Resource Futures in Cities

The project, in collaboration with Siemens Corporate Technology, aims to develop a city-scale analysis of the energy, material and natural resource flows activated by cities, including their impact on greenhouse gases. This will also include some socio-economic metrics such as employment, and will develop an evidence base for exploring alternative development paths for cities. Some of this evidence will be implemented within the Foreseer tool, developed in the University's most inter-disciplinary project, which allows dynamic and interactive visualisation of alternative resource futures. The project will provide new and robust evidence to support Siemens' developing insights into resource futures, will allow validation and comparison of other approaches to exploring environmental impacts of planning decisions, and will allow strategic exploration of possible technology and business model innovations.

The project will include data collection, estimation, structuring and analysis, interpretation of predictions about resource futures, exploration of the appropriate treatment of uncertainties, and interactive work with Siemens to explore how different user groups respond to different presentations of possible futures.

Relevant EPSRC research areas include:
Built environment
Energy efficiency (end use energy demand)
Resource efficiency
Whole energy systems