UBC Agricultural Road Walkway Project – Week Five
Feb 17th, 2012 by irisfeng
It is almost the end of the project. The final report and documents hopefully will be done on next week. All our group members are working hard on organizing the data and summarizing the evaluations. At the meantime, we have a chance to think about the impacts of the Agricultural Road renewal project and our walkway project evaluation.
During these few weeks, the renewal project research gave us a lot of ideas about building and maintaining a sustainable water system, and brought us experience of being involved in a practical project with a client and organizations. Also, we got to know how our community, UBC Vancouver campus, is trying to protect and improve the environment. The impacts of the renewal project can be categorized in three aspects: aesthetic value, environment sustainability, and society value. Here are the pictures of Agricultural Road before and after renewal.
Agricultural before renewal
Agricultural Road after renewal
Aesthetic value
Compared the pictures above, a lawn with a nice looking x-cross pavement was implemented in the renewal project. More trees and shrubs were planted to cover the bioswale and runoff tubes. Also, the reconstructed concrete pavement and new benches outside LSK building create a aesthetic pleasure to users.
Environment Sustainability
The new water system of Agricultural Road effectively utilizes runoff and stormwater to irrigate plants and save potable water.
– The bioswale stores stormwater and allows stromwater to infiltrate into soil slowly.
– The large area of lawn absorbs most of the runoff.
– Runoff and stromwater are stored naturally through underground tubing system and reused for irrigation.
– Less energy is used in irrigation.
Since we are using the rainfall intensity data from 1992, the present rainfall intensity might be slightly different due to global warming effects as well as La Nina effect. This is an issue we need to consider in our evaluations. Global warming brings the increase of atmosphere temperature, which can cause more rain than snow in winter and more evaporation in summer. The extra rainfall during rainy reasons will be a burden to the runoff collection system. And the extra need of water for irrigation in summer will be a problem of the irrigation system as well.
Society Value
The Agricultural Road renewal project affected the society from the beginning to the end. It first caught people’s attention with its construction disturbance, but ended as a pleasant looking renewal. UBC as a leader in imparting knowledge and technologies, should pioneer the green maintenance and sustainability ideas to students. The Agricultural Road project perfectly promotes the water recycling ideas and concerns about global warming to the society.
Feel free to contact us at ssi.agrd.walkway@gmail.com for further inquiries.
UBC Agricultural Roadway Group