Performance assessment of urban precinct design: a scoping study

Executive Summary: Significant advances have been made over the past decade in the development of scientifically and industry accepted tools for the performance assessment of buildings in terms of energy, carbon, water, indoor environment quality etc. For resilient, sustainable low carbon urban development to be realised in the 21st century, however, will require several radical transitions in design performance beyond the scale of individual buildings. One of these involves the creation and application of leading edge tools (not widely available to built environment professions and practitioners) capable of being applied to an assessment of performance across all stages of development at a precinct scale (neighbourhood, community and district) in either greenfield, brownfield or greyfield settings. A core aspect here is the development of a new way of modelling precincts, referred to as Precinct Information Modelling (PIM) that provides for transparent sharing and linking of precinct object information across the development life cycle together with consistent, accurate and reliable access to reference data, including that associated with the urban context of the precinct. Neighbourhoods are the ‘building blocks’ of our cities and represent the scale at which urban design needs to make its contribution to city performance: as productive, liveable, environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive places (COAG 2009). Neighbourhood design constitutes a major area for innovation as part of an urban design protocol established by the federal government (Department of Infrastructure and Transport 2011, see Figure 1). The ability to efficiently and effectively assess urban design performance at a neighbourhood level is in its infancy. This study was undertaken by Swinburne University of Technology, University of New South Wales, CSIRO and buildingSMART Australasia on behalf of the CRC for Low Carbon Living

Building Information Modeling as Tool for Enhancing Disaster Resilience of the Construction Industry

As frequencies of the disasters are increasing, new technologies can be used to enhance disaster resilience performance of the construction industry. This paper investigates the usage of BIM (Building Information Modeling) in enhancing disaster resilience of the construction industry and in the establishment of the resilient built environment. In-depth literature review findings reveal BIM’s contribution to the disaster resilience in the pre-disaster and post-disaster phases especially through influencing the performance of the supply chain, construction process, and rescue operations. This paper emphasises the need for BIM’s integration to the education and training curriculums of the built environment professionals. Policy makers, construction professionals, professional bodies, academics can benefit from this research

User-driven design of decision support systems for polycentric environmental resources management

Open and decentralized technologies such as the Internet provide increasing opportunities to create knowledge and deliver computer-based decision support for multiple types of users across scales. However, environmental decision support systems/tools (henceforth EDSS) are often strongly science-driven and assuming single types of decision makers, and hence poorly suited for more decentralized and polycentric decision making contexts. In such contexts, EDSS need to be tailored to meet diverse user requirements to ensure that it provides useful (relevant), usable (intuitive), and exchangeable (institutionally unobstructed) information for decision support for different types of actors. To address these issues, we present a participatory framework for designing EDSS that emphasizes a more complete understanding of the decision making structures and iterative design of the user interface. We illustrate the application of the framework through a case study within the context of water-stressed upstream/downstream communities in Lima, Peru

Proceedings of Abstracts Engineering and Computer Science Research Conference 2019

© 2019 The Author(s). This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. For further details please see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Note: Keynote: Fluorescence visualisation to evaluate effectiveness of personal protective equipment for infection control is © 2019 Crown copyright and so is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Under this licence users are permitted to copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information; adapt the Information; exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application. Where you do any of the above you must acknowledge the source of the Information in your product or application by including or linking to any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/This book is the record of abstracts submitted and accepted for presentation at the Inaugural Engineering and Computer Science Research Conference held 17th April 2019 at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK. This conference is a local event aiming at bringing together the research students, staff and eminent external guests to celebrate Engineering and Computer Science Research at the University of Hertfordshire. The ECS Research Conference aims to showcase the broad landscape of research taking place in the School of Engineering and Computer Science. The 2019 conference was articulated around three topical cross-disciplinary themes: Make and Preserve the Future; Connect the People and Cities; and Protect and Care

British Geological Survey Annual Science Review 2012-13

The British Geological Survey (BGS) is part of the Natural Environment Research Council and is its principal supplier of national capability in geoscience. We advance understanding of the structure, properties and processes of the solid Earth system through interdisciplinary surveys, monitoring, modelling and research for the benefit of society. We are the UK’s premier provider of objective and authoritative geoscientific data, information and knowledge for creating wealth, using natural resources sustainably, reducing risk and living with the impacts of environmental change. Our vision To be the world’s leading centre for geoscience impact

Assessing and visualising hazard impacts to enhance the resilience of Critical Infrastructures to urban flooding

This is the final version. Available on open access from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordThe design, construction and maintenance of Critical Infrastructures (CI) is commonly based on standards that are rigorous, so as to withstand any climate or weather-linked pressures. However, due to climate change, climate characteristics may shift, resulting in increased frequency/magnitude of potential failures, or exposure to new unknown risks. As vital components for the normal functioning of modern societies, the resilience of CIs under climate stressors encompasses their structural integrity, their operational elements, and their capacity to maximize business output. In this work, we propose an integrated and participatory methodological approach to enhance the resilience of interconnected CIs to urban flooding under climate change, by assessing the risk and introducing adaptation measures. The main objectives of the proposed methodology and approach are: (i) to provide scientific evidence for better understanding of how future climate regimes might affect normal operation of interconnected CI in urban areas during their lifespan; (ii) to assess the cost-effectiveness of different adaptation measures; (iii) to involve local stakeholders and operators in the co-design of the approach, as well as the assessment and the evaluation of adaptation measures; (iv) to combine computational modelling with advanced 3D visualisation techniques for effectively engaging stakeholders in decision making; (v) to include risk assessment and damage functions co-designed by end-users and local stakeholders; (vi) to integrate all of the aforementioned components in a specifically designed cloud platform as a Decision Support System for end-users, (vii) to validate the DSS by the end users and local stakeholders. The paper presents the computational background and tools. Additionally, it describes a Case Study in Torbay, UK, where the full methodology and the proposed participatory approach have been applied, with all the specifics, i.e., the scenarios of extreme flooding, the numerical and visualization results, the response of the stakeholders and the evaluation of selected adaptation measures.European CommissionEuropean Union FP7Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Towards a global participatory platform: Democratising open data, complexity science and collective intelligence

The FuturICT project seeks to use the power of big data, analytic models grounded in complexity science, and the collective intelligence they yield for societal benefit. Accordingly, this paper argues that these new tools should not remain the preserve of restricted government, scientific or corporate élites, but be opened up for societal engagement and critique. To democratise such assets as a public good, requires a sustainable ecosystem enabling different kinds of stakeholder in society, including but not limited to, citizens and advocacy groups, school and university students, policy analysts, scientists, software developers, journalists and politicians. Our working name for envisioning a sociotechnical infrastructure capable of engaging such a wide constituency is the Global Participatory Platform (GPP). We consider what it means to develop a GPP at the different levels of data, models and deliberation, motivating a framework for different stakeholders to find their ecological niches at different levels within the system, serving the functions of (i) sensing the environment in order to pool data, (ii) mining the resulting data for patterns in order to model the past/present/future, and (iii) sharing and contesting possible interpretations of what those models might mean, and in a policy context, possible decisions. A research objective is also to apply the concepts and tools of complexity science and social science to the project's own work. We therefore conceive the global participatory platform as a resilient, epistemic ecosystem, whose design will make it capable of self-organization and adaptation to a dynamic environment, and whose structure and contributions are themselves networks of stakeholders, challenges, issues, ideas and arguments whose structure and dynamics can be modelled and analysed. Graphical abstrac

Modelling and simulating change in reforesting mountain landscapes using a social-ecological framework

Natural reforestation of European mountain landscapes raises major environmental and societal issues. With local stakeholders in the Pyrenees National Park area (France), we studied agricultural landscape colonisation by ash (Fraxinus excelsior) to enlighten its impacts on biodiversity and other landscape functions of importance for the valley socio-economics. The study comprised an integrated assessment of land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) since the 1950s, and a scenario analysis of alternative future policy. We combined knowledge and methods from landscape ecology, land change and agricultural sciences, and a set of coordinated field studies to capture interactions and feedback in the local landscape/land-use system. Our results elicited the hierarchically-nested relationships between social and ecological processes. Agricultural change played a preeminent role in the spatial and temporal patterns of LUCC. Landscape colonisation by ash at the parcel level of organisation was merely controlled by grassland management, and in fact depended on the farmer's land management at the whole-farm level. LUCC patterns at the landscape level depended to a great extent on interactions between farm household behaviours and the spatial arrangement of landholdings within the landscape mosaic. Our results stressed the need to represent the local SES function at a fine scale to adequately capture scenarios of change in landscape functions. These findings orientated our modelling choices in the building an agent-based model for LUCC simulation (SMASH - Spatialized Multi-Agent System of landscape colonization by ASH). We discuss our method and results with reference to topical issues in interdisciplinary research into the sustainability of multifunctional landscapes

Complexity Aided Design: the FuturICT Technological Innovation Paradigm

"In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies--even our dreams ....What will the earth's new skin permit us to feel? How will we use its surges of sensation? For several years--maybe for a decade--there will be no central nervous system to manage this vast signaling network. Certainly there will be no central intelligence...some qualities of self-awareness will emerge once the Net is sensually enhanced. Sensuality is only one force pushing the Net toward intelligence". These statements are quoted by an interview by Cherry Murray, Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Physics. It is interesting to outline the timeliness and highly predicting power of these statements. In particular, we would like to point to the relevance of the question "What will the earth's new skin permit us to feel?" to the work we are going to discuss in this paper. There are many additional compelling questions, as for example: "How can the electronic earth's skin be made more resilient?"; "How can the earth's electronic skin be improved to better satisfy the need of our society?";"What can the science of complex systems contribute to this endeavour?