Awaiting Public Project Summary

Awaiting Public Project Summary

There is huge potential for the infrastructures of UK cities to be better configured to reduce the impacts of climate change. The infrastructures of the energy, telecoms, transport and water sectors are all delivered in isolation and by different mixes of companies and government agencies. For a long time this approach has delivered secure, dependable services such as reliable electric power, clean water,rapid advances in ICT connectivity and smarter transport networks. However, the challenge of climate change also means these critical infrastructures must be leveraged to enable low carbon development, and be resilient to climate change impacts such as increased overheating, more severe flooding and longer drought spells. Many of the providers of critical infrastructures have started to mitigate and adapt to climate change pressures and plan for more uncertain futures. However, much of this activity is limited to single sector approaches and does not seek synergies with infrastructure providers across systems and sectors. Infrastructure continues to be delivered in industry silos, even when it is physically interconnected. This is a problem because there are exciting opportunities to fundamentally change the way infrastructure systems are organised in major cities by taking a more systemic approach; this means researching cross sectoral benefits that can only be realised by linking mitigation activity across systems. These opportunities not being captured in UK cities due to the fact they rely on complex values. Simply put complex values are missed opportunities to benefit cities, economies, and the environment that can only be captured by linking infrastructure provision across systems, i.e. transport and electricity, heat and green infrastructure. Historically this resource sharing has been very difficult, as each infrastructural sector in the UK has been operated in isolation. This research uses two examples of the complex value problem for climate change mitigation in cities. The first is the systemic links between electric vehicles, cities and electricity networks. Here it would make sense for cities, EV infrastructure providers and electricity networks to share the costs of intercity charge infrastructure, especially if smart grid approaches are taken. Currently this is not possible because the investment priorities, system regulation and decision frameworks of electricity networks, EV infrastructure providers and cities do not match in space or time. Secondly the link between green infrastructure systems and urban heat networks will be explored. Biomass energy with carbon capture and storage could provide a source of 'negative carbon' heating for cities through urban heat networks. The complex values this would deliver span mitigation, adaptation and sustainable economy benefits; but rely on linking diverse decision makers across the urban built environment and the bio energy and green infrastructure sectors. Using these case studies the research will then use methods from infrastructure systems research, as socio-technical approaches and decision science, to look into the consequences of adopting these 'systemic' approaches to urban infrastructure on: resource management, infrastructure resilience, GHG mitigation and urban economic performance. This research will work with decision makers across these systems to identify new strategies for 'whole systems' management of urban infrastructures. Complex value identification and decision science methods will be used to generate solutions for these problems. The outcome of this research will be a new understanding of how cities can reconfigure infrastructure networks for climate compatible development and local economic resilience.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

The UK RDRF brings together a number of research strands funded under the DET, EPSRC and ESRC portfolios over the last decade to create a national facility to tackle the vexed question of regional competitiveness and rebalancing the UK economy. Following the Scottish referendum there have been renewed calls for greater devolution to regions and core cities. This facility will bring together the big economic data and construct the high resolution models needed to support policy makers at national, regional and local level. It will innovate by building together a model of the fixed stock of buildings, including housing, commercial, warehousing and manufacturing, with a network model of key infrastructure. This will allow analysis of which policy nudges might be expected to overcome the inertia present in the historic geography of the UK. It will allow a common framework of data and evidence ti be used by regional and local policy professionals wishing to evaluate policy options. The whole facility is built on the opportunity created by CDT funding to develop a cohort of evidence based policy professionals and analysts to support the needs of a more devolved form of planning. We aim to support the creation of a 'community of practice' based on access to big economic data and open source analysis and modelling tools. We will host workshops and networks to spread best practice and create some institutional glue amongst the people concerned. Finally, we will engage local communities in the debate and bring the same evidence and tools to the public at large through crowd science and in-the-wild research engagement.