Barcelona
TOP SEC - Ecological green roofs bringing nature back to cities through metropolitan circularity and community engagement
Barcelona’s metropolis is facing hotter summers, longer droughts, and a growing mountain of organic waste, along with declining urban biodiversity.
TOP SEC offers a solution: transforming flat rooftops into seasonal green, or brown, spaces that do not need irrigation. This is achieved by creating an innovative substrate made from biochar derived from organic waste digestate. Another action is to identify optimal plant species for low-maintenance roofs. The project is piloted in four diverse buildings and includes an educational programme to engage the community, changing mindsets and fostering harmony between residents and urban biodiversity.
Our main challenges...
Urban areas are experiencing increasingly longer drought periods and more intense, recurrent heat waves.
Managing rising volumes of organic waste is increasingly challenging – from collection and treatment to finding new ways to revalorise waste beyond agriculture and composting.
Developers, entrepreneurs, urban authorities – and the public – often see green roofs as costly and problematic to build and maintain, particularly in dense, vulnerable areas with deficient building stock.
and proposed solutions
Transform flat rooftops into low-maintenance, naturalised and seasonal roofs that retain humidity and do not require irrigation.
Repurpose the digestate from the organic fraction of municipal waste by turning it into a biochar with high agronomic capacities, to create a substrate for irrigation-free naturalised roofs.
Create educational workshops to guide the users of the buildings throughout the project, and a service to advise citizens on the multiple benefits of rehabilitating their roofs with the TOP SEC solution.
Key figures
Milestones
Set-up of a new stakeholder engagement strategy and educational programme
Set-up of 22 trays with different substrate mixtures and construction sections to collect data
End of construction and start of measurements of the TOP SEC roofs on four buildings
Impact evaluation report assesses the TOP SEC solution at building and city levels
Final event to present and showcase TOP SEC results and Innovative Solution Model
