Complex Built Environment Systems (CBES) Platform Grant Renewal Bid: The Unintended Consequences of Decarbonising the Built Environment

The CBES group at the UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies received its Platform Award in 2006 and the funding has facilitated a period of sustained success. Platform funding has been of critical value in helping us to retain key staff, to innovate and in providing the flexibility to be adventurous. We have also been able to enhance our knowledge exchange/transfer work and international collaboration. This has been reflected in the quality, growth and range of our activities. The Platform funding thus enabled us to establish a multi-disciplinary, world-leading research group which has dramatically increased in size, resulted in world leading academic publications, seeded a new Institute (Energy), developed new methods of interdisciplinary and systems working and won international prizes. CBES was submitted to and awarded the highest percentage (35%) of world leading rated researchers of any UK university in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) - Architecture and the Built Environment Panel. Building on the work directly supported or indirectly facilitated by the current Platform Grant, and also responding to new opportunities, the strategic direction of this continuation proposal represents a step change for CBES. During the period of the current Platform Grant, CBES was primarily interested in developing multi-disciplinary solutions to the practical problems of designing, constructing and managing environments within and around buildings. In the next quinquennium we will strengthen our world-leading position. We propose a strategic programme of activity in a timely new research direction - the unintended consequences of decarbonising the built environment . We aim to transform understanding of this urgent issue that will have enormous impact internationally.In order to predict the possible future states of such a complex socio-technical system, conventional scientific approaches that may have been appropriate for systems capable of being analysed into simple components are no longer applicable. Instead, we need to bring radically new approaches and ways of thinking to bear. We need to develop and extend our multi- and inter- disciplinary ways of working and be informed by modern complexity science. The initial Platform grant has helped set up a group that includes building scientists, heritage scientists, economists, systems modellers and social scientists. The renewal will enable the group to focus on this urgent problem, to develop appropriate research methods and help develop real-world solutions within the required timescale. The number of Investigators has increased from 11 at the start of the existing Platform Grant to 13 in the renewal - a vital expansion to enable the inclusion of a wider range of disciplines. Nevertheless, facilitated by Platform funding, we will now need to form a whole new set of additional alliances to support the development of our proposed work.One of the key achievements of the current Platform Grant has been the spinning off of the newly formed UCL Energy Institute (EI). CBES is thus ideally placed to benefit from the extensive and diverse range of energy demand reduction work at the EI. However, the EI is not funded to study unintended consequences and this Platform renewal will thus perfectly complement EI activity. Via Platform funding and in partnership with the EI, CBES aims to develop a new concentration of world-leading research excellence in this field. We will establish a regional hub for research collaboration with local universities which will ensure that benefits from Platform funding are felt more widely than UCL alone.

- UK policy makers and regulatory agencies will be informed by the outputs of the proposed research, especially Communities and Local Government (CLG), Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the UK Department of Health (DH) and the Health protection Agency (HPA). See, for example, statements of support from CLG Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Jeremy Watson and DCMS Chief Scientist and Chief Analyst Dr Anita Charlesworth. - International policy makers, for example the World Health Organization (WHO), will also benefit, as will other organizations interested in air quality and health, and in the health effects of adaptation and mitigation of climate change, such as the Wellcome Trust. CBES has acted as an expert adviser to WHO and received funding from both WHO and CBES during the last Platform Grant and we envisage working even more closely with them during the renewal. - In the commercial private sector, the Met Office, for example, will benefit from the evidence into the health impacts associated with air quality and climate change policies. CBES has worked with the Met Office during the EPSRC funded LUCID project and looks forward to developing these relationships during the renewal. - UK industry - see statements of support from companies such as Max Fordham LLP, WSP, Ann Thorne Architects and several lighting companies. For example, Max Fordham LLP note that some of the possible unintended consequences of de-carbonising the built environment that are of particular interest to them include: i) de-centralised power generation and its effect on the urban heat island and air quality. ii) the effect on electrical grid of changes in load patterns (load shedding, mass move to electric transport in cities etc). iii) adaptation or otherwise of people to higher temperatures and effect on building energy use. iv) adaptation of building density to reduce energy use and how this might affect the ability of buildings to cope with higher temperatures (balance between overshadowing and exposure to wind for ventilation etc.). - Local authorities. For example, the Greater London Authority (GLA) statement of support notes: I believe that the CBES has the potential to help the Greater London Authority develop better evidenced-based policies and programmes. The research capabilities of CBES will help us optimise the best mix of adaptation and mitigation measures, assist in targeting limited funding to where it will have most effect and identify and avoid the unintended consequences of decarbonising London . - Housing Trusts. For example, see statement of support from the Metropolitan Housing Partnership (MHP). The letter notes that the MHP expects that continued involvement with us will ....produce many more research findings and lead to the design and construction of better buildings by MHP and the development industry generally. The holistic approach you are suggesting for your new funding bid is very much supported by MHP.. . - Heritage organisations. See the relevant statements of support - for example, the Library of Congress notes: From the perspective of collection stewards everywhere, it is of key importance to understand what the unintended consequences of decarbonisation might be, and how we will face the new challenge.....it is vital that the long-term conservation issue are taken into consideration . - The UK population will directly benefit from increased understanding of the (positive and negative) impacts associated with decarbonising the built environment. Our dissemination methods are described in the Pathways to Impact plan.