On February 7, 2019, the second “Clean Brownfields” project seminar took place in Skrunda.

The Second Seminar on Brownfield Revitalization in Skrunda, Latvia

 

The second out of five seminar series of LLI-303 “Clean Brownfields” project took place on February 7, 2019, in Skrunda. The seminar was dedicated to assessment,  classification and ranking of brownfield territories, to new approaches and technologies how to investigate and do planning to revitalize these territories.

Representatives whom the contents of the seminar was relevant from all municipalities of Kurzeme Planning Region were invited to participate on the seminar.

Taking into account varying audience of the seminars project manager Sarmīte Ozoliņa introduced to the contents of the “Clean Brownfields” project, told about infrastructure activities completed and planned, seminars and study visits, benefits the project will bring to its participants and population in Latvia and Lithuanaia.  Participants were reminded to work at assessment of the degraded territories in the municipalities where it is not done yet. They were invited to follow systematically and make use of funding available from different sources for degraded territories. The audience was asked to follow preparation of policy planning documentation when support directions and specific objectives are defined, including funding resources for degraded territories. Targeted work can lead us to the best possible result – brownfield territories returned to new business or public service providing life.

Mārtiņš Turks, senior expert of Land Policy Division, Ministry of Regional Development and Environmental Protection, informed about the tasks proceeding from Law on Land Management and the draft regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers on the assessment of land and soil degradation, classification of degraded territories and elaboration of their information system.

Rest of the seminar agenda was dedicated to the application of new technologies. Representatives of Geomatics Department, Riga Technical University in a friendly attractive manner provided audience with concentrated comprehensive information, enriched with practical examples,  on application of new technologies for technical investigation, planning and rebuilding degraded territories and objects:

professor Māris Kaļinka – on underground radars, cable locators, laser scanners and drones;

head of Geomatics Department Jānis Kaminskis – on the development of 3 – dimension scanners;

researcher Lauris Golbergs – on the technical possibilities for 3 – dimension printing.

In addition, while the lecturers were speaking about the planned subject, another representative of the Department carried out laser – scanning of the seminar room and the building of Skrunda culture centre to demonstate practically modes of application and efficiency of technologies.

Different IT based equipment was demonstrated to the seminar participants and concise information provided.

In answer to the question about service costs with application of new technologies audience was pleasantly surprised costs were customer friendly, hence, with wide perspectives for future applicability, for example, at detecting and planning communal service networks, investigating old and derelict buildings.

Lecturers acknowledged that new technologies cannot solve absolutely all the cases concerning investigation of degraded territories and objects, however, their application gives excellent contribution to process large amounts of complicated information from different aspects. It is not of least importance that new technologies provide possibility to obtain information from places and in ways which otherwise was not possible, or was very expensive, or even dangerous for a person involved.

At the conclusion seminar participants visited Skrunda military town which is a large area of degraded land and buildings, participants were informed about its history, present day usage  and future perspectives.

 

More information: www.kurzemesregions.lv