 Hello everyone and welcome to 2020 in this video I would like to talk about 2019 and how important a year it was for us at Metabolism of cities 2019 was a great year with so many projects and so many things that happened that It's actually very difficult to remember and that's why I have noted them all down here on my computer I'll try to go piece by piece to try to explain what we've been through And where we're going in 2020 The first significant thing that happened in 2019 was the redesign of our website and of our logo That was a very hard process for us to decide amongst all of us. What is the best design we could get? Not only for the logo, but also for the website We had to restructure many of the previous aspects, but we also added many new things You can now find an updated List of projects list of articles list of authors We had to rethink everything in our minds, but also we have a very exciting new feature Which is called multiplicity multiplicity is now Something that we have in our website, which is an urban metabolism dashboard. So any of you can Sign up Add your data sets there and visualize them for any city in the world Another very exciting project we have been doing over the 2019 was the global seminar on urban metabolism In this seminar series that took place in three places in the planet, so Cape Town, Beijing and Brussels It was a one-day seminar and every time we tried to have Urban metabolism meets policy and practice. We wanted to know how This academic, mostly academic field can benefit and can be implemented in policy and practice So we had three very different contexts in three very different seminars with different audiences as well We're extremely happy for instance to go in Cape Town and to figure out how the city has multiple crises where You might know the water crisis. Well, it's very much connected with the waste crisis We also went to Beijing where we figured out that It's actually very hard to talk about urban metabolism in these extremely Growing cities and you have to think about all of the challenges simultaneously And then we went back to Brussels where we had the last of the three seminars Where Brussels, let's say it's a more Mature case study where there has been a lot of work on urban metabolism We wanted to reflect whether urban metabolism has contributed to any change and also how it has been used in policy and practice Another exciting development was the launch of the metabolism of islands website. Well, it's been in the works for since 2018 where we collaborated with Simran Singh an associate professor and at the University of Waterloo in New Canada and We are actually just changing the scale because islands are actually extremely relevant as laboratories for Metabolism studies because they have a physical boundary and so we have Developed a sister website, which is now available called metabolism of islands With another community that is behind it in our dreams for 2020. We're continuing with Something else that's called platform you Which is very much focused on companies So we'd like to do this metabolism of companies and who knows perhaps metabolism of countries or regions In order to have all of them the scales that we could somehow nest and have data flowing in every direction Perhaps last but definitely not least the biggest project that we have Actually carried out and are carrying out right now is the city loops project So it's a EU H2020 funded project where we will be developing a sector-wide and urban-wide circularity assessment method for the sector of Construction and biomass for seven cities Seven European cities. So Roskilde, Hayotostrup, Micheli, Bodo, Sevilla, Appledorm and Porto We will be developing this method in order for these cities to To assess by themselves. So we want to build capacity with these cities to Learn how to assess their own sectors and their own cities in order to develop a circular economy strategy So we're extremely excited about this project. It started in October. So not so long ago We started with three months of literature review. What are the methods that are actually accounting? Material flows and material stocks. We will be publishing that very soon in our website But also in the website of the projects And this will last for four years. So you'll see plenty of New updates on this topic on urban circularity, but also on sector-wide circularity. So That's this is a great adventure for us And we hope we're gonna learn a lot and we're gonna also share our experiences with you on the team side Well three new members also joined in 2019. So a very warm welcome to them Even if it's been already a year Guille Hermet from Lisbon Carlos from Glasgow and George from Milford in the US. So We have a growing community of team members, but also of contributors a lot of contributors are now Contributing to our multiplicity platform this urban metabolism dashboard And we have almost a hundred contributors In putting that about also helping us on developing New methods and adding publications in our website. So a very big. Thank you to all other than that in social media in general we continue to have a we try to have a Strong presence to continue to share as many insights articles and results that we find in the urban metabolism world We try to continue also to post all of the videos from the seminars on our YouTube channel So just subscribe there if you want more urban metabolism videos in general And also, please try to you know, give us any of your feedback if you want if you have any questions If you have any suggestions on what you would like to see included in this platform Please tell us and also please contribute and be part of this growing community For 2020 there are many things that we have in our heads Actually, so many things happening in 2019 that we have big dreams and hopes for 2020 We hope that We're gonna go to the next phase of multiplicity. So right now. It's more of a data harvesting platform We hope it's gonna be a data analysis platform Or are you gonna see crazy? Sankey diagrams and and more analytical aspects and not just visualization aspects We are also co-organizing another conference called actionable science for urban sustainability ask us Together with the International Society of Industrial Ecology, it will be on the third to fifth June 2020 we are co-organizing this and we try to have a very virtual Component to this conference. So have a look as well on our website and on the ask us conference page That's it for now. We it's already we're already in the middle of 2020. So we hope we're gonna Have more regular updates and fill you in with all of the great work we're doing. Thanks so much and see you soon