A team of five Swiss experts has worked out the reasons why Switzerland’s built infrastructure stands before huge challenges and how the country can logically and efficiently start to cope with this situation. To this end, the experts have developed a roadmap entitled “Switzerland's building stock is under pressure to adapt”.
With a bird’s eye perspective on the entirety of buildings, streets, supply and disposal networks, traffic and many other aspects besides, according to a report published by the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa), the group now intends to generate fresh impetus for the Entwicklung Bauwerk Schweiz (Swiss building stock development) project, which was originally launched around a decade ago, with the aim of driving progress in the areas of research and practice. Today, Switzerland’s built infrastructure is facing massive challenges, for example due to climate change, natural hazards and population growth.
Under the leadership of Peter Matt, the group also comprising Fritz Hunkeler, Hans Rudolf Ganz, Laurent Vulliet, Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), and Peter Richner, Deputy CEO at Empa, has identified five segments that will be particularly impacted by the looming challenges: building stock, freight transport infrastructure, passenger transport infrastructure, drinking water networks and wastewater networks. The need for action and potential impact are evaluated as particularly high in the area of passenger transportation and building stock.
The roadmap pursues several goals, Richner explains. For example, the group is aiming “to demonstrate the importance of Switzerland's built infrastructure for our society, to specify the need for action and, above all, to raise awareness of the fact that we can only develop a goal-oriented strategy for the future from a higher perspective”.
