BONN. Since Thursday, a so-called ‘city tree’ has been standing outside the Telekom headquarters. It is not a real tree, but a square box with a lot of technology inside the wooden slatted casing. It does what trees can do, only more efficiently - it filters pollutants from the air and cools down the surrounding area using moss. The moss grows on special mats that surround the technical equipment inside the box - ventilation, irrigation, sensors and more. It serves as a biofilter system and attracts fine dust, similar to a microfibre cloth. The city tree can filter up to 80% of the fine particles in the air.

Peter Sänger, co-founder and CEO of the start-up company Green City Solutions said that the city of Bonn is already showing interest in the solution. The technology could be set up in public spaces, school yards and other places. Other cities, real estate companies and industrial firms abroad have already been knocking at the company’s door. The box in front of the Telekom building is the world's first City Tree ready for series production because the company supplies the data transmission technology for evaluating the information and providing remote maintenance.

The City Tree is no substitute for a real tree, but “the filter effect is a requirement of nature that can be maximized through technology,” says Sänger. Experts at Green City Solutions have been working on the trees for seven years and are developing even more efficient trees for home use in the future. The concept is based on research at Bonn University where botanist Jan-Peter Frahm experimented with the filter properties of mosses.

(Original text: Stefan Knopp)

BONN. Site management of the Victoria Bridge renovation continues to challenge the municipal civil engineering office. A further adjustment has had to be made to the schedule due to the continued traffic whilst constructing the new bridge. From 19 June, the bridge, an important transport link between Nordstadt and Weststadt, will be completely closed for eleven days. During the closure, the city plans to have the nearby, sparsely lit underpass on Herwarthstraße (popularly known as the "Pissrinne") cleaned and disinfected every day and to provide a security service from 6.30 am to 9 pm. The widening of the underpass to twice its original size, including new lighting, is due to be completed by the end of 2021.

In order to maintain the flow of traffic during the renovation works, the city had decided to first demolish and rebuild the eastern side of the bridge, and then to proceed in the same way with the western side. If everything goes smoothly, traffic will run over the new east side from 29 June onwards.

The civil engineering office expects the Viktoria Bridge to be completed by the end of 2021, at a total cost of around 45 million euros.

(Original text: Philip Königs)

BONN. The General-Anzeiger's ‘Sommergarten’ (Summer Garden) series of events in cooperation with the Bundeskunsthalle will not take place this year due to the corona pandemic. The musical events on the roof of the Bundeskunsthalle were due to take place every two weeks from mid-June to mid-August. The state ban on events until the end of August prevents the Sommergarten from starting as planned. Compliance with the current hygiene and distancing regulations on the roof and in queues would have required a great deal of effort, and the constant coming and going of guests would exceed the number of visitors allowed, explains Klaus Gering from the GA marketing department. It was therefore with a heavy heart that the decision was made, together with the Bundeskunsthalle, not to take the risk of possible infection and to cancel the series for this year.

(Original text: Rüdiger Franz)

OFFENBACH/ESSEN. Germany has experienced the seventh driest spring in a row. This was announced by the German Weather Service (DWD) in Offenbach in a preliminary assessment of the months from March to May. Spring 2020 is one of the six springs with the least precipitation since systematic weather records began in 1881.

According to initial evaluations of the data from the around 2000 DWD measuring stations, this year's spring was also relatively warm. At 9.2 degrees Celsius, the average temperature was one and a half degrees higher than the average for the so-called reference period 1961 to 1990, which is used for long-term comparisons. While March was mild, April was clearly too warm.

The meteorological spring that ended in May resulted in a number of forest fires in NRW. In the most densely populated federal state, an average of 110 litres of rain per square metre was measured from March to May. Weather experts expect that the sun will have shone for almost 720 hours in NRW up to and including Sunday. The annual average for the comparison period is 441 hours. The average temperature was 10.0 degrees and thus 1.7 degrees above the comparative value.

On Whit Monday temperatures in the Rhineland will reach up to 27 degrees with a great deal of sunshine and occasional loose cumulus clouds.

(Original text: afp/dpa)

(Translations: Caroline Kusch)