Environment
Members of the Excellence Cluster on Environment
By combining the expertise of the five IDEA League partner universities and developing collaborative and complementary research in the area of Environment, the IDEA League aims to make a significant contribution to society in this field. Our secondary objective is to become the nucleus of a KIC as part of the planned European Institute of Technology (EIT).
Imperial College
Researchers working across the spectrum of climate change research are brought together by Imperial's Grantham Institute for Climate Change launched in 2007. The Institute focuses on providing solutions to the healthcare, environmental and engineering challenges caused by climate change with the aim of having a concrete influence on international policy makers.
TU Delft
The Delft Research Centre Sustainable Urban Areas brings together research into different aspects of the built environment: urban planning, the housing market, social cohesion in neighbourhoods and sustainable building. Goal: to make urban areas more sustainable and improve the quality of life of the people living there. Examples of the research topics are the development of a checklist which people can use to determine whether the indoor environment at home is healthy and research into the pros and cons of financial government support for home-owners.
ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich’s Department of Earth Sciences played a decisive role in the planning and implementation of difficult phases of constructed of the Swiss alpine NEAT tunnel, in which one of the greatest challenges was undercutting existing dams.
New Masters programs in Earth Sciences, Atmosphere and Climate Science and Applied Geophysics (in conjunction with IDEA League partner universities) have been introduced.
The new institute of Environmental Decisions,
part of the Energy Science Center and formed in conjunction with the Department
of Environment Sciences, intends to further improve the integration of the
humanities and social sciences.
RWTH Aachen University
Geosciences and Materials Technology
(including raw materials management) constitute an independent faculty of RWTH
Aachen University; its work focuses systematically on resource-efficient
materials flow at every stage from raw materials extraction to recycling. For
over 15 years now, moreover, the University’s wide-ranging and multi-faceted
expertise in environmental sciences has been drawn together in what is known as
the Interdisciplinary Forum: more than 60 professorial-rank staff from all nine
main subject areas – though mostly from Natural Sciences and Engineering – have
come together under its aegis and have been collaborating intensively in a
range of working groups. Research projects to a total value of about €30 million
a year are undertaken in response to commissions from external bodies.
ParisTech
Environment is an active field of research and teaching at ParisTech. This
broad and cross-disciplinary domain has a significant overlap with the Energy
and Life Sciences areas. Besides the main energy and automotive companies,
the industrial collaborations of the ParisTech labs in this field range from
public transportation (SNCF, RATP) to water distribution and waste
processing companies (Veolia).
ParisTech also benefits from a close research
partnership in this field with the
French national institute for agronomy
research (INRA).
Our main fields of investigation are :
- understanding
biogeochemical cycles and eco- and agrosystems
- modelling of the impact of
human activities and economic growth (with emphasis on energy
transformation, food/biomass production, urbanisation and transport) on
environment (soil, air and water quality, forests, natural resources,
climate change,...)
- modelling of the impact of pollution on living
organisms
- reducing the environmental impact of industry, agriculture and
transport, in particular through ecodesign, biotechnology, and
innovative territorial organisation
- improving depollution techniques
(e.g. waste water purification) and waste processing.
Providing decision
makers with expertise and management tools is also a
major mission of the
ParisTech institutes in this field.
