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Verband für Bauwerksbegrünung (VfB)
The non-profit Austrian Green Roof and Living Wall Association (VfB) was founded in 1991 and brings together over 80 industry and business players, planning, delivering and maintaining greened buildings in Austria. Since 2017, the Austrian association (VfB) is 100% owner of the Austrian competence centre and central coordination unit GRÜNSTATTGRAU, the Innovation Laboratory for Green Cities. GRÜNSTATTGRAU is supported by the Austrian Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology and consists of a partner network of over 300 entities from public, research and business sector. GRÜNSTATTGRAU is facilitated by three different experts panels formed by the network partners (business,scientific and external advisory board) who are supervising GRÜNSTATTGRAU with their expertise.
Mission and current status
In light of its background of the Austrian Green Roof and Green Wall Association, GRÜNSTATTGRAU is focusing on the future of urban green environment, innovations and ideas for green cities, products and services, activities targeting research dissemination and knowledge transfer, technical implementation guidance, co-creation activities and economic and social cooperation regarding Green Infrastructure and nature based solutions on buildings and their implementation.
The aim is to promote all levels of green on buildings through communication, demonstration projects, business incubators, law and policies activities – not only on national, but also on European level. The intention is to upscale and share the results with all partners in the European network and market (knowledge transfer). The trade of the greening industry is now highly demanded and ready for rollout. After publishing the national standards for green roofs ÖNORM L1131 (2010) and interior landscaping ÖNORM L 1133 (2017), a committee of experts (VfB) are currently working on the Austrian Standards of outdoor vertical greening (ÖNORM L1136), including the results of the latest fire protection tests. Furthermore, GRÜNSTATTGRAU is supporting cities to set up strategies including green infrastructure. The demand of action taking within cities for climate change adaption is rising.
The instruments of GRÜNSTATTGRAU are including demonstration testbeds in different cities, a moving Green Laboratory on roadshow and a multi-stakeholder online platform to develop and offer own supporting tools, services and technologies.
The mobile Living Lab unit test-track roadshow of GRÜNSTATTGRAU is a reconstructed cargo container called MUGLI that is used to demonstrate various kinds of green roof, outdoor and indoor green wall technologies, energy production, pollinator and bird supporting technologies and in general new innovative approaches for green and energy infrastructure. MUGLI stands for mobile.urban.green.living.innovative. It is used for information and communication work, awareness rising, events, as an experimental space, to generate live monitoring data and as a meeting point and physical centre to show green technologies come alive. Since summer 2017 MUGLI is touring through Austria and beyond to bring the greening technology to all target and synergy partner cities of GRÜNSTATTGRAU.
The GRÜNSTATTGRAU online platform (www.gruenstattgrau.at) is a multi-stakeholder platform for all network partners of GRÜNSTATTGRAU and the interested public. It provides information for green cities and nature based solutions, greening technologies and best practice of green buildings. The online platform includes databases for showcase projects, products, R&D-projects and greening experts and provides different online services of GRÜNSTATTGRAU, for example a free digital first level consultancy service for projects called “Greening Check”. Event calendar and newsletter are implemented. In the internal area we provide studies and data for premium users. All network partners of GRÜNSTATTGRAU have online profiles to present their innovations, products, projects or ideas online.
The Green Living Laboratory GRÜNSTATTGRAU represents an innovative approach for facilitation and multiplication of national, European and global interests in Climate Change adaptation through Green Infrastructure and Nature Based Solutions.