The Construction Technology Centre (CTCON) and the company CHM Obras e Infraestructuras, thanks to an agreement with Barcelona City Council, have replicated the LIFE HEATLAND project in more than 4,000 m2 adjacent to the Catalan city hall. The participation of the project in the COSCI & COSTA 2021 event, organised by the LIFE COOL & LOW NOISE ASPHALT project, allowed Barcelona City Council to learn about the initiative and take the decision to implement this pilot project in the city.
The new pavement was laid over the weekend and, this Monday, Francisco Moral, coordinator of the LIFE HEATLAND project, Gloria Motos, from CTCON, David Nicolás and Lorena Palomo from CHM, accompanied the Barcelona City Councillor for Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition on a visit to the new asphalted area and were responsible for verifying that the correct instructions had been followed.
The process of monitoring and verifying the sustainability over time of the noise reduction will be carried out by CTCON until 2024.
In the Region of Murcia, the project was launched in 2018 on the basis of the promising reflective asphalt mix developed at laboratory scale by the Technology Centre in the REPARA 2.0 project. After this three-year trial, the project has shown as results an increase in the solar reflectance of 173%, a decrease in surface temperature by up to 15°C and in ambient temperature by about 2°C. In addition, the ambient noise level in the area is 3 dB(A) lower.
HEATLAND, in the city of Murcia, has had four measurement towers which, over the last 3 years, have obtained 6.5 million data, recording the following parameters every 15 minutes, 24 hours/day: pavement surface temperature, air temperature, humidity, wind speed, solar radiation, atmospheric pollutants, lighting levels and noise.
The LIFE HEATLAND project (LIFE16 CCA/ES/000077) has been co-funded by the European Union's LIFE 2014-2020 Environment and Climate Action Programme. The project consortium is formed by the Construction Technology Centre of the Region of Murcia (CTCON), the construction company CHM Obras e Infraestructuras, the City Council of Murcia, the Regional Federation of Construction Employers of the Region of Murcia (FRECOM) and the Slovenian Construction Cluster (SGG-CCS).
