Our vision is to engage users in the design of control systems they like, that allow them to create the comfort conditions they want, and which through using the technology and fabric of their homes more effectively, reduces their energy use by 20%. We want to design and test these control systems in a way that complies with utilities' CERT-2 obligations, and provide design, installation and maintenance guidance which allows others to learn from our work and apply it more widely. We estimate this has the potential to save around 3 MT CO2 annually.Homes use about a third of the UK's energy, and produce about a third of all CO2 emissions. Because of the low rates of demolition, and the difference in efficiency between new and old houses, even if every house built from now to 2050 was zero-carbon, the total emissions from the UK housing stock would stay roughly the same. Any significant reductions must come from existing homes. In existing homes, making them comfortable (primarily through heating) uses around two thirds of their energy and carbon. We also know that how occupants' make their home comfortable, through use of the heating system, doors, windows, lighting, the clothes they wear, etc, has an enormous effect on energy use. Identical homes, with different occupants, can vary in energy use by a factor of two to three. Driving your home well can reduce your carbon footprint much more than installing wind turbines or solar panels. Currently, driving your home well is very hard to do. There's almost no feedback on the effect of leaving the bedroom window open at night, or having your thermostat at 21 C rather than 19 C. A quarterly energy bill provides almost no help so occupants' are currently 'driving blind' when it comes to saving energy or reducing their carbon footprint. This project aims to give them something to see with / forms of feedback on the energy costs of their actions which are immediate and in a form they themselves want. We will work with occupants, in their own homes, to understand what they would find useful. Using an action research approach and user centred design methods, we will understand their day to day comfort practices (i.e. how they drive their home) and design systems to help them drive it better, better in terms of comfort, spending less on energy and reducing their carbon footprint. Previous studies show that relatively simple forms of feedback, such as an LCD display showing instantaneous energy use, can help people save 5 to 15%. While these displays are good, they usually only display the total electricity used in the home, not on individual appliances, and they only provide information. In order for people to make changes they need three things: feedback (information on energy use); motivation (the desire to reduce energy use) and choice (the ability to act differently). There is scope to design technologies that provide all three of these - to provide occupants with systems for control that tell them what is using energy, what choices they have to use less, and do to so in a way they like to engage with. An approach targeting all three of these issues, and engaging users throughout the design process, has not been tried before but given previous studies, savings of 20% could reasonably be expected. The research is highly interdisciplinary and is based in field work involving lots of monitoring to ensure the technologies work and deliver real, measurable savings. The research team is a balance of technologists and social researchers and through working closely with householders, utilities and housing providers, we feel we can make a real contribution to understanding how people use energy to make their homes comfortable, and to develop control systems that can help them do this more effectively while saving on energy costs and reducing their carbon footprint.

The project team propose that system shocks constitute opportunities to radically 'shift minds' by reevaluating the relationship between demand and provision of infrastructure. Shocks provide drivers to re-imagining the scale of resource use, particularly in terms of delivering core utilities, as we move into an era of resource scarcity. The SHOCK (not) HORROR project uniquely unpicks the potential for radical change through the allegory of medical trauma to challenge infrastructure stakeholders to move out of their comfort zone, challenge the current organization of infrastructure in silos, rethink the nature of shocks and devise new and transformative ways of thinking about infrastructure. Specifically it will develop a new concept of infrastructure resilience, both by using shocks as a way of both highlighting the interdependencies of existing infrastructure systems (identifying the weak points), and improving infrastructure by restoring it to a better state after the shock (rather than re-instating what was there before the shock). The project team is connected by the belief that the study of infrastructure shocks can help develop new holistic models of infrastructure. We approach infrastructure problems from very different discipline perspectives (civil engineering, design for sustainability and socio-technical systems research) but aim to build on this diversity to generate new and insightful outputs which will synthesise knowledge across these different fields of study. Our methodology is based on the use of narratives of trauma as a means to free up thinking about infrastructure 'traumas' and the opportunities they provide for radical re-shaping of the infrastructure. These will be used, together with a portfolio of case studies where trauma has occurred, to explore to what extent the 'window of opportunity' for change was recognised and/or utilised, and whether we can envisage methods to take the maximum advantage of similar situations in the future. The methodology is will use maps of socio-technical infrastructure systems of systems and develop of narratives of intervention points. It will have 5 stages: 1) Medical trauma as an allegory of infrastructure system shocks: We are going to develop the medical allegory using a range of qualitative methods, including document analysis and interviews with medical professionals from different cultural approaches (e.g. Western and Chinese medicine) and different forms of medical practice (e.g. GP consulting vs emergencies), to compile trauma storylines that have led to radical re-evaluations of either medical practice and/or personal ways of living 2) Construction of maps of the socio-technological configuration of infrastructure systems: We are going to map the socio-technical configurations of infrastructure systems and the dynamics of change with reference to the literature of systems innovations and sustainability transitions. We will extend this framework by investigating it further through our storylines of systems shocks. 3) Testing the allegory in real infrastructure systems and defining system intervention points: We are going to organize two day-long stakeholder events in which stakeholders will be invited to evaluate the accuracy of our infrastructure systems maps and debate the feasibility of intervention in the system intervention points defined according to a hierarchical scale. 4) Development of a Framework to Maximise Learning from Infrastructure Systems Shocks: We are going to devise a series of experiments to understand the decisions required to maximize the window of opportunity provided by shocks to learn about the integration of infrastructure systems. 5) Synthesis of the combined outputs into a long-term transformative agenda: We will use the combined outputs of the research to develop an agenda for transformative research, education and practice on integrated infrastructure. We will focus on developing a "shock tactics laboratory".

Globally, green infrastructure is recognised as an important tool that can address a range of interwoven benefits in urban areas such as: reducing flood risk, reducing urban heat island effects, reducing water pollution, improving air quality, reducing noise, providing amenity provision and well-being. The challenges these benefits address are projected to intensify in the context of climate change and urban population growth. The potential to achieve these benefits is made difficult by the traditional models for delivering green infrastructure and complexities such as: understanding who benefits and hence who pays; valuing the benefits; the appropriate spatial scale for implementation; incentives and enforcement for its implementation and maintenance; and how its delivery interacts with existing infrastructure in urban areas. Here we aim to identify, investigate and pilot tangible design, funding, implementation and operating models for green infrastructure which can be replicated or adapted internationally. An initial review of funding and delivery mechanism for green infrastructure will be undertaken from an academic and practitioners' viewpoint, drawing upon a range of literature sources. Simultaneously, laneways in Melbourne deemed suitable for 'greening' will be co-designed and implemented with local communities. An evaluation of the potential multiple benefits of laneways in the Melbourne will include social, economic and environmental benefits. An example of how these benefits can be quantified will be conducted in the context of flood risk by coupling Newcastle University's pluvial flood risk model of Melbourne that can illustrate the flood mitigation effect of green infrastructure with ARUP's economic tool, Floodlite. Stakeholder mapping of the beneficiaries, coupled with a conceptual map of how benefits flow, will inform the proposal of alternative business models for funding the delivery of laneways. These various elements will then be brought together to inform the development of a digital community funding platform for green infrastructure; this will be complimented by a set of recommendations and non-technical summary guide to green infrastructure funding. The process will be repeatable and transferable to enable communities to support green infrastructures in their neighbourhoods. Joint funding from NERC and Arup (through their Global Research Challenge fund) will bring together teams from the scientific, government and practitioner communities and enable them to integrate the range of skills required to deliver this work.

The aim of this research is to improve the reliability, safety and profitability of transport networks through the identification of existing and potential slope stability hazards using integrated remote engineering surveying techniques. UK industry and government agencies have recently invested heavily in applying a number of remote sensing techniques to transport environments. The proposed research seeks to develop methods in which remotely sensed data can be utilised to perform intelligent analysis in transport corridor environments, namely by integrating high resolution airborne LiDAR, NIR digital imagery and terrestrial laser scanning.The research will consist of four complementary work packages. Firstly it is necessary to identify robust and multi-compatible workflows that will allow the core research to take place. Remote sensing techniques will then be employed to undertake quantitative assessment using established geotechnical and hydrological modelling. Remotely sensed data will also be used to provide qualitative assessment and identification of the symptoms of slope instability using automated/semi-automated methodologies. The combination of datasets will be addressed using a technique to consider the inherent uncertainties of data integration. Based on these results the research will focus on the process of assessing risk.The research will use both a dedicated embankment research facility currently in construction at the University of Newcastle and an industry identified test site near Ben Rhydding, near Ilkely. This will ensure both academic rigour and industrial relevance.

Buildings must provide a comfortable internal environment for their users but how they perform depends on the weather to which they are exposed. The UK climate is already changing and this will demand different approaches to the way buildings are designed. However, the climate of the future cannot be predicted with complete certainty and this is reflected in the future climate scenarios being developed under the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP08), which are to be presented in probabilistic terms. This means that the information will be given in the form There is a 5% probability that the temperature will be greater than (value) . This uncertainty is unfamiliar for building designers, who are used to taking fixed extreme summer or winter conditions and designing cooling, ventilation and heating systems of sufficient capacity to cope with these design conditions. Consequently, there is a risk that buildings may not perform as designed, either because the building systems cannot adapt to the changing climate or because systems are over specified to deal with a climate scenario that does not happen. Future building performance is additionally constrained by the need to minimise CO2 emissions, so it is not appropriate or sustainable to simply build in over-capacity, for example by providing air-conditioning everywhere to cope with future summer weather. Equally, highly insulated and well sealed low-energy buildings may overheat as a result of the heat gained from the occupants and the equipment they use. These factors are likely to see a departure from the current way in which buildings are conceived and designs carried out as designers will need to take account of the frequency of occurrence of particular external conditions in selecting design criteria. This proposed project aims to develop a method of linking these probabilistic UKCIP08 climate scenarios to the requirements of the community of building services engineers. It will produce a practical method of designing economic and environmentally friendly heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in both existing and new buildings. The method will be based on probabilistic data but will not require the user to understand sophisticated statistical theory.The project has several interlinked parts. The UKCIP08 data will be transformed statistically to give a set of simple design conditions which can be used by practitioners. A series of criteria will be developed to identify acceptable levels of building performance in the field of human comfort and systems provision. The performance of a series of case studies will be simulated from the probabilistic climate scenarios against these criteria. The experience of a senior building user group will be collected in order to quantify what needs to be known about building performance and the acceptability of risk so that buildings can be designed or adapted to accommodate the changing UK climate. The outcome will be a set of case study buildings in various UK locations which designers can call upon to support their decisions.