Smart trees. Reusing UMA´s waste: un árbol biotecnológico para mejorar entornos docentes universitarios y ofrecer servicios conectivos

Resumen en ingles: At present, climate change will affect not only natural ecosystems, but also strongly threatens our urban environment, so mitigation work is necessary in our cities. Aware of this, the Smart Campus Vice-Rectorate of the University of Malaga (UMA) is working to make its Campus more environmentally friendly, sustainable, more technological, healthier and friendlier. Within this idea, the project presented here, framed within SDG 13 (Climate Action) is called “Smart-tree”. This is aimed at creating a relaxed and friendly co-working space, where nature (mainly plants) provides a microclimate of environmental and sensory comfort, and access technology to renewable energy and information is able. At the same time, the space is also intended to generate a friendly green atmosphere of leisure and recreation. It is widely known and proven that the benefits provided by green spaces to citizens are multiple: reduction of noise pollution, increase in evapotranspiration, decrease in wind when making a barrier effect, increase in the biodiversity of the area and increase in perceptual and sensory quality (landscape, environmental, aesthetic and aromatic qualities). The development of the project is being carried out by an interdisciplinary group of professors from the university knowledge areas of Architecture, Communications Engineering, Industrial Engineering Design and Botany, as well as students (through the elaboration of their final degrees works and final projects of Master) in the surroundings of the Teatinos Campus of the UMA (Malaga city, Spain). The structure of the Smart-Tree and its furniture have been designed to be built, based on the “re-using” of campus materials that have exhausted their first useful life (circular economy). For this, a catalogue of obsolete materials has been made, from both the different centres and the warehouses that the UMA has available and where there is material that can be used again. Therefore, it is possible to increase the life cycle of the products and decrease the use of new resources, achieving eco-efficiency in an nZEB (“Nearly Zero Energy Buildings”) prototype. In order to create the space and therefore provide it with plants that generate a new environmental and sensory microclimate, a proposal based on the use of primarily native flora has been developed and also considering the water requirement, maintenance needs, functionality, moments were flowering occurs and the ability to fix carbon. Taking all this into account, and through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the design of the most optimal nature tuning of the structure and surrounding area has been developed. The Smart-Tree also belongs to the IoT (Internet Of Things) and Smart-Campus paradigms, with the aim of apply the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to monitor and guide its management in an efficient and ecological way. In this way, the necessary mechanisms for the monitoring of various environmental and energy variables through a near-range IoT system have been established in the Smart-Tree. This system has been designed based on the modification and appropriate hardware for the measurement of the desired variables and a system that allows the visualization of this information obtained in a web address. A small photovoltaic solar installation has also been defined in line with the nature of the project, which will provide infrastructure users with access to clean and sustainable electricity, in addition to meeting the energy needs of the aforementioned data collection system. As a result, the Smart-Tree space is being built in the environment of the Faculty of Sciences of the UMA, under the environmental and sustainability premises pursued. Specifically, the space has been located in the NW area of the Faculty, next to the Central Research Support Services (SCAI) and is in the assembly phase.