City of Philadelphia sets sights on “the most comprehensive network of green infrastructure” in country [VIDEO]

From Treehugger:

Philadelphia is taking some pretty major steps to reduce water pollution and green its streets and public spaces: The city’s water department has signed an ambitious deal with state environmental officials to deploy a series of infrastructure innovations like green roofs, absorptive pavement, and expanded park space that will contain overflow and halt the spread of pollution. The plan will also have the distinct benefit of cleaning up Philadelphia’s water, and generally making the city a more pleasant place to live, as the above video attests. It’s being hailed as “the most comprehensive network of green infrastructure found in any U.S. city.”

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The Water Department has also recently announced plans to adopt water infrastructure capital planning software.

PhillyTreeMap.org: crowdsourced census of Philadelphia’s tree canopy

Map rendering of some 180,000 cataloged trees in Philadelphia, via PhillyTreeMap.org.

Philadelphia is crowdsourcing a census of its trees, and, yes, would you mind helping?

Unveiled on Arbor Day during Philly Tech Week, PhillyTreeMap.org is a wiki-inspired web application that allows users who register free to collaborate with the project partners — City of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission – to map,  inventory and preserve the Philadelphia urban forest. The project was built by local mapping company Azavea.

Nearly 180,000 are already cataloged, though the species and other core details are missing.With guidance from the site, users can ascertain species type, estimate trunk diameter and height and fill in other specifics that will help the coalition of groups to better ascertain what is lacking and what is working in Philadelphia foliage.

PhillyTreeMap is meant to help Parks & Rec with its 30 percent tree canopy goal outlined in Greenworks Philadelphia by engaging residents around tree planting and stewardship, Azavea Project Manager Deb Boyer said during the Green Tech Showcase unveiling. Currently Philadelphia has an average of roughly 20 percent canopy across the city, though some parts have fuller coverage and other parts have far less.

Funding has not yet supported a mobile interface, which would allow users to more easily update entries while at the tree, Boyer said, but the browser experience is a user friendly one. Team members will offer some project oversight in case of false information, but the hope is for Philadelphians to help with this cause, she added.

According to a press release [PDF]: “Azavea built PhillyTreeMap using open source code contributed by the Urban Forest Map project in San Francisco and plans to collaborate with the group on future urban forestry projects.  The development of PhillyTreeMap was supported by a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.”

Green Tech Showcase: four environment innovations take stage at Philly Tech Week

Launching of the Battleship U. S. S. New Jersey, at the Navy Shipyard, Dec. 7, 1942.

Sustainability has a tech angle beyond composting, and Philly Tech Week has an event to show that off.

For Arbor Day, on Friday, April 29, four of Philadelphia’s biggest, most promising environmentally-themed innovations are taking the lunchtime stage at WHYY, the official headquarters of PTW, for the Green Tech Showcase and brown bag lunch — highlighted by CityPaper.

(1) Christine Knapp, formerly of PennFuture, will discuss the Navy Yard-located Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster for Energy Efficient Buildings, one of three Energy Innovation Hubs the U.S. Dept of Energy has funded throughout the United States with goals of improved energy efficiency and operability, reduced carbon emission, stimulation of private investment and quality job creation.

(2) The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, and Azavea will unveil PhillyTreeMap.org, a website that enables organizations and the public to collaboratively build and map an inventory of the Philadelphia urban forest.

(3) Mark Group has developed a proprietary technology that marries high speed thermal imaging with satellites. The result is a mobilized vehicle that can capture a thermal image of a home’s exterior (illustrating the energy loss of the home from the exterior) at the rate of 1,000 homes per hour. Check out our recent coverage here.

(4) Micah Gold-Markel, the CEO of Solar States, will discuss the technology behind and immediate lessons from the company’s first major commercial installation on top of the Crane Arts Building in Kensington.

Mark Group: exposing energy efficiencies in homes with thermal imaging [VIDEO]

Craig Rodgers, Mark Group Home Performance Advisor, uses a handheld thermal imaging device to check for temperature variation. Photo by Sarah Schu.

We often have a subtle struggle to be comfortable in our own homes. In the winter, we use layers and blankets, and in the summer, it all comes off to keep down those pesky utility bills.

This is where the Mark Group, which says home weatherization can still shape that struggle, comes in.

The Mark Group uses state-of-the-art technology to assess and improve a home’s energy efficiency, says spokeswoman Abby Feinstein. Currently the Mark Group uses a blower door, which is a high-speed fan that connects to the outside of the homeowner’s door and pulls air out of the house. By pulling air out of the house, the air pressure is lowered and higher pressured air from outside will begin to come in through any cracks and holes. This allows the homeowner to see exactly where sealing or insulation needs to be installed.

“One of the greatest barriers to scaling energy efficiency is awareness,” Feinstein says. “In the United States, people are not familiar with the levers they can pull to make their homes more energy efficient, which saves energy consumption and money.”

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Drexel’s green home technology experiment

From left to right: Cody Ray, Dr. Joan Weiner and Aleksandra Wolchasty standing in front of the Drexel Smart House

In partnership with Temple University’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab, the university’s capstone journalism class, students Chelsea Leposa and Jared Pass will cover neighborhood technology issues for Technically Philly and Philadelphia Neighborhoods through May.

The is the second of a two-part series about residential technologies being developed or explored in the region. See the first here.

Frat houses are usually synonymous with keg-stands and jungle juice. There, eco-friendly house technology would seem as important as finishing homework.

But a group of Drexel students are trying to alter that perception, using an abandoned frat house as a great green opportunity.

The Drexel Smart House, located at 34th and Race Streets, is a 19th century Victorian home that is being transformed into a living, working laboratory for green tech. The Smart House team, a student-run organization, hopes that after it is built, it can serve as a platform for green design, technology and research.

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