The goal of the environmental communication research carried out in this project is to research the conditions and opportunities that influence the establishment and development of communication relations and cooperation structures for the remediation and re-use of closed waste sites and develop general recommendations for further action.

Against a background in which it is necessary to reduce the building on undeveloped or greenfield sites, there is an increasing necessity to rehabilitate contaminated sites thus integrating them into the land use cycle. As residential areas expand, former factory sites and waste disposal sites are now often desirable new locations. The reuse of contaminated sites however is confronted with obstacles, risks and problems.

The “NAPS” project, in collaboration between partners Prof. Burmeier Engineering Partnership, the Institute for Environmental Law and the Institute for Environmental Communication of the Leuphana University Lüneburg, integrates engineering, legal and communication science perspectives on the reuse of contaminated sites.
This environmental communication sub-project investigates the conditions for successful cooperation when rehabilitating and reusing contaminated sites. This project involves first of all investigating the case study of the factory disposal site (asbestos cement slurry disposal site) of the Fulgurit company. The Fulgurit site is a model project for the reintegration of (industrial) contaminated sites in the land use cycle and as an active contribution to land use policy in the sense of soil conservation policy. The goal of this accompanying communication science research project is to first of all observe, document and analyze the planning process and compare it with experiences from other sites.
In addition the goal of a nation-wide survey and analysis of experiences and know-how of acknowledged experts is to achieve a deeper understanding of the requirements, the conditions, the possibilities and limits of cooperation in reusing contaminated sites.
These findings will be brought together with the findings from the engineering and legal subprojects and integrated in an initial concept for planning aid support. The initial concept will be evaluated by experts in regard to its feasibility and user-friendliness and then optimized.
The goal is to make an action-oriented model as a basis for a web-based interactive planning aid to help in the goal-oriented development and management of political-administrative planning processes and project management for the rehabilitation and reuse of contaminated sites in context of environmental, building and planning regulations, publicity, financing and technical feasibility.

Cooperation partners:

Prof. Burmeier Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH (BIG)
Institute of Public Law, especially Energy and Environmental Law
Leuphana University of Lüneburg