CEPT prepares roadmap for a greener Ahmedabad

Awarded to the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) University,the project managers are working in close association of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) to develop a city specific green toolkit.

The project,‘Implementing the city infrastructure investments prioritisation and programming toolkit (CIIPP)’,involves development of a toolkit that can give alternative approaches for a greener city as well as assess how green a city is. The idea behind this is to screen cities on the green index and sensitise the local authorities while revising the city development plan.

“The final presentation is slated for next month while the initial one was given in February in Singapore. Keeping diverse nature of the country in mind,CEPT has included a city each from north,south,east and west. Ahmedabad is one of these. As compared to other existing conventional assessment parameters,this toolkit is a well structured format,extremely flexible and empowers local governments,” said project manager Sameeha Sheth,who had presented the initial report.

While the toolkit will help in assisting current sustainability situation of Ahmedabad,including projects like BRTS,garbage disposal,water management and others,it also aims at identifying green projects for the AMC to invest in,prioritise these projects and safeguard investments against climate risks.

“The three principal components (of the toolkit) are energy benchmarking,process for prioritising sectors and ‘playbook’ for tried and tested energy efficiency interventions,” said project co-ordinator Prof Saswat Bandopadhyay from Faculty of Planning and Public Policy.

After the final presentation next month,modalities will be worked out with the AMC for revising the city development plan (CDP). As CEPT had contributed in the preparation of the existing CDP,the University is expected to have a better knowledge of weak and strong areas to be worked on.