The EcoShape Guideline team has worked hard over the past year to update the Building with Nature Guideline and to make them more user-friendly. All pages have been checked and information has been partially updated. The preliminary new version is now online. The team now would like to receive user feedback to officialy publish the updated Guideline on June 27th.
Jurre de Vries of the Guideline team explains: ‘The structure of the Guideline has been improved so that it is easier to find what you are looking for. The amount of text is shortened and easier to scan thanks to paragraph headers with flip-out text blocks. We also made more links with other Guidelines on Building with Nature, for example with the Engineering with Nature website of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.’
The Guideline team consists of a combination of enthusiastic young people and experienced ‘old hands in the profession’ of the various EcoShape partners, with backgrounds varying from ecology and engineering to physical geography and climate science. A number of students have also helped to renew the Guideline. The team is led by Jurre de Vries of EcoShape partner Van Oord and Gerard van Raalte for partner Boskalis, the latter ond was involved in the first version of the 2012 Guideline. With the involvement of Van Raalte, the transfer of knowledge and the idea behind the first version of the Guideline from 2012 are guaranteed. (Text continues below the picture).
Left to right: Gerard van Raalte (for Boskalis), Carolien Wegman (HKV Lijn in Water), Ivana Prusina (Witteveen+Bos), Fokke de Jong (Wageningen Universiteit, top), Wieger Buijs (Boskalis, below) en Stephanie IJff (Deltares) . Jurre de Vries (Van Oord), Hanneke Heesmans en Judith Kloosterman (Wageningen Universiteit) are not on this photo.
‘The renewal process has not been completely finished yet’ continues Jurre, ‘but we deliberately chose to already open the Guidelines website for use. We bring the guideline to the attention of the EcoShape network and of students, so that they can give us feedback on things that we can still improve. For example, I just gave a lecture at Wageningen University. The students there will get work an assignment with the information from the Guidelines. If they encounter points of improvement, they report it to us. ‘
Does the team now cease to exist? Jurre: ‘No, certainly not, in the coming years a lot of new knowledge will come from the ongoing pilot projects of EcoShape. Together with the project leaders, we will add this information step by step on the Guideline website. We announce the release of every new part within our network and beyond. ‘
Visit the preliminary revised Guideline here and give your feedback
Use the contact-tab in the upper right corner of the Guideline page to share your feedback or contact Jurre de Vries, see contact details below.
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