The CESBA MED Sustainable Med Cities Project promotes a neighbourhood level approach to develop synergies in energy efficiency. The Interreg Med Project is coordinated by Prof. Ruben Paul Borg from the Faculty for the Built Environment at the University of Malta. 

CESBA - Common European Sustainable Built Environment Assessments, represents a bottom-up initiative towards promoting a harmonisation of assessing the built environment on sustainability from buildings to neighborhoods to regions throughout Europe. CESBA is a process towards a new culture and standards in Europe.

It promoted a neighbourhood level approach to develop synergies in energy efficiency. Energy efficiency improvement is a key strategy to reduce the environmental impact of public buildings. However energy efficiency plans do not fully exploit the potential for synergies that groups of buildings might offer. Energy efficient measures and their implementation at neighbourhood level, such as district heating and PV installations are clearly showing that a building scale approach is not optimal in reaching significant and cost-effective improvements.

At the neighbourhood scale, decision making processes and the design of the intervention are more complex. Several EU projects addressed this issue proposing different methodologies, tools and indicators. CESBA MED exploited the results of 10 previous EU projects and identified the most affordable and operational solutions. The evaluation of the test results led to the development of  a common sustainability assessment framework at urban scale, together with a set of 8 regional assessment tools (CESBA MED SNTool) and an innovative decision making process. These were developed in order to support the development of energy efficiency plans for public buildings in the context of their surrounding neighbourhoods. The CESBA SNTool led to the MED Passport enabling the comparison of the performances of buildings and neighbourhoods, in line with the EC COM 2014 445. A CESBA MED network of cities was setup in order to maximise the transferability of results. Training courses and workshops were organised in the MED area. The project was part of the European CESBA initiative. 

The CESBA MED Interreg Med Project Objectives included the following: 

• exploited results from 10 previous EU projects and developed energy efficiency plans at neighbourhood level in five Mediterranean cities
• developed a CESBA MED Passport for public buildings, including a sustainable neighbourhood toolkit, and a training system
• organised a CESBA Sustainable MED Neighbourhood Award
• produced a booklet on best practices.

The CESBA Med Project refers to Investment Priority-Specific Objective 2-1-1 of the Interreg Med Programme (Priority Axis 2: Fostering low-carbon strategies and energy efficiency in specific MED territories: cities, islands and remote areas; to raise capacity for better management of energy in public buildings at transnational level). For more details kindly visit the project website. 

In particular, the University of Malta (UM) was involved in a number of key deliverable of this project including the creation of the CESBA Med e-Learning platform for professionals and for decision makers, the irganisation of Training in the Med Area, the first Sustaibaility Audit of the University of Malta, the creation of the CESBA med urban and Building Sustainbaility Assessment Tool and the organisation of the neighbourhood award.

CESBA Sprint Workshop 2018 Gozo-Malta

From 14 to 16 November 2018, the CESBA Med Interreg Mediterrean consortium in collaboration with the University of Malta, under the coordination of Prof. Ruben P. Borg from the Faculty for the Built Environment and ECO Gozo at the Ministry for Gozo amongst other partners, organised the CESBA Sprint Workshop 2018 at the Kempinski Hotel San Lawrenz in Gozo. The CESBA Sprint Workshop was inaugurated by Hon. Dr Justyne Caruana who is currently the Minister for Gozo and was attended by over forty participants including Dr Ing. Owen Casha from the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology, Francarl Galea, Jordan Lee Gauci and Alessia Debono who were also involved in the organisation of the sprint workshop.

Staying away from the office for three days, offered the participants the possibility to focus on specific topics and establish strong relationships with other experts. Additionally the results of the first  CESBA neighborhood award were also shared. The participants engaged in a  comprehensive exchange on quality standards for the future built environment, implementation of policies and the involvement of users and new EU-project applications. The three day fully packed programme included a number of parallel working sessions (some of which were held outside the workshop’s main venue) with a well defined thema which focused on the latest challenges in the built environment, circular economy, tools and indicators: their usage and necessary adaptations, energy renovation in buildings and pooling resources amongst others. Each of the four team focused on specific topics, but which were all linked to each other. All teams had two moderators who defined in advance a number of guiding questions per topic, coordinated the discussion and reported the outcomes in a plenary session. A team of overall moderators including Dr Markus Berchtold-Domig from CESBA Med ensured a fruitful working atmosphere and useful results were published later on. 

Pilot Training Courses

On 21 February 2019, UM together organised a seminar with the collaboration of Nature Trust Malta, FEE and the Green Key National Committee. The seminar served as an info-day on the CESBA-Med project as well as training for both professionals/technicians and policy makers. Two training courses were organised: one for the decision makers and one for the technicians/professionals. The technical course included a workshop, where the tool was introduced and explained to the participants and a test case sustainable audit was done. 

The CESBA Med e-learning Platform for Sustainbale Med Cities

Following the organisation of these two Pilot Local Training Courses, the University of Malta has been actively working on the CESBA-MED E-learning platform that hosts two pilot online training courses. The first course is targeted for the users of the CESBA MED SNTools and consists of eight technical level modules. At the end of this course, one may take a test and on successful completion, a certificate is awarded. The second training course is targeted for decision makers and consists of three modules. These courses are organised using Moodle which is an open source e-learning platform and were developed as part of the CESBA MED Project, with free access to any interested individual or organisation from the MED area. The CESBA-MED E-learning platform was officially launched at the beginning of October 2019 and may be accessed from the following link:

CESBA Neighbourhood Award 2019

Earlier on this year, the University of Malta submitted an application to participate in the CESBA Neighbourhood Award 2019. The Neighbourhood Award fostered a competitive challenge for urban areas in the three main categories: new developments, areas under a planned or project phase retrofitting and existing retrofitted areas. The aim of the award was the dissemination and capitalisation of the tools and methodologies developed by CESBA-MED partners for raising the sustainability of MED urban areas. The CESBA Neighbourhood Award had the following objectives:

• improve the quality of life for inhabitants and minimize negative impacts on climate and resources
• collect knowledge on urban development;
• give visibility and share knowledge;
• contribute to the global SBE Urban Challenge.

A neighbourhood had to comply with at least three of the following criteria:

• borderlines are streets, natural borders and legal borders
• 40.000 m² up to 160.000 m² ground area (200 m to 400 m)
• an area that can be crossed in a 10 to 15 minute walk
• cluster of 5 to 15 buildings
• 200 to 1,500 inhabitants.

This award featured an international jury composed by reputed professionals, belonging to the sphere of urban development, spatial planning, architecture or energy efficiency and sustainable development as well as politics and policies. They evaluated and honoured the winners of the award. The award ceremony was held during the SBE conference which took place in Scilla, Italy from 16th to 17th of May 2019. A dedicated time slot shall be given to the awardees to present their projects during the World Sustainable Built Environment (SBE) Conference, to be held in Gothenburg (Sweden), from 9th to the 11th June 2020.

The University of Malta Sustainability Assessment submission is included in the Neighbourhood Award book published by CESBA Med. The University of Malta submitted a proposal, under the Existing Retrofitted Areas category, on an innovation project implemented on the main campus in Msida, for educational facilities in a safe environment which is sustainable at both building scale and at urban neighbourhood scale. It targeted the wellbeing of the community on the campus while serving as a hub with the various facilities including office spaces and the library. The campus features a size of 27 ha, with circa 14,000 inhabitants and lies in areas with cities with 10,000 to 50,000 inhabitants. 

For further information on the CESBA med project and the Sustainabity Audit of the University of Malta Campus, contact Prof. Ruben Paul Borg (ruben.p.borg@um.edu.mt), Faculty for the Built Environment.