Buildings must provide a comfortable internal environment for their users but how they perform depends on the weather to which they are exposed. The UK climate is already changing and this will demand different approaches to the way buildings are designed. However, the climate of the future cannot be predicted with complete certainty and this is reflected in the future climate scenarios being developed under the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP08), which are to be presented in probabilistic terms. This means that the information will be given in the form There is a 5% probability that the temperature will be greater than (value) . This uncertainty is unfamiliar for building designers, who are used to taking fixed extreme summer or winter conditions and designing cooling, ventilation and heating systems of sufficient capacity to cope with these design conditions. Consequently, there is a risk that buildings may not perform as designed, either because the building systems cannot adapt to the changing climate or because systems are over specified to deal with a climate scenario that does not happen. Future building performance is additionally constrained by the need to minimise CO2 emissions, so it is not appropriate or sustainable to simply build in over-capacity, for example by providing air-conditioning everywhere to cope with future summer weather. Equally, highly insulated and well sealed low-energy buildings may overheat as a result of the heat gained from the occupants and the equipment they use. These factors are likely to see a departure from the current way in which buildings are conceived and designs carried out as designers will need to take account of the frequency of occurrence of particular external conditions in selecting design criteria. This proposed project aims to develop a method of linking these probabilistic UKCIP08 climate scenarios to the requirements of the community of building services engineers. It will produce a practical method of designing economic and environmentally friendly heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in both existing and new buildings. The method will be based on probabilistic data but will not require the user to understand sophisticated statistical theory.The project has several interlinked parts. The UKCIP08 data will be transformed statistically to give a set of simple design conditions which can be used by practitioners. A series of criteria will be developed to identify acceptable levels of building performance in the field of human comfort and systems provision. The performance of a series of case studies will be simulated from the probabilistic climate scenarios against these criteria. The experience of a senior building user group will be collected in order to quantify what needs to be known about building performance and the acceptability of risk so that buildings can be designed or adapted to accommodate the changing UK climate. The outcome will be a set of case study buildings in various UK locations which designers can call upon to support their decisions.

The I'DGO Research Consortium has a continuing overall aim to identify the most effective ways of ensuring that the outdoor environment is designed inclusively and with sensitivity to the needs and desires of older people, to improve their quality of life. In focusing on the changing needs of older people, the Consortium will address issues that are relevant to a much wider range of people in society as a whole, including disabled people, frail or vulnerable people and those who care for them. The proposed research under I'DGO TOO combines the skills and experience of three research centres and academic colleagues across five academic institutions. It brings this expertise together with that of a range of collaborators from different organisations, agencies and groups, ranging from ODPM to Age Concern, who are keen to use the findings of the research and benefit from it,I'DGO TOO focuses on particular policies and strategies that are currently being promoted by government as part of the sustainability agenda / urban renaissance, integrated communities and inclusive environments / where the potentially important, practical implications for older people's lives have not fully been explored and tested. It investigates how well outdoor environments in certain types of development, built in line with these policies, contribute to older people's health and wellbeing. It does so through research at three different levels of detail. It explores the implications of denser urban living on open space in housing, pedestrian-friendly approaches (such as Home Zones) in street environments and the practical consequences of using tactile paving in the urban environment. A range of innovative methods, some of which have been developed in earlier research by the consortium, will be used to examine in detail how design, and older people's perceptions of the designed environment, make a difference. The voices of older people themselves are a key element in this research. I'DGO TOO recognises the great diversity and range of abilities, disabilities, aspirations, expectations and needs that are encompassed in the population of people over 65 years of age. From the beginning, older people will be involved in expressing what is important to them and in shaping the development of the programme. The approaches used treat older people and disabled people as co-researchers, rather than 'subjects', and the range of techniques place these people at the heart of the investigation. A number of different methods is used to ensure that diverse perspectives and evidence is collected to throw light on the questions and objectives of the research. The main issues to be addressed are: how residential outdoor space in higher-density 'urban renaissance' housing can best be delivered to optimise older residents' quality of life; whether Home Zones provide a good design solution in the context of an ageing population, and the implications of the design, siting, laying and use of tactile paving for older people?The implications of the findings will be important for policy-makers, planners, designers and other professionals working in the urban environment, as well as users of that environment. The research collaborators will help ensure that the outputs are useful and useable for the range of people and groups for whom this work is important. Guidance will be published in a range of formats and media, including attractive and accessible printed booklets as well as web-based publications targeted to suit the needs of different expert, academic, professional and lay audiences.

It is well known that climate change will have a significant impact on UK building design and energy use. It is also known, that the current standard reference year and design summer year (these are the weather files used by industry-standard computer models of buildings), being assembled from data collected only up to 1995, do not represent even the current UK climate. The building design community is therefore highly exposed to the possibility of occupant dissatisfaction and possible litigation. In addition, most buildings are not being designed to cope with increased variability in a warming climate. The desire to use probabilistic scenarios will not solve this unless either new reference years are created, made widely available and guidance given on which ones to use and when/or, totally new methods are developed. Even this is likely to be unsuccessful in driving adaptation decisions unless a full understanding of how designers might use such data is gained and a consistent way found of examining any changes in costs. There is therefore a need to simultaneously study not only probabilistic data sets for the built environment, but also how such information can be used to drive adaptation decisions. In many ways the move to probabilistic outputs by such groups as UKCIP presents an opportunity. The ability to create bespoke probabilistic reference years using, for example a weather generator, changes the way problems can be tackled and even how the client or architect thinks about such issues.An interdisciplinary approach is envisaged with the project separated into seven work packages:1. It has been identified that high resolution climate information has many practical applications for building design/(for example the BETWIXT project). However, the best way to downscale climate model information for any particular application is not clear. We will agree a process for the creation of new reference years for the period 2010 to 2080, with hourly time steps. This will make use of the UKCIP08 probability distribution functions and UKCIP08's weather generator, but with the addition of wind direction estimates.2. Consider how in theory, probabilistic climate data is best used to produce useful and accurate predictions of internal environments and energy use. 3. Create a large set of reference years compatible with common building simulation codes based on the latest probabilistic results. 4. Given the complex decision-making context of future proofing, an additional aim of the project is to better understand the organisational, social, and psychological factors that might influence the willingness of the industry to adopt new technologies/practices. Research will focus on how engineers work in practice, the time and knowledge constraints they work under, and the motivational factors that are likely to influence decisions about using future-proofing technology. 5. There is the need to fully understand the range of possible results in building performance that can be generated by UKCIP08 and then to finalise a much smaller sub-set of probabilistic reference years (PRYs), that reflect the needs and practices of design teams working within a commercial environment. (These files would be delivered in a format consistent with the requirements of common building simulation codes.) 6. Examination of the effect of climate change on UK building design and refurbishment. The smaller PRY subset would be used to examine how parameters such as thermal mass and glazed fraction can be used most effectively to improve thermal comfort and reduce energy demand for a range of built forms and uses, and produce case studies. 7. The economic costs of various design strategies will also need to be examined, for example the increased cost of cooling, as will the cost to architectural practices of altering their working practices in order to make use of probabilistic data.

This project will bring Volume House Builders (represented) by Taylor Wimpey, built environment academia (represented by academics on a North-South axis from Edinburgh, Sheffield and Kingston Universities) and SME architecture practice together on a shared research project - a framework for developing a series of 2-3 other embedded projects - the primary aim of which is improving VHB provision and knowledge exchange across partners. In doing so we will share good practice and model novel forms of engagement across an industry in critical need of innovation. The built environment is perhaps the most ubiquitous example of the creative economy in modern Britain, yet is generally overlooked and undervalued in this context. The UK construction industry contributes around 10% of UK GDP. The work of the professions that drive it is therefore of vital importance to our society. Their expertise is reflected in a strong global reputation but the market is shrinking (RIBA Building Futures Report, p.39). In 2007, the Labour government announced a target of building an extra three million homes in England by 2020 to help deal with the growing demand for houses. At the same time it set up the framework to be world class in the delivery of zero-carbon homes by 2016. According to the Calcutt Review of Housebuilding Delivery this would 'stretch' an industry (2007, p.7) not yet ready for these demands. The need for bulk delivery of sustainable housing remains the same, even after a change of government. Local authorities look to housing associations and private sector developers such as the VHBs to help them achieve these demands however the recent recession means that house builders are struggling more than ever to minimize their costs. This is likely to impact on design quality which, as CABE research has indicated was poor, even before the recession (CABE, Space in New Homes, What Residents Think, 2009 ). Our project focuses on improvements to the supply chain. The Calcutt Review has identified the need for VHBs to work with partners with the 'necessary expertise' to make this happen (2007, p.8). This is where architectural SME practice and academia come in. There is a great deal of, largely unacknowledged, research potential in SMEs in the architectural creative industries, yet these practices are under threat - their traditional market is being taken over by large interdisciplinary conglomerates (RIBA, Building Futures Report, 2010, p.32).The project will provide the necessary support to allow these firms to deploy their creative energy in a wider industry context, to build on their research base and to develop new business models. Academia has an important role to play in giving SME practices access to cutting edge research. Through the embedded research projects our departments will become a shared resource of both equipment and knowledge where practitioners and academics can exchange knowledge, similar to the MIT's model of 'Fablabs', at the same time providing opportunities for academic researchers to test their ideas in a real world setting. There are three elements to the project: - Knowledge Exchange through the Ideas Lab and the 2-3 embedded research projects that emerge from them disseminated through partner networks. - Innovation resulting from the 2-3 embedded research projects developed by architectural SME practice and academia in partnership with Taylor Wimpey. - Development of practice based research through the above activities and through the Housing Practice Research Review to be undertaken, in partnership with the RIBA, through which we will be able to identify the current state of practice based housing research. The report from this review will act as a platform for research in this area and as a framework for a Research Practice Guide, the focus of a series of CPD events. These are the ingredients of a strategy to expand the reach of project and to change the face of VHB housing.

The aim of the Sustainable Eastside Project is to explore how sustainability is addressed in the regeneration decision-making process, and to assess the sustainability performance of completed development schemes in Birmingham Eastside against stated sustainability credentials and aspirations. The incorporation of sustainability into an urban regeneration program, such as Birmingham Eastside, appears best conceptualised as a complex decision-making process carried out by stakeholders who are embedded within the development process. The barriers to and enablers of sustainability (as identified in Phase I of this project) appear at various moments or locations within this complex. The timing and context of decisions are critical (examined in Phase II), and can cause path-dependency which then limits how sustainability features in final development plans. In Phases I & II, the research set in place a framework of cross-disciplinary knowledge and key partnerships; highlighted the importance of coherent integration of the three pillars of sustainability to enable the complexity of achieving urban sustainability to be sufficiently grappled with; gained access to key decision-making forums in Eastside; built strong links with key stakeholders in the area; and firmly integrated into the policy agenda for Eastside. In addition, researchers are working to establish a cross-cutting baseline dataset of developments in Eastside rigorously to measure change over time and the impact of particular decisions on the sustainability of the overall urban regeneration programme. In so doing the foundations for a zonal urban regeneration case study site are being established, augmented by the creation of a study facility, with library and hot desking, now available for researchers from SUE / IEP consortia, to study the application of research to practice. The emerging findings of Phase II have allowed researchers to develop a series of hypotheses about the timing of decisions for sustainability in a range of decision-making forums, and the extent to which path-dependency becomes problematic. In Phase III, a suite of innovative analytical tools will be employed to elucidate further the complexities and interactions of the key elements of the sustainability vision for Eastside. First, a Development Timeline Framework (DTF), a multi-disciplinary tool that makes explicit the path dependency of decisions toward achieving sustainability goals, and the conflicts and synergies between different sustainability objectives, will be used as the basis for further research. Second, a cross-cutting Sustainability Checklist (SC) applied to the DTF will allow each researcher to analyse the impact of timing and context of decisions for each sustainability element (e.g. biodiversity, public participation, space utilisation, local sourcing, and recycling). Third, an Industrial Ecology (IE) analysis will follow particular resources (e.g. water, aggregates) thus highlighting their interdependence, while a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) approach will enable assessment of the socio-cultural aspects of sustainability (not covered by the IE approach). This suite of tools underpins the delivery of the work package aims. This analysis will be undertaken on a case history site basis, using development sites within Eastside that are all currently 'live,' each site representing a different conceptualisation of sustainability. This provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the specific impact of early thinking about sustainability in the planning and design stages, and the impact of this timing and path-dependency on sustainability performance in the final built form.