Green-Campus Living Lab
The An Taisce Green-Campus programme has been a front-runner in structuring an approach to enhancing campus sustainability since 2007. It embraces a partnership approach to environmental management, education, and action to allow campus stakeholders to engage in a meaningful way in the sustainable transition of their campus. TU Dublin’s Green Flag award in 2023 marks the significant progress made by the TU Dublin campus community through the Green-Campus programme.
Since 2007 a lot has changed, and the Public Sector Climate Action Mandate and TU Dublin’s Climate Action Roadmap (CAR) create a legally binding obligation for aspects of campus sustainability. The TU Dublin Living Lab creates a way to connect Green-Campus activities at TU Dublin to the CAR, so that they can more effectively contribute to reaching our climate action targets.
How can I interact with the TU Dublin Living Lab?
To animate the TU Dublin Living Lab, Green-Campus project ideas can be developed and implemented as living lab projects where relevant and feasible. The following living lab characteristics can be incorporated into project design:
- Real-world experimentation
- Multi-stakeholder participation
- Active end-user or campus community involvement - these can be the first adopters of the idea.
- Systematic co-creation - engaging stakeholders through all project phases.
- An iterative approach to innovation e.g., through prototyping or agile piloting.
- Multiple methods and tools – allowing the idea to be thoroughly explored and enabling a range of stakeholders to contribute.
Working in this way can enhance the replicability and scalability of project ideas and increase their impact. Any idea or intervention to improve campus sustainability can fit into this approach.
Two living lab templates titled TU Dublin Living Lab Project Ecosystem and TU Dublin Living Lab Project Phases have been developed by the Societal Engagement team to help plan Green-Campus Open Call projects. These can be used to sketch out the project proposal. Complete the templates as best you can, and then integrate this information into the Green-Campus Open Call project description.