RECAP: ITACUS @ WTC2022 IN COPENHAGEN

RECAP: ITACUS @ WTC2022 IN COPENHAGEN

27 September 2022

From 2-8 September 2022 we had the chance to attend the ITA-AITES World Tunnel and Underground Space Congress #wtc2022 in Copenhagen, Denmark by Danish Tunneling Society .
+ Our steering board including activity group leaders Petr Salak, Chrysothemis Paraskevopoulou, Marilu Melo Zurita, Mahak Agrawal, Rosanne Verloop and Abidemi Agwor met up and discussed ongoing activities and future plans.
+ In the ITA-AITES General Assembly we presented our ongoing and planned activities with the focus on the urgent challenges our planet is facing and what our industry can contribute to meet these. The bottom line is "we don't have time" and the "next level up is down"!
 + We celebrated the progress and achievements made by the ITACUS team in the past 1.5 years, including new partnerships with UN Environment Programme, We Don't Have Time, Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), and engagements with the  National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), cyber agoras on underground urbanism with ISOCARP - International Society of City and Regional Planners and UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network – Youth.
+ Co-chairs Han Admiraal and Antonia Cornaro held a talk on sustainable underground design during the pre-congress training organised by Alun Thomas. Marilu Melo Zurita and Loretta von derTann facilitated a workshop during that same afternoon for the over 100 participants about ways of effective stakeholder engagement in the early planning phase of projects to incorporate underground #design from the start.
+ Mahak Agrawal held a presentation on the merits of underground #urbanism in the ITA Young members session.
+ Our steering board members met with Ioannis Fikiris, Andreas Benardos and Chrysothemis Paraskevopoulou the Greek Tunnelling Society to discuss the planned Young Professional Think Deep Programme (YPTDP) preceding the next WTC 2023 in Athens.
+ In the ITA Open Session Antonia Cornaro and Han Admiraal explained what the sustainable development goals #sdgs by UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) stand for and how they can be contributed to with #underground #infrastructure projects.