ESP Taskforce Education Webinar
Translational education: Integrating ecosystem services into the urban and built environment
18th November 2026, 15:00-16:30 CET
Register here
About the webinar
This webinar explores recent efforts to weave ecosystem services, both as a concept and design practice, into the urban and built environment. It brings together perspectives from academic education, applied research, and professional consultancy to show how ecosystem services thinking is being translated into practice.
Target audience: Ecosystem services educators at universities and in companies, special focus on the urban and built environment.
Program
15:00 Introduction to the webinar, Luis Inostroza
15:05 Integrating ecosystem services into the Bio-Inspired Innovation master’s programme, Jaco Appelman
15:20 Integrating ecosystem services into consultancy and educational work with building and urban practitioners, Catalina Bustillo Restrepo
15:35 Integrating ecosystem services into EcoBUILD: connecting building design, baseline science/publications, education and consultancy, Katharina Hecht
15:50 Q&A / discussion, All speakers
16:30 End
Speakers
Dr. habil. Luis Inostroza is leads the ESP Education and training Taskforce. His transdisciplinary research on urbanisation and socio-ecological systems combines remote sensing, GIS and quantitative analysis. He has worked across Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia. He is an editor of the Ecosystem Services journal, a former ESP executive committee member (2018–2024), and currently co-chair of the IPBES Spatial Planning and Ecological Connectivity assessment.
Jaco Appelman is a lecturer at the Department of Biology at Utrecht University and founder of the Master’s in Bio-Inspired Innovation. His work is linked to UU’s Life Sciences and Pathways to Sustainability themes, and he integrates ecosystem services into master courses that connect bio-inspired design with urban regeneration challenges as well as into his own plot of land of 4 acres.
Catalina Bustillo Restrepo is an architect, founder of Biomimicry Caribe and co-founder of Sharing Nature’s Genius. She works on consultancy projects and gives workshops and presentations for companies, schools and organizations on integrating biomimicry’s Life’s Principles and ecosystem services into building projects.
Katharina Hecht works at Utrecht University as project lead CSRD at the Sustainability Office and as postdoc researcher in the Visualization and Graphics group. She supports the UU in aligning sustainability reporting with current European standards. Her transdisciplinary work aims to bridge ecological science and the building industry, including practice-oriented research on quantifying ecosystem services in buildings and the development of EcoBUILD, a digital tool that inspires architects and developers.
