million
Awarded from growth fund
10
Annual community meetings
The Challenge
The effects of climate change are evident across the Netherlands, including on business parks. But many stakeholders do not know how to make existing and new sites climate-adaptive and biodiverse. At the same time, there are many sites that are in need of revitalization and improvement, and which are feeling the pressure of meeting energy transition targets. The introduction of climate-resilient solutions can help to tackle many of these challenges, but a lack of knowledge and fragmented interests often prevent a coordinated and successful approach.
The Solution
To prepare business parks for climate change, 'Samen Klimaatbestendig' (climate-resilient together) is building a new network of people to share experiences and knowledge of green and climate-resilient solutions. Some examples include passive cooling methods to reduce the temperature, and collecting rainwater to allow business activities to continue even in the case of heat or heavy downpours. For local businesses, this will help to reduce energy bills and the risk of property damage.
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As community manager, Arcadis supports the network by providing a wealth of experience, knowledge and useful contacts. As an industry, our insight and overview of available knowledge is growing, and together we can bring expertise around new techniques, regulations, policies, funding models, and communication strategies, all supported by practical examples of implementation; for more information, see Klimaatadaptatie Nederland (the Climate Adaptation Knowledge Portal for the Netherlands). As community manager, we can build and enhance this valuable network to identify challenges, find solutions, and unite diverse interests, parties and above all people. In this way, we connect people and networks and help set the agenda, raise awareness and draft new policies, aligning with all relevant parties and engaging with government agencies. For this work, we are able to draw on experience gained from many other projects Arcadis is carrying out with and on behalf of companies and business parks, such as pilot studies, policy development, process guidance and design.
The challenge is to establish connections between parties that haven't yet found one another.
The Impact
As community manager, our efforts are helping to accelerate the delivery of blue-green infrastructure in business parks throughout the country. We have been committed to supporting the needs of stakeholders and the environment from the outset, as a result of which we were awarded €26 million from the National Growth Fund for the project 'Werklandschappen van de Toekomst' (working landscapes of the future).
Clever design can make any business park attractive for customers, employees, plants and animals. It also reduces the damage caused by rainwater, impassable roads, hot parking lots or machines that overheat. Companies and visitors can benefit from a sustainable and well-planned blue-green business park.
