Peer-to-peer and community-based markets: A comprehensive review

The advent of more proactive consumers, the so-called "prosumers", with production and storage capabilities, is empowering the consumers and bringing new opportunities and challenges to the operation of power systems in a market environment. Recently, a novel proposal for the design and operation of electricity markets has emerged: these so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity markets conceptually allow the prosumers to directly share their electrical energy and investment. Such P2P markets rely on a consumer-centric and bottom-up perspective by giving the opportunity to consumers to freely choose the way they are to source their electric energy. A community can also be formed by prosumers who want to collaborate, or in terms of operational energy management. This paper contributes with an overview of these new P2P markets that starts with the motivation, challenges, market designs moving to the potential future developments in this field, providing recommendations while considering a test-case

The economic ecology of small businesses in Oxfordshire

Report by the Oxfordshire Economic Observatory (OEO) for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Oxfordshire Branch

From buildings to cities: techniques for the multi-scale analysis of urban form and function

The built environment is a significant factor in many urban processes, yet direct measures of built form are seldom used in geographical studies. Representation and analysis of urban form and function could provide new insights and improve the evidence base for research. So far progress has been slow due to limited data availability, computational demands, and a lack of methods to integrate built environment data with aggregate geographical analysis. Spatial data and computational improvements are overcoming some of these problems, but there remains a need for techniques to process and aggregate urban form data. Here we develop a Built Environment Model of urban function and dwelling type classifications for Greater London, based on detailed topographic and address-based data (sourced from Ordnance Survey MasterMap). The multi-scale approach allows the Built Environment Model to be viewed at fine-scales for local planning contexts, and at city-wide scales for aggregate geographical analysis, allowing an improved understanding of urban processes. This flexibility is illustrated in the two examples, that of urban function and residential type analysis, where both local-scale urban clustering and city-wide trends in density and agglomeration are shown. While we demonstrate the multi-scale Built Environment Model to be a viable approach, a number of accuracy issues are identified, including the limitations of 2D data, inaccuracies in commercial function data and problems with temporal attribution. These limitations currently restrict the more advanced applications of the Built Environment Model

Costs and benefits of superfast broadband in the UK

This paper was commissioned from LSE Enterprise by Convergys Smart Revenue Solutions to stimulate an open and constructive debate among the main stakeholders about the balance between the costs, the revenues, and the societal benefits of ‘superfast’ broadband. The intent has been to analyse the available facts and to propose wider perspectives on economic and social interactions. The paper has two parts: one concentrates on superfast broadband deployment and the associated economic and social implications (for the UK and its service providers), and the other considers alternative social science approaches to these implications. Both parts consider the potential contribution of smart solutions to superfast broadband provision and use. Whereas Part I takes the “national perspective” and the “service provider perspective”, which deal with the implications of superfast broadband for the UK and for service providers, Part II views matters in other ways, particularly by looking at how to realise values beyond the market economy, such as those inherent in neighbourliness, trust and democrac

Broadband : towards a national plan for Scotland

The development of national broadband plans has been used by many countries to join up different areas of governmental and regulatory activities and to set ambitious targets for ubiquitous access to and use of the latest fixed and wireless networks and services. For Scotland this requires working within EU and UK legislative frameworks, which have also provided the bulk of the finance for interventions. It also requires an understanding of the significant weaknesses of urban broadband adoption compared to other UK and EU nations and of its e-commerce supply and demand. While resources are being targeted at rural and remote areas, more are needed to close the social digital divide, which is unavoidable if the stated ambition of being world class is to be achieved

Business begins at home

One of the most significant trends in the post-industrial era has been for the home to become an important focus for work. The boundaries between work and home are now increasingly blurred, reversing the forces of the industrial era in which places deemed suitable for each were clearly demarcated and physically separate. The most recent published figures available from the Labour Force Survey (2005)1 indicate that 3.1m people now work mainly from home, 11% of the workforce. This represents a rise from 2.3m in 1997 (9% of the workforce), a 35% increase. The majority of homeworkers (2.4m or 77% of the total) are 'teleworkers' – people who use computers and telecommunications to work at home. The number of teleworkers has increased by 1.5m between 1997 and 2005, a 166% increase. Clearly, it is the growth in the number of teleworkers which is driving the increase in homeworking