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.

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

This project will use metrological and satellite data from the Met Office in combination with electricity generation data from solar photovoltaic (PV) installations from the BRE National Solar Centre to develop (i) a method of generating accurate geographical representations of solar generation potential across the UK and (ii) capability for short term forecasting of UK-wide radiation and site specific solar generation from utility scale solar plants. The research produced by this technical feasibility project will have commercial applications across the value chain of the UK solar industry, particularly in grid and asset management and supporting investment confidence. The innovative step is to use accurate generation data from existing UK solar installations in combination with Met Office observations for metrological and satellite data, to build accurate mapping and forecasting capability for solar generation. End users are included to verify the planned commercial solutions.