Recent flooding has laid bare the vulnerability of urban areas and buildings. In the winter of 2013/14 there was an insured loss of over £1bn, with much more being spent by local authorities and government to recover and repair urban areas. The result is that property owners have found affordable insurance difficult to find, if they can be insured at all. In response BRE, AXA and Lexis Nexis have developed a pilot property flood resilience database (PFR-d) that provides a dataset for insurers to assess the impact of measure taken by property owners to address their flood risk. In the Urban Floods Resilience project the same team in association with Liverpool City Council will further develop the PFR-d to incorporate a PFR-score, to quantify the impact of the resilience measures. The data on the PFR-d will be uploaded by certified PFR-surveyors; thus it will involve the development of training and a certification scheme. The PFR-d will be further developed to integrate local authority flood risk data, water / flood infrastructure assets, community data and satellite data of previous flood events. The PFR-d will therefore become a way for urban areas to address and manage flood risk.

The European Construction sector is facing unprecedented challenges to achieve ambitious energy efficiency objectives (with the aim to generalize Near-Zero Energy Buildings), in an economic crisis context dominated by reduced investments, search for cost effectiveness and high productivity. Moreover the industry is experiencing its digital revolution, with Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach gaining significant interest across Europe. Member states implement very different approaches through regulations and maturity targets, which always face the traditional low-tech and informal practices of construction businesses (a fragmented sector, dominated by SMEs). BIMEET project aims to leverage the take-up of ICT and BIM through a significant upgrade of the skills and capacities of the EU construction workforce. This Coordination and Support Action project is built around a strong consortium relying on educational and research expertise, robust experience of accrediting and labelling bodies, training supply chain and a wide engagement of industry led best practice (already committed in an EU-wide expert panel). Through its actions the project will (a) pave the way to a fundamental step change in delivering systematic, measurable and effective energy efficient buildings through BIM training with a view to effectively address European energy and carbon reduction targets; (b) promote a well-trained world leading generation of decision makers, practitioners, and blue collars in BIM for energy efficiency; (c) establish a world-leading platform for BIM for energy efficiency training nurtured by an established community of interest. Its principal outputs are 1) a skills matrix related to BIM and energy efficiency, harmonized thanks to EQF standard, and 2) a training platform contributing to widely disseminate the BIMEET EQF. These results associated with a labelling scheme will guarantee the sustainability of the project results after its lifetime.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

In the UK there over 25 million domestic dwellings. More than 80% of these homes depend on gas boilers to provide space and hot water heating. Against the context of dwindling UK gas reserves, increased sensitivity to gas supplies sourced internationally and the potential for unsustainable growth in peak time electricity generation, there is a growing imperative to seek alternative heating systems. RISE (Renewable Integrated & Sustainable Electric Heating System) is such an alternative, all-electric heat pump with storage heating system that avoids the use of peak time power. The RISE Project will build on the earlier technical validation of the concept, to carry out live trials in up to four apartments in a multi-dwelling unit (MDU) in Eastbourne. This live demonstration will utilise optimising controls to simulatenaously control the occupants thermal comfort needs and the electricity demand proflies to provide a Smart Grid approach to sustainable heating for the UK, in real time. The project schedule is to start April 2015, with live trials starting in October 2015, with the performance monitoring. The project's outputs will support RISE towards commercialisation and manufacture.

Awaiting Public Project Summary