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PROFORSK-Skole og samfunn

Stormwater research - get young people engaged!

Alternative title: Overvann - få ungene med!

Awarded: NOK 0.30 mill.

Stormwater research is about water - but not only! It is also about people. It requires interdisciplinary cooperation between hydrologists, water managers, urban planners and social scientists to come up with good stormwater solutions. And stormwater is a societal challenge in nearly every larger city causing flooding in basements or spills of mixed wastewater and rainwater. This project is about getting young people engaged in research by involving them in the ongoing research project «New Water Ways» (www.newwaterways.no), which is about urban stormwater management. It aims to show them that interdisciplinary cooperation is necessary to solve stormwater related challenges. The project includes several activities, which require manual skills for building a green roof, social skills for preparing and performing a survey, as well as creativity for making a "stormwater-friendly pollinator oasis". We cooperate with Teglverket school in Oslo where the pupils with help from Kuben yrkesarena will install and test several green test roofs with different vegetation on it. With a watering can and after heavy rainfall they will measure how much water runs off from the different green roofs in comparison to a black roof without vegetation. In the surroundings of the school we will install a ?transparent beehive?, which allows to study the life of bees. Further will the kids get engaged with the schools neighbourhood to find out what the people know about stormwater and how do they think future stormwater solutions around Teglverket school should look like.

Stormwater research is about water - but not only! It is also about people. It requires interdisciplinary cooperation between hydrologists, water managers, urban planners and social scientists to come up with good stormwater solutions. And stormwater is a societal challenge in nearly every larger city causing flooding in basements or spills of mixed wastewater and rainwater. This project is about getting young people engaged in research by involving them in the ongoing research project "New Water Ways" (www.newwaterways.no), which is about urban stormwater management. It aims to show them that interdisciplinary cooperation is necessary to solve stormwater related challenges. The project includes several activities, which require manual skills for building a green roof, social skills for preparing and performing a survey, as well as creativity to design multi-functional stormwater solutions. Our target group are young people from the age of 10 and onwards, which invited to contribute to ongoing research on stormwater management.

Funding scheme:

PROFORSK-Skole og samfunn