The systemic city: Infrastructure interdependency and complex value business models

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.

To meet the LWEC challenge this fellowship must produce impact beyond the academic community, and enable change in the ways critical infrastructures are configured. This means developing new decision processes and business models that result in much faster adoption of sustainable and resilient infrastructures in cities.

There is a particularly strong impact focus in this fellowship. The attached case for support demonstrates the great care the applicant takes to build lasting and productive networks across academia and the stakeholder community, and the impacts this has had at a national and international scale. This approach will be replicated and enhanced in this research by building networks across sector regulators, city governments, government departments, and related research groups from the EPSRC landscape.

This research has significant potential to benefit the structures of decision making at the city regional level. The devolution of responsibility for urban infrastructures in the UK was started under the Localism Act and has seen the devolution of hundreds of millions of pounds of infrastructure spending to city regions and the establishment of new combined authorities. The Core Cities group (a group of the 10 largest cities outside London) has ambitions to take a greater stake in electricity infrastructures, transport networks, heat infrastructures, telecoms systems, flood prevention and green infrastructure provision. This group and affiliated cities would benefit greatly from the development of decision support processes for infrastructure spending which take account of complex values, resource implications, and climate change resilience.

This research also has significant potential to impact the ways in which private infrastructure providers engage with city regions. Currently engagement with electricity, water and telecoms providers by cities is ad-hoc or bespoke to particular problems. This research will bring these providers together with city managers to identify new ways of working to maximise the mitigation potential of infrastructure systems and speed up the adoption of myriad engineering solutions and technological innovations currently developed but unable to be deployed.
This research will also be closely linked to national systems regulators and policy departments. The announcement of the National Infrastructure Commission provides a clear pathway to impact for new infrastructure valuation methods and decision structures. This fellowship will be directly relevant to this body. The applicant has already shown their ability to engage closely with energy system regulators and policy makers. This will be replicated across the national policy space. The output of this engagement will be in the form of policy briefs, workshops and consultation responses to demonstrate where policy, regulation and/or infrastructure business models can change to enable better use of engineering innovations. Each of these communities, the city level, infrastructure providers, the national policy community and system regulators will be pro-actively engaged in the [co] production of this research.

Ultimately the impact of this fellowship should be to change the ways in which stakeholders configure urban infrastructure systems and seek ways to re-engineer the physical attributes of these systems to be more resilient, sustainable, and economically viable; i.e. the key challenges in this Living With Environmental Change Call.