ARCC news for October 2016
Hello,
It is a pleasure to report that through our latest activities ARCC is working across the full breadth of our remit in the built environment and infrastructure sectors. We had a successful event in Birmingham for UK Construction Week, and there were plenty of engineering solutions to our air-quality issues discussed at the event run with IET and CIBSE. Next on the calandar we have the culmination of our Feeling Good in Public Spaces series with a multisensory conference to be held in London, and you can register online.
I would like to congratulate a number of academics who work closely with the ARCC network on their recent wins at the CIBSE President’s Awards 2016 (more details are included below).
As always, enjoy the read, and follow us on Twitter @ARCC_CN if you don’t already.
Roger B Street, Principal Investigator
News from the ARCC network
Multi-sensory design – creating healthier public spaces – 8 December, London
Join us for the final event in our Feeling good in public spaces dialogue series. We’ll explore how multi-sensory design approaches can improve city dwellers’ experiences in urban public spaces – their form, morphology, aesthetics and materials. By providing a sensory journey from start to finish, we aim to challenge and perhaps inform changes to conventional approaches to placemaking.
Barking Riverside healthy new town research & innovation summit
11 November, London
This research and innovation summit will bring together researchers, innovators and practitioners in health and care, planning, urban design and related disciplines to share their knowledge and expertise about what works to make places healthy and inclusive.
CIBSE academic awards… congratulations to ARCC friends
EPSRC researchers have been recognised for their research on the impact of climate change on buildings by membership-body CIBSE:
Well done to C Alan Short, Giridharan Rengenethan, and Kevin J Lomas for their paper “A medium-rise 1970s maternity hospital in the east of England: Resilience and adaptation to climate change”.
And Jonathan Taylor, Mike Davies, Phil Biddulph, Eleni Oikononmou, Clive Shrubsole and Anna Mavrogianni for their paper entitled “Understanding and mitigating overheating and indoor PM2.5 risks using coupled temperature and indoor air quality models”.
Take a look at the full list of awards.
International Centre for Infrastructure Futures (ICIF) – white papers available
The ICIF white paper collection is targeted at an international audience of those involved with, and affected by, infrastructure, in particular infrastructure planners and operators, regulators, policy makers, investors and those involved with shaping future priorities for infrastructure research. Some of the areas covered in these papers include achieving low carbon thinking in infrastructure delivery, people and infrastructure based services, and investing in infrastructure.
You can hear more about these white papers and about the ICIF Infrastructure Grand Challenges: Exhibition and Networking Forum on 16 November.
Built environment & infrastructure news
National Infrastructure Commission – call for ideas due 2 November 2016
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, together with the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has launched a call for ideas for the NIC’s future specific studies. This call for ideas is open to everyone and the Chancellor would particularly welcome views from infrastructure experts, operators, business representative groups and investors. The call for ideas is open for three weeks and the Chancellor will announce the topic of the next study or studies later this year.
Black mould? Someone else’s fault
Damp, mould and condensation continue to affect the health and wellbeing of residents, as well as landlords’ ability to deliver against their duty of care and bottom line. Estimates on how many houses are affected by black mould range from 5% to 24%, with many more suffering condensation issues.
Join Sustainable Homes this winter to investigate the causes of this mould to help tackle the problem, and make homes more energy efficient in the process.
PhD opportunities at Oxford Brookes University, Low Carbon Building Research Group
There are two opportunities for full-time funded PhD Studentship on Energy performance gap in housing, or the Eco-Bicester Living Lab. Applications for both are due on 11 November 2016.
Infrastructure Transition Research Consortium (ITRC) – new job in Newcastle
Research Assistant/Associate in Urban Systems Modelling
The ITRC-MISTRAL project is developing the next generation of infrastructure systems analytics and modelling tools. As part of this ambitious high-impact work the Newcastle University team, working with Oxford and Leeds Universities, will develop a generic GIS-based methodology to spatially model the infrastructure network requirements of households and businesses. Applications for the post close 21 November 2016.
Events
Communicating Climate Change – connecting cognitive science and climate science
10–11 November 2016, London
UKCIP will be presenting tales from the ‘Portuguese Sorcerer’ at this workshop. The programme is designed to bring together expertisefrom the cognitive science, psychology, climate science and policy-making communities, with the goal of improving accessibility to climate science evidence.
NERC Environmental Risks to Infrastructure Innovation Programme
28 November, webinar
A showcase of NERC funded innovation projects which take the outcomes of existing research and translate these into industry-relevant information, tools to help UK infrastructure identify environmental risks, assess their impacts on infrastructure and develop solutions. This webinar will focus on the ERIIP results that addressed issues in the water sector.
Flood and Coast 2017, risk, resilience and response in a changing climate
28–30 March 2017, Telford
The second Flood and Coast conference will take place in Telford. Led again by the Environment Agency, this event will draw together key stakeholders from the flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCRM) community, including local authorities, infrastructure owners, consultancies, contractors, businesses, community groups and universities. Join more than 1500 fellow professionals to exchange a broad range of perspectives on innovation and best practices in FCRM.
Passive Low Energy Architecture – Design to thrive conference
3–7 July 2017, Edinburgh
Abstracts due 15 November. This conference recognises the enormity of the local and global challenges we face in building and refurbishing our buildings, cities and societies in the context of both minimising climate emissions and adapting effectively to climate change impacts in each of our own rapidly evolving economies, societies and physical infrastructures. Find out more.