Comprehensive Lifecycle Assessment and Recommendations for Engineering Transformations (CLARET)

Comprehensive Lifecycle Assessment and Recommendations for Engineering Transformations (CLARET)

Previous Track Record

Brian CollinsCB, FREng (PI) is Professor of Engineering Policy at UCL, with expertise in information exploitation in modernising national infrastructure, particularly in transportand energy. He became the Department for Transport’s Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) in 2006 and the CSAfor BIS in 2009. He is PI of the £3.4m EPSRC/ESRC International Centre for Infrastructure Finance (ICIF) project to investigate the future financing of infrastructure and Co-I on the £6.2M EPSRC Programme Grant “Transforming the Engineering of Cities”(EP/J017698/1). He was a member of the CST study group “A national infrastructure for the 21st Century”, ischair of the Programme Advisory Board for the RCUK Digital Economy programme, and was the foundingchair of the Engineering and Interdependency Expert Group for Infrastructure UK within HM Treasury.

Professor Nick TylerCBEi(Co-PI) is the Chadwick Professor of Civil Engineering at UCL ( and works with clinical, engineering, social science, arts and humanities researchers to explore exactly how a person interacts with their immediate environment. Nick has a strong involvement with various governments in relation to city development: UK PI on a Chinese research and application project “Low Carbon City Development” (£2 billion) in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Nanyang; developing and communicating the evidence to support national policy with the Peruvian, Panamanian, Cuban and Colombian governments in relation to accessible low carbon transport (UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office). Research Council funding: PI on several EPSRC projects, Co-I on the £6.2m EPSRC Programme Grant “Transforming the Engineering of Cities”, a Co-I on an EPSRC project to develop a new generation of hybrid buses, a Co-I on ICIF. Professor Hélène Joffe(Professor of Psychology, UCL) is a Social and Health Psychologist with research interests in risk and aspirations; theories of how publics engage with social issues; and climate change. She is the lead editor of Cities at Risk: Living with Perils in the 21st Century (Springer) and Risk and 'the other' (CU Press), is CoI of the EPSRC’s EPICentre (studying Japanese, Turkish and North American representations of earthquakes in highly seismic zones), EPICentre’s Challenging Risk (conducting an intervention to increase earthquake preparedness), EPSRC’s Transforming the Engineering of Cities project and has been PI on ESRC and other grants concerned with how publics engage with social issues. She won the Lloyds Science of Risk prize for the best international risk paper of 2013. She is an advisor to the UK government on Behaviour and Communications regarding Pandemic Influenza (The Scientific Pandemic Influenza Behaviour and Communication Sub-Group). Professor Francesca Medda is Professor of Applied Economics and Finance in the QASER (Quantitative & Applied Spatial Economics Research) Laboratory in the Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering at UCL. QASER has an extensive research portfolio with funding from bodies such as EPSRC, the European Investment Bank, World Bank, Ernst & Young and the EU. Sheleads the Economic Viability research themein the Transforming the Engineering of Cities Programme Grant. Her work to date has been developed according to two main outputs: (1) the construction of a portfolio structuring model for the combination of investments in cities where environmental and social impacts, together with financial returns, are taken into consideration, (2) the definition of a model of multi-layer networks in order to examine the effects of a city’s natural assets in its growth and sustainable development.

Professor Rachel Cooper (Co-PI) is Director, Imagination@Lancaster, a design-led research lab addressing the future of products, places and services at Lancaster University. She has led over 20 EPSRC, (including three research grants on cities over a period of ten years),Home Office, DTI and Design Council grants, and researches: cross-disciplinary design; design management; design policy; design in the built environment; design against crime; and socially responsible design. With >120 papers, she has undertaken research on all aspects of the design process from requirements capture to evidence-based design decision-making and design management. She is currently a lead expert advisor of the Foresight Future of Cities programme and a non-executive director of the Future cities Catapult. She is also currently advising the Chief Scientific advisor on security and defence in relation to the ‘internet of things’ related to products and cities. Professor John Urry BA, MA (Economics), PhD (Sociology), all Cambridge University. He is now Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University. Heis a FoundingAcademician, Academy of Social Sciences. John Urry chaired UK RAE Panels (1996, 2001),was aScience Expert on a UK Government Foresight Programme (2005-6), was a member of the Science and Engineering Review of DfT (2009), and was co-author of Electric Vehicles (Royal Academy of Engineering 2010). Currently he holds grants from EPSRC, ESRC (2) and Foresight. His c40 books and special issues include Mobilities (Polity 2007), Aeromobilities (Routledge 2009), After the Car (Polity 2009), Mobile Lives (Routledge 2010), The Tourist Gaze 3.0 (Sage 2011), Climate Change and Society (Routledge 2011), Mobilities. New Perspectives on Transport and Society (2011), Societies beyond Oil (Zed 2013), Energising Society (2014) and Offshoring (Polity 2014). He is founding Co-editor of the leading journal Mobilities (Routledge). Twitter @johnurry

Prof Chris Rogersis PI of the programme grant Transforming the Engineering of Cities to deliver Societal and Planetary Wellbeing (EPJ017698, £6.2m, 2012-17), and was PI of the SUE1 Birmingham Eastside (£1.1m, 2004-08) and SUE2 Urban Futures (£3.5m, 2008-12) consortia. He is a member of the Foresight Future of Cities Lead Expert Group and the Academic Lead of the Future Urban Living UoB Policy Commission. He provided leadership in delivering impact from the SUE Programme as PI of the SUE Vision-into-Action Research Fellows Conference (GRC511115, 2004-05) and as Co- PI of SUE Research Dialogues (EPH002235, 2010). He is PI of Assessing the Underworld (EPK021659, £5.9m, 2013-17), having been PI of the Mapping the Underworld programme (£4.5m, 2004-12), which derived from an EPSRC-funded Engineering Programme Network in Trenchless Technology (EPC547330,2001-04). He is a CI of iBUILD (EPK012398, £3.5m, 2013-17) exploring infrastructure interdependencies and novel business models, was PI of a Cross-Disciplinary Feasibility Award on Critical Local Infrastructures (EPI016163, 2011-12) and is CI of a Basic Technology project creating a gravity gradient sensor to map underground space (GG-TOP, EPI036877, £2.4m, 2011-15). Editor of Engineering Sustainability (2007-2011) and an editor of Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology (1996-2013), he chairs the Institution of Civil Engineers Innovation & Research Panel.Professor Jon Sadler (Co-I) holds a chair in Biogeography and Ecology at the University of Birmingham, where his research focus is on people-environment interactions in urban areas. His research portfolio amounts to 13 million in funding derived from UKRC (NERC, EPSRC, ESRC), charities (Leverhulme Trust, Big Lottery, UK Agencies (EA, Natural England, Countryside Council for Wales) and private industry. He was CI on the SUE1&2 grants focusing on ecological services in cities, 3 NERC-URGENT grants (urban biodiversity, urban habitats and urban rivers) and an EU grant on sustainable urban drainage and brown (biodiversity) roofs. A UK REF 2014 panel member, he has published >120 outputs including interdisciplinary studies of animal ecology and ecological function in cities, especially in respect to the disruption of those functions by human activity and the importance of ecological services for city dwellers. He edits the Journal of Biogeography, is on the European Geophysical Union’s Hydroecology steering group and a Trustee of two UK wildlife charities.

Professor AbuBakr Bahajis the head of Energy and Climate Change Division at the University of Southampton with expertise spanning energy generation and demand reductions with special emphasis on the built environment. He has fostered a culture of cross-disciplinary research across the energy field,whichhas produced >250 publications and,over the last 7 years, a research portfolio in access of £18 million. He is the academic lead of the recently awarded£10.3 million Ofgem’s LCNF project to support network grid investment. He is also the Chief Scientific Advisor to Southampton City Council and was recently voted by theScience Council as one of the UK’s top 100 practicing scientists.Professor Jane Falkingham is a specialist in demographic change and its social and economic welfare implications with a particular focus on ageing. She is the Director of the ESRC Centre for Population Change and PI of the EPSRC Care Life Cycle Programme. Her work on poverty and health dynamics is embedded within government agencies such as DFiD.Dr Patrick James is a specialist in micro-generation and urban energy systems. His work is at the interface of technology and people incorporating studies of national and international standing in micro-wind, micro-CHP, solar-thermal, photovoltaics, building refurbishment and urban futures. His work has been used by numerous institutions and policy makers including DECC, CIBSE, Scottish Executive, Carbon Trust, ICE and the European Commission.Dr Milena Buchs is a senior lecturer in sociology and social policy. Her research focuses on the issues surrounding inequality and climate change, as well as practice change, in particular in relation to energy and low carbon lives. She led the ESRC study ‘Who emits most? The distribution of CO2 emissions across UK households’, was co-director of ‘environment’ within the Third Sector Research Centre and is currently co-I of the ESRC study ‘Community based initiatives in energy saving’.

Case for Support

1.Background and context

CLARET is an outcome of the EPSRC Programme Grant ‘Transforming the Engineering of Cities’ (TEC)ii,which is undertaking a radical re-visioning of how we engineer the world’s cities so they become fit for the needs of future generations, in the context of rapid changes at the global scale. To achieve this TEC is providing new approaches to appraising and designing future cities.

One part of TEC isthe development of a city analysis framework which will help city leaders understandthe challenges posed by a radical view of what cities could be and how they could function.This will be based on re-visioning a city to maximise wellbeing and optimise low carbon living. TEC is also producing new insights intothe synthesis of social and governance aspects of cities with environmental and technological perspectives. In doing so they re-vision the engineering required to create sustainable urban environments. To capitalise on this work these new approaches need to be brought to the attention of city and national governments and those who implement developments throughout the UK and elsewhere in the world. An initial attempt at providing more dynamic support for city/national officials has been made for the Colombian Government as part of a project on low carbon Colombian cities funded by the UK FCO (Tyler). This provides a starting point in making guidance for practitioners available in a helpful and dynamic way, but the advances being made in TEC both necessitateand enable this approach to be taken much further to provide greater impactiii. This is the purpose of CLARET.

The output of CLARET (Comprehensive Lifecycle Assessmentand Recommendations for Engineering Transformations) will bea body of knowledge with dissemination enabled by technology that will provide guidance for use by government policy makers (national and local) and public and private city decision-makers. It will enable them to access the highest level of expertise on which to make urban design and policy decisions. This will help city governments ensure that their cities are fit for purpose in the 21st and 22nd centuries in conditions of rapid multi-contextual change.This will also provide a new model for the delivery of national Government guidance regarding areas other than cities; the development of guidance for sustainable and adaptive cities is suitably rich to provide a useful example for others to follow.

2.(Inter)National Importance

In addition to TEC, EPSRC has funded programmes specifically related to cities through its Sustainable Urban Environments initiative phases 1, 2 and 3; and Adaptation and Resilience in the Context of Change Network (ARCC). In addition it funds highly complementary projects on infrastructure (e.g. ITRC (EP/I01344X/2), The Innovation Knowledge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction at Cambridge University (EP/I019308/1), ICIF (EP/K012347/1)); energy (e.g. CBES (EP/I02929X/1), Centre for Sustainable Energy Use in Food Chains (EP/K011820/1), DEMAND (EP/K011723/1), RESNET (EP/I035757)); transport (e.g. Centre for Sustainable Road Freight Transport (EP/K00915X/1), Railway Track for the 21st Century (EP/H044949/1)); the built environment (e.g. Adaptable Suburbs (EP/I001212/1); and Co-design of the built environment for mobility in later life (EP/K03748X/1)) amongst others

In addition to those funded by EPSRC, there are a number of research-led initiatives exploring cities and liveability. Of particular interest are the Future of Cities Foresight programme led by BIS, which is taking a long-term look at how UK cities can contribute to economic growth, taking into account wellbeing, equity and social inclusion. Also, the TSB-funded Future Cities catapult, which focuses upon joining-up how cities operate for improving quality of life, strengthening the economy and protecting the environment, with Glasgow as its demonstrator city. In these initiatives, pathways to policy implementation are fostered by using technology and science to illustrate possible futures. Non EPSRC-led research initiatives that focus upon underpinning science, demonstration and facilitation between research, business and policy include Biophilic Cities (Summit Foundation); Centre for Low Carbon Futures (various funding sources); EU Association of Smart Cities (EU); Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities (University of Oxford); LSE Cities ( Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society); MIT CoLab and Sense-able Cities Lab (MIT); Reconciling Adaptation, Mitigation and Sustainable Development for Cities - RAMSES (EU); and Transitioning Towards Urban Resilience and Sustainability - TURAS (EU).

As cities increasingly rely upon outsourced competencies to move towards liveability there is a growth in business-led initiatives, such as: AECOM Global Cities Institute, Cisco Smart City Framework, IBM Smarter Cities, Siemens Infrastructure and Cities, and WSP Designing Future Cities.In addition, a number of independent initiatives have grown: Centre for Cities, Center for Neighborhood Technology – CNT, Centre for Sustainable Energy - CSE, Citymart, New Cities Foundation, Next City, Project for Public Spaces - PPS, RSA City Growth Commission, Urban Sustainability Research Coordination Network - RCN, and the Santa Fe Institute. Policymakers are developing city initiatives as cities are increasingly recognised as important agents of change: Foresight Review on the Theme of Future Cities (UK), C40 Cities Programme, City Protocol, Core Cities (UK), Covenant of Mayors, European Sustainable Development Network (ESDN), Global City Indicators Facility, and the World City Mayors Forum.

CLARET crosses seven of EPSRC's 12 funding themes: Digital economy (e.g. Sustainable Society, Communities and Culture, New Economic Models), Energy (e.g. Sustainable Energy Vectors), Engineering (e.g. Built Environment, Complexity Science, Energy Networks, Engineering Design, Resource Efficiency, Sustainable Land Management, Whole Energy Systems), Global Uncertainties (e.g. Natural Resources), ICT (e.g. Databases, Engineering Design, Graphics and Visualisation, Information Systems), LWEC (e.g. Infrastructure, Water), and Manufacturing the Future (e.g. Working in the UK Innovation Landscape, Sustainable Industrial Systems, Innovative Production Processes).

3.Methodology and structure

Within the CLARET project, we will develop exemplars as the starting point for the research so that we can maintain the appropriate depth, rather than attempt to cover every aspect of future city operation at a more superficial level. So the CLARET ‘Book’ will adopt a Transformational Engineering approach to focus work emanating from TEC and other research into an innovative form of guidance for people who govern, manage, live or work in cities.The aims and objectives described in the Je-S form lead to five interlinked topic groups, which, in combination, structure the CLARET book: People & Places (Aspirations, Senses, Urban Form), Policy (Governance, Finance), Practice(using Energy as an example), andTransformational Engineeringto combine all of these. The lead investigators are identified in each case.

3.1People and Places (Tyler)

The interactions between places and people are supremely complex. In order to understand how to make people-place interactions more sustainable for future generations, we have clustered them into three interlinked themes:

1. the Aspirationsfor cities of the future that link to improvement of wellbeing,
2. the Sensesand perceptions by which people interact with the environment around them and
3. the Urban form and Mobilities needed to link their chosen activities together, by which cities make people’s aspirations achievable.

3.1.1Aspirations (Joffe) – Months 1-18

Vision: To conduct a nationally representative survey and segmentation of members of the British public to identify the types of ‘aspirational city’ people aspire to live in.

Previous research:Surprisingly little research has investigated what types of cities member of the British public aspire to live in. Academic research typically investigates city aspirations as they relate to urban design and housing preferencesiv. Broader scale ‘recipe books’ of best practice, as defined by engineers, policy experts and practitioners, highlight the transformations future cities will require to become ‘smart’ and ‘resilient’v while other surveys explore the current quality of life in cities for people across the EU and beyondvi. Nothing is available, however, which puts people’s specific desires and aspirations for future cities centre stage.

Novelty: A systematic, robust, empirically grounded survey of British public aspirations for cities of the future has never been conducted. Questions are derived from a detailed qualitative study of aspirational cities (conducted within the TEC project by these researchers) in a matched sample in three UK cities. Researchers and practitioners have placed considerable energy into conceptualising future cities, but not directly gauged the perspective of the lay public.

What we will do: A nationally representative survey, with a segmentation analysis on 2,000 UK dwellers to identify the types of aspirational city (e.g. the “friendly” city, the “green” city) the UK public aspire to live in, but also how prevalent these city types are for different demographic groups (e.g. for young professionals, retirees).