Track: V Aquatic Leisure Symposium

Tourism and sport are two fundamental pillars for the implementation and dissemination of the Sustainable Development Goals on a global scale. We’ll discuss the importance of promoting responsible, sustainable and accessible tourism and how the WTO offers leadership and support to the sector to increase knowledge and promote policies that enable economic growth with inclusive development and the necessary environmental sustainability. Sport is also a major facilitator in sustainable development, increasingly contributing to making development and peace a reality by promoting tolerance and respect, empowering women, young people, individuals and communities, as well as working towards health, education and social inclusion goals. The Royal Spanish Swimming Federation (RFEN in its Spanish initials) will tell us about the projects they are working on to improve sustainable development in pool-based sports.

Swimming pools play a key role in outdoor leisure environments. In this round-table discussion we’ll see how designers approach this as well as hear about recent experiences in the world of camping, tourist accommodation set in natural environments in which integrated aquatic and outdoor facilities play a vital role.

Architectural and engineering software tools based on the Business Information Modelling (BIM) methodology have been mandatory in Spain since January 2020 in all public facilities and infrastructures for both new constructions and restoration projects. This round-table discussion will give a brief introduction to what this methodology entails, and we will then see specific examples of how the swimming pool environment and its facilities, especially in the case of public swimming pools, are integrated into other architectural projects and with other types of infrastructures.

Integral safety in aquatic facilities is based on 3 fundamental pillars: physical safety (facilities and constructions that must comply with all current regulatory requirements), operational safety (based on the definition of a series of procedures that enable the effective management and supervision of the facility) and health safety (focused on compliance with the required health and hygiene regulations). All of these must be taken into account when designing and constructing an aquatic facility and there can be no compromises if we want to ensure maximum safety for the end user. We will look at specific examples of how to improve each of these aspects.

The concept of sustainability needs to be translated into specific measures and actions. If we focus on the public swimming pool environment, one factor to improve sustainability focuses on energy efficiency. There are two types of consumption with particular significance: energy consumption and water consumption. Today we will review both areas of action, with an emphasis on how to be more energy efficient and how to reduce water consumption and even reuse water that traditionally just goes down the drain.