Ursula Cardenas Mamani

Ursula Cardenas Mamani is a doctoral researcher from the Sector of Sciences and Technologies (SST) working for the Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Urban Planning (LOCI) under the supervision of Prof. Daniela Perrotti. My area of research involves the sysyems-thinking analysis of urban areas, namely, Urban Metabolism. Her thesis project consists in the development of a framework that involves both Nature-based solutions and Urban Metabolism. Nature-based solutions provide nowadays an extensive reservoir of techniques and strategies to optimize the metabolism of cities through enhanced resource cycling and emission abatement, however, this reservoir is largely untapped in Urban Metabolism research, despite substantial progress in ecosystem-service knowledge and classification. Thus, the framework will provide a shared basic set of assessment categories and indicators across the two fields and facilitate the development of combined dynamic modelling approaches to jointly assess ecosystem services and resource flows. 

Previous to her current work in UCLouvain, she worked as a research assistant for the PELCAN (Peruvian Life Cycle Assessment and Industrial Ecology Network) group at PUCP (Peru).