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Adaptation and Resilience to a Changing Climate

Collaborative research to enable the design of resilient and sustainable systems in the UK built environment and infrastructure sectors

Research update, 2011

This report should be referenced as:

UKCIP/ACN. 2011. Adaptation and Resilience to a Changing Climate: Collaborative research to enable the design of resilient and sustainable systems in the UK built environment and infrastructure sectors. Research update, 2011. Adaptation and Resilience to a Changing Climate, Oxford, UK.

ARCC Coordination Network: UK Climate Impacts Programme, School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY

T: 01865 285717

F: 01865 285710

E: [email protected]

www.ukcip-arcc.org.uk

Summary

Introduction

The ARCC Coordination Network

Completed projects LUCID

PROCLIMATION

PROMETHEUS

SCORCHIO

Current projects ARCADIA

ARCC-Water

BIOPICCC

COPSE

CREW

DeDeRHECC

DOWNPIPE

FUTURENET

ITRC

Low Carbon Futures

SNACC

Contents

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ARCC Research update 2011

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SummaryOur climate is already changing. The UK is experiencing higher

temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and more extreme weather events including heatwaves, flooding and drought. Whilst mitigation measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are helping to limit the extent of climate change especially in the longer-term, adaptation measures are required to respond to the unavoidable consequences of climate change to which we are already committed.

Understanding the likely impacts of climate change is particularly important for the built environment given the long life expectancy of buildings and infrastructure. There is also a need to adapt existing dwellings, installations and networks to cope with both today’s climate and a future climate, which is likely to be significantly different from that for which they were designed.

Decision makers require specific and timely information from the research community on which to assess robust adaptation strategies and effective measures to enhance the capacity of the built environment to adjust to the consequences of climate change. Recognising this need, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), through the Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) programme, initiated over £14m of research, through 15 different research consortia, which is brought together within the Adaptation and Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARCC) Coordination Network (ACN). These research projects are advancing our knowledge of the impacts of climate change to, for example, help inform community adaptation strategies, to ensure resilient infrastructure networks, to aid in water resource planning, to help cope with extreme events and to improve comfort levels in buildings.

This brochure summarises progress to date within the ACN research programme and aims to inform a range of stakeholders including policy makers, decision makers, planners, designers and other researchers. Further details can be found in the links and references given in each project summary.


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IntroductionIn the UK, average annual temperatures have risen by about 1ºC in

central England since the 1970s and by 0.8ºC in Scotland and Northern Ireland since 1980. There are signs of drier summers and wetter winters but also heavier rainfall events, and sea levels around the UK have risen by around 1 mm per year throughout the last century. Over the next few decades, as the world warms, the UK climate will experience even greater changes than those already occurring, with the consequences of these impacts, both negative and positive, being felt across all sectors and all regions.

Within the built environment, potentially adverse impacts include increased thermal discomfort in buildings in the summer, enhanced risk of flooding and erosion, summer water shortages, possible storm damage and increased subsidence in certain areas. Possible benefits include less winter transport disruption and the reduced demand for winter heating. Effective planning can help manage the risks involved in adapting to climate change, avoid unexpected costs and make the most of any opportunities.

Adaptation actions are being delivered in the UK by a range of organisations, including central government, local authorities, companies, industry and community-based organisations. All require evidence and research information on which to base informed adaptation decisions and effective measures to enhance the capacity to minimise, adjust to and take advantage of the consequences of climatic change.

Under the UK’s Climate Change Act 2008, the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) was established to provide expert advice, analysis and information through the Committee on Climate Change to ensure that the Government’s programme for adaptation enables the UK to prepare effectively for the impacts of climate change. The ASC recently presented Government with a report on the preparedness of the UK for climate change, which identified the provision of resilient national infrastructure and designing and retrofitting buildings to cope with climate change as key priority areas.

The Climate Change Act also commits the UK Government to the development of a National Adaptation Plan based on the results of the on-going assessment of the risks to the UK of climate change within the Climate Change Risk Assessment. CCRA reports on, inter alia, the built environment, energy and transport sectors are all being prepared as part of the required presentation to Parliament in 2012, drawing on the latest evidence from the research community.

In order to plan effectively for the future, researchers, policy makers and decision makers need to work together to determine future adaptation challenges and to develop appropriate response strategies. The challenge for the research community is to provide focussed, highly relevant, outputs to help meet the needs of a wide range of end users with highly specific requirements.


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The ARCC Coordination NetworkThe ARCC Coordination Network (ACN) was established in 2009 and

brings together EPSRC-funded research projects looking at the impacts of climate change and possible adaptation options in the built environment and its infrastructure including water resources, transport systems, telecommunications, energy and waste. Overall, the research aims to:

• Enable the design of urban systems that are more resilient to climate change.

• Provide quantitative evidence of the impacts of climate change in the built environment.

• Develop new methodologies and practical decision-making tools to further the understanding and assessment of adaptation options.

• Assess robust, risk-based adaptation strategies for use by decision makers and policy makers.

Managed by the UK Climate Impacts Programme, the ACN aims to foster networking between the projects, to further engage stakeholders at all stages of the research process and to help promote the efficient and focused dissemination of project outputs. Currently, there are 15 projects within the network. Four of these started in 2007 and 2008 and have just finished (PROCLIMATION, PROMETHEUS, LUCID, SCORCHIO), others started in 2008 and 2009 and are now reaching the mid-way point of their research (ARCADIA, ARCC-Water, BIOPICCC, CREW, COPSE, DeDeRHECC, DOWNPIPE, FUTURENET, Low Carbon Future and SNACC), whilst the latest project started in early 2011 (ITRC).


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Many of the projects are providing sector-specific knowledge on practical strategies to enable a wide range of users to meet the challenges presented by climate change. For example, to help:

• design robust water resource infrastructure systems at regional levels;

• ensure health and social care systems supporting older people will be resilient to climate change;

• develop feasible adaptation scenarios to ensure sustainable development in both cities and suburbs in the UK;

• gain a better understanding of the performance of buildings, including drainage, in a changing climate and a low carbon future;

• improve the adaptive capacity of local communities to the impacts of extreme weather events;

• develop economic and practical strategies to increase the resilience of hospitals to climate change;

• understand the probable nature of the UK transport system in the future and to explore options to improve resilience;

• inform the strategic analysis, planning and design of efficient integrated national infrastructure systems.

All projects are supported and underpinned by stakeholder advisory groups which are active in identifying needs, setting the project direction and ensuring the outcomes are directly relevant to UK users, industry and government, both at the national and local levels. This helps ensure the project outputs are quickly picked up and inform, and are informed by, evolving decisions, policy and practices.

Inevitably, policy-driven questions on adaptation in the UK built environment remain and many of the research projects continue to provide evidence to inform current and emerging policy requirements. One sector not yet covered by the ACN is the UK energy sector and it infrastructure, and the EPSRC is considering funding several projects in this sector starting mid-2011. Other related projects may join the network in the future as new research priorities emerge.

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completed projects

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PrincipaI Investigator Prof Mike Davies, University College London

Research partners UCL, University of Reading, Brunel University, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants, Met Office, Energy Monitoring Company, Arup

Stakeholder partners A range of stakeholders including GLA, CABE, CIBSE, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and Max Fordham

Project duration June 2007 to December 2010

Project website www.lucid-project.org.uk

LUCIDThe Development of a Local Urban Climate Model and its Application to the Intelligent Design of Cities


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Rationale for research

Many cities worldwide already face the challenge of increased thermal burdens due to the combined effect of global warming and urban heat island (UHI) effects. As half of the world’s population is now living in urban areas, there is an increasing awareness of how the local climate should inform urban design decisions. The effects of extreme events have recently been experienced in the UK; the 2003 heatwave posed a significant risk to the health and comfort of the UK population. However, the wider picture should also be considered – whilst urban warming in the UK will result in increased summertime cooling loads in buildings and increased heat-related mortality, it will also lead to decreased heating loads in winter and fewer cold related deaths. The net effects of such phenomena need to be better understood. Appropriate tools, able to identify and quantify the effectiveness of various planning, building, energy and health policies need to be developed.

Aims and objectives

The purpose of the LUCID project was to develop a series of tools that quantify a) the effect of urbanisation processes on local environmental conditions, and b) the impact of such conditions on comfort, energy use and health. These tools will enable the related impacts to be better understood, quantified and addressed.

Methodology and examples of outputs

The project brought together a new consortium of meteorologists, building scientists, urban energy and health modellers, planners, urban and building designers and epidemiologists. The 3 year project began in June 2007 and had a specific focus on London. The work involved:

• the gathering and preparation of data to both drive and test the LUCID models

• the development of urban climate models at range of scales

• the development of comfort, health and energy models

• the application of the models – a series of case studies at different scales

1. LUCID data gathering and preparation

A wide range of data was gathered and generated in the LUCID project. Some details are noted here. Other examples were work using remote sensing data from satellite platforms and mobile temperature monitoring. Space does not permit a fuller treatment of the data gathering and preparation.

1.1. Anthropogenic heat emissionsIn order to investigate the significance of anthropogenic heat emissions

for London’s UHI, a study carried out as part of the LUCID project (Hamilton et al. 2009), compared the building related component of the anthropogenic heat emissions to incident solar short wave radiation.

1.2. Morphological dataNew methods have been developed to generate detailed urban

morphology data to act as input data for the LUCID urban climate models, using geographic information system (GIS). Full details are provided elsewhere (Evans, 2009).


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1.3. Fixed point temperature measurementsA series of fixed point temperature sensors were installed in streets

across London and provided additional data against which to test the LUCID models (Kolokotroni et al. 2009).

2. LUCID urban climate models

A series of quantitative tools have been developed (see Figure 1) to model the urban local climate at a variety of scales:

• City level: LondUM and LSSAT models

• Neighbourhood level: CERC model

• Street level: OutdoorROOM model

2.1. LondUM The London Unified Model (LondUM) (Bohnenstengel et al. 2010) is a

high-resolution set-up of the Met Office Unified Model for the Greater London Area. An example of the outputs of LondUM is given in Figure 2 (in this case with a horizontal resolution of 1 km × 1 km). A period of 6–8th May 2008 was chosen in this case because it was characterised by weak winds and cloud free conditions, which are favourable for the formation of the urban heat island. Figure 2 shows the spatial structure of the London urban heat island at 9 pm on 7th May 2008. The urban heat island intensity (UHII) was calculated as follows: a simulation was performed with the urban land use represented by the LondUM and then a second simulation with the urban land use replaced by rural land. The UHII was then defined as the difference in the temperatures (at a height of 1.5 m) from the urban and non-urban simulations. Hence, the urban heat island is the increment in near surface air temperature caused by the urban land use. Figure 2 shows that the heat island reaches 5ºC in central London during this period. The spatial structure of the heat island demonstrates how the warmed air is advected downwind by the weak easterly winds.

Figure 1. LUCID urban climate models


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2.2. LSSAT The London Site Specific Air Temperature (LSSAT) prediction model

(Kolokotroni et al. 2009) comprises of a group of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models that predict site specific hourly air temperature within the Greater London Area. The model was developed using a back-propagation ANN model based on hourly air temperature (dependent variable) measurements at 77 fixed temperature stations and hourly meteorological (independent variables) data from Heathrow. The independent variables in the model are air temperature, global solar radiation, cloud cover, wind velocity and relative humidity. The LSSAT models control the seasonal and geographical variation within the area of Greater London, partially by incorporating an ANN model for each hour for each of the 77 locations. The statistics-based approach of LSSAT complements the physics based approach taken in LondUM: although the results might not be as accurate as LondUM, LSSAT is easier to use and requires only modest computational resources.

2.4. CERC modelADMS (ADMS, 2009) is a new-generation atmospheric dispersion

model used worldwide for regulatory, research and other purposes. For the LUCID project, ADMS has been developed to model the changes across an urban area in the temperature and humidity that result from spatial variations in the underlying surface and the characteristics of the buildings. The upwind boundary layer profile can be calculated using heat flux data output from the LondUM model described above. The model calculates the downwind evolution of temperature and humidity at high spatial resolution (typically tens of meters) over the domain on an hourly basis. The model can be used to estimate the temperature variations at a range of different areas across London, including built up neighbourhoods and areas with transitions between buildings and open spaces including parks.

2.5. OutdoorROOMWithin the LUCID project, Arup have developed a dynamic thermal

modelling computer program – called ‘OutdoorROOM’ – intended to provide design guidance at the street scale, on elements such as façade materials and shading devices. The program is based on Arup’s ROOM software, which deals with radiative exchanges and comfort conditions throughout internal spaces.

Figure 2. Simulated UHII (ºC) – 9 pm 7/5/08

5.2+

4.8 – 5.1

4.5 – 4.7

4.1 – 4.4

3.8 – 4.0

3.4 – 3.7

3.1 – 3.3

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2.4 – 2.6

2.0 – 2.3

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–0.1 – 0.2


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The model outputs the following parameters hourly: surface temperatures, surface heat fluxes; average air temperature; and various comfort parameters derived from these parameters. These outputs can be used to understand the thermal dynamics of the modelled canyon. Important factors are the magnitude and timing of heat fluxes into the atmospheric boundary layer above the canyon (and hence into the urban heat island) and the direct effects of air and surface temperatures on thermal comfort.

3. LUCID comfort, health and energy models

A key application of the output of the urban climate models presented in the previous section is to act as input data to a series of comfort, energy and health models.

3.1 Comfort Increasing summer air temperatures can lead to overheating of free-

running buildings, thus contributing to increased thermal discomfort of the urban population. To explore how the variation in urban climates impacts on comfort, site-specific weather files for the 1999–2000 summertime period were produced for ~ 20 locations in London by using the LSSAT model described in the previous section. The thermal performance of a generic free running office building when placed in each of these locations, was then simulated using thermal modelling software. The work (Demanuele et al. 2011) showed that distance from the centre is not the only significant parameter for local temperatures and comfort; factors such as the surrounding building morphology and urban land-use fraction also play a key role. Work undertaken to analyse the relative importance of local issues on domestic overheating suggests that the combined effect of built form, geometry and thermal quality of a building are of greater importance for overheating than the location of the building in the UHI (Oikonomou et al. 2011; Mavrogianni et al. 2010).

3.2 EnergyTo assess the impact of the properties of a dwelling, its location within

the UHI and the built form of the surrounding area on the annual heating and cooling requirements, a domestic heat demand model was developed in the LUCID project. The building properties are inferred as a function of known attributes such as the age, built form type and height of the structure. The model uses local Heating Degree Day data provided by the LSSAT model described above. The model offers a flexible method to aggregate results at different urban geographic levels, so as to allow for validation tests to be carried out easily. The primary fuel demand profiles were initially generated at individual dwelling level and, for the purpose of model validation, were subsequently aggregated at the Middle Layer Super Output Area (MLSOA) and compared to existing top-down regional gas consumption statistics provided at the same geographic unit level. Figure 3 gives some example results from the simulations of 100 case study MLSOAs (approximately 273,000 household spaces in total) (Mavrogianni et al. 2009). The figure shows current and projected future modelled energy demand. The significant energy demand reduction benefits due to the UHI are shown in the dotted box on the top of each bar.


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3.3 Health The LUCID project has undertaken work to assess the impact of

the urban heat island effect on mortality. The mortality response to rising temperatures in London appears to increase above 24.7ºC (which is a higher threshold for heat effect than in other UK regions) (Armstrong et al. 2011) Above this threshold, there is a greater increase in mortality per degree Celsius increase in temperature than in other regions with lower heat thresholds. On the assumption (so far untested) that that relationship is the same in all areas, the burden of heat deaths due to the UHI effect can be estimated directly from temperature data. Specifically, the UHI-related mortality may be calculated as the difference between (i) the number of heat deaths computed by applying the temperature-mortality function to the observed temperatures and deaths in London and (ii) the number computed by the same method but assuming temperatures to be those of a background location not affected by the UHI. On this basis, interim results from the LUCID project (Milojevic et al. 2010) indicate that, for May/June 2006, the maximum daily temperature in London was around 0.45ºC warmer than in surrounding areas, and that around 40% of London’s heat deaths in this period could be attributed to the UHI-effect. This percentage will vary from period to period, however, depending on temperatures, and may be lower during the very warmest periods when background temperatures are well above the threshold for heat deaths. There is no clear evidence of variation in risk of heat death by area characteristics, such as the percentage of green space, within London (Mavrogianni et al. 2009), though there is some evidence of association with average building height.

Summary of key results and implications for policy and practice

The main messages that evolved from the urban climate modelling component of LUCID are:

• Urban land-use distribution is key to urban temperatures

• London’s current scattered greening cools London

• Advection is important

• To affect the city-scale UHI the greening needs to be large

• Building form has a moderate impact on urban temperatures

• Anthropogenic heating is likely to be important

• Increasing the albedo of urban surfaces leads to daytime cooling

The key messages that evolved from the ‘impact’ modelling component of LUCID are:

Energy• The UHI currently has a significant net energy benefit for London

• This balance will depend critically on future uptake of air conditioning

Comfort• The thermal quality of dwellings seems more important than the location

in UHI

• The current stock is vulnerable to heat

• There is some relationship between overheating and distance from centre

• There is a significant impact of very local microclimatic effects

Figure 3. Example outputs of the LUCID domestic energy model

Current climate (1999–2000 LSSATmonitored data)

Future climate (2050s UKCIP02 Medium-High emissions scenario)

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0Smallest energyconsumer:Wandsworth 022 (inner London)

Average energyconsumeracross the 101 case study MLSOA

Largest energy consumer:Barnet 037(outer London)

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Health• UHI has significant impact on mortality

• There are indications however, that the geometry and thermal quality of a building are of greater importance than the location of the building in the UHI

Stakeholder views

The findings from the LUCID project have direct bearing on relevant policy and practice. For example, the findings have important implications for Building Regulations. The LUCID work has been used by the Greater London Authority (GLA) to inform the development of the draft replacement London Plan and London’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, the final versions of which are due for publication in 2011.

Matt Thomas, GLA, writes:“The Mayor’s vision for London is for the capital to be the ‘best big city in

the world’. A key part of achieving the Mayor’s vision is our commitment to tackle climate change – both by reducing London’s carbon emissions by 60% by 2030 and preparing London for the impacts of climate change and extreme weather. Achieving this vision will be challenging as we work with the legacy of Victorian buildings and infrastructure, a planning system that has little influence on existing development and a climate of financial efficiency savings in the public sector.

A key element of reducing London’s carbon emissions and increasing our resilience to climate change is to improve the energy and water efficiency of London’s existing buildings. The Mayor has developed a number of large-scale programmes to tackle both domestic and non-domestic buildings. The RE:NEW programme unites the London Boroughs to work with the GLA on retrofitting up to 1.2 million homes by 2015, the RE:FIT programme looks at retrofitting public sector buildings and the RE:CONNECT programme works in 10 areas to create low carbon communities. We are also working with the 16 biggest commercial landlords in London to improve their estates.

We also need to ensure that we are adapting the city to warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers, and that the current emphasis on reducing emissions doesn’t foreclose any adaptation options, or increase our vulnerability. We need to understand how to manage the urban heat island at citywide, neighbourhood, street and individual building scales. Our urban greening programme seeks to increase the amount of green cover in London to help cool the city and absorb rainwater, but we need to ensure that it is targeted where most effective.

The LUCID project has helped us to begin to develop better evidenced-based policies and programmes with respect to the above. For example, the outcomes of LUCID have informed our urban greening programme, demonstrating that increasing green cover in the most developed areas of London can help to reduce the higher temperatures associated with the urban heat island effect. Research from the LUCID project has assisted us in beginning to optimise the best mix of adaptation and mitigation measures and to target limited funding to where it will have most effect.”


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References

ADMS (Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling System). Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants Ltd. (2009) Available from: http://www.cerc.co.uk/software/adms4.htm

Armstrong, B.G., Chalabi, Z., Fenn, B., Hajat, S., Kovats, S., Milojevic, A. & Wilkinson, P. (2011) Association of mortality with high temperatures in a temperate climate: England and Wales. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 65, 340–345.

Bohnenstengel, S.I., Evans, S., Clark, P. & Belcher, S.E. (2010) Simulations of the London urban heat island. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. Submitted.

Demanuele, C., Mavrogianni, A., Davies, M., Kolokotroni, M., & Rajapaksha, I. (2011) London’s urban heat island: impact on overheating in naturally ventilated offices. Submitted.

Evans, S. (2009) 3D cities and numerical weather prediction models: An overview of the methods used in the LUCID project. UCL Centre for Advance Spatial Analysis (CASA). Working paper 148. Available from: http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/publications/workingPaperDetail.asp?ID=148

Oikonomou, E., Davies, M., Mavrogianni, A., Biddulph, P. & Kolokotroni, M. (2011) The relative importance of the urban heat island and the thermal quality of dwellings for overheating in London. To be submitted.

Hamilton, I.G., Davies, M., Steadman, P., Stone, A., Ridley, I. & Evans, S. (2009) The significance of the anthropogenic heat emissions of London’s buildings: A comparison against captured shortwave solar radiation. Building and Environment 44 (4): 807–817.

Kolokotroni, M., Zang, Y. & Giridharan, R. (2009) Heating and cooling degree day prediction within the London urban heat island area. Journal of Building Services Engineering Research and Technology 30 (3): 183–202.

Mavrogianni, A., Davies, M., Chalabi, Z., Wilkinson, P., Kolokotroni, M., Milner, J. (2009) Space heating demand and heatwave vulnerability: London domestic stock. Building Research and Information. 37 (5&6): 583–597.

Mavrogianni, A., Davies, M., Wilkinson, P. & Pathan, A. (2010) London housing and climate change: Impact on comfort and health. Open House International 35 (2): 583–597.

Milojevic, A., Wilkinson, P., Armstrong, B., Davies, M., Mavrogianni, A., Bohnenstengel, S. & Belcher, S.E. (2010) Impact of London’s Urban Heat Island on heat-related mortality. Annual Conference of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE), Seoul (Korea).

PROCLIMATIONThe Use of Probabilistic Climate Scenarios in Building Environmental Performance Simulation

PrincipaI Investigator Prof Vic Hanby, De Montfort University

Research partners Stefan Smith, Kevin Lomas & Andrew Wright, De Montfort University; Claire Goodess, Colin Harpham & Phil Jones, CRU; Jake Hacker, Arup

Project duration October 2008 to September 2010

Project website www.ukcip-arcc.org.uk/content/view/592/542/


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Aims and objectives

• To investigate effective ways of sampling from the uncertainty space of the UKCP09 climate projections for use in building performance simulation;

• To compare and evaluate alternative methods for the production of future weather reference years;

• To assess the future viability of mixed-mode buildings and low-energy cooling systems.

Building simulation

This task required the implementation of a number of prototype building models, covering a range of building types, followed by a large number of simulation runs to establish effective methods for exploring the uncertainty space. A number of building models were created, ranging from compact, single zones to large, multi-zone buildings and encompassing naturally-ventilated, mixed-mode and fully air-conditioned environmental solutions.

Two simulation programs were selected for use in this work: the open-source multi-zone program EnergyPlus and a single-zone in-house code. The latter proved very useful in that it would run a year at hourly weather resolution in around one second, whereas for EnergyPlus an equivalent yearly profile would take of the order of an hour to run – so requiring grid/cluster computing for multiple simulations.

Generation of the input data required to run a building simulation program was a problem given the limited number of variables produced by the UKCP09 Weather Generator (WG). The principal problem was caused by the lack of data on wind velocity (and, to a lesser extent, direction). A number of work-arounds were tried, but attention was focused on the following two options*.

• Daily average wind speeds were calculated from the values for potential evapotranspiration that were available from the daily output; these were then disaggregated into 24 hourly values.

* It is noted that wind data associated with

the UKCP09 Climate Projections are available

if using the 11-member RCM output. With a

project commitment to utilise the UKCP09

probabilistic projections, this data has not

been used as is not considered part of the

projections.

Figure 1: Thermal comfort in a naturally-ventilated zone.

0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000

Weighted cooling degree days

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• Given that there are only small changes in predicted wind speeds over the rest of the century, a historical yearly sequence was selected for the most adjacent site using BADC data.

Extensive simulation runs suggested that most of the buildings studied were largely insensitive to wind speed, with the exception of overheating in naturally-ventilated buildings. A program was written to generate TMY2 and CIBSE format weather files from WG output.

In order to capture the full picture of the range of output quantities it is necessary to carry out 3,000 yearly simulation runs, although it is possible to reduce this in the case of the control weather files. The output from this task showed that reducing the number of simulation runs whilst having confidence that the full range of performance variability has been sampled needs care. For many performance measures, such as heating or cooling loads, a fairly simple relationship exists between the output and key input quantities such as temperature and solar radiation. However this is not the case with other outputs such as overheating and thermal comfort, where a more complex relationship exists. Figure 1 shows a frequency distribution for a thermal comfort measure (weighted cooling degree-hours) for the occupied hours of a naturally-ventilated building.

This figure shows the range of values that simulations across the spectrum of WG output produces for this measure, but also that assumptions about the frequency distribution of the desired quantity can be misleading: many outputs have a close to normal distribution but in this case a Weibull distribution is a closer match.

If a reduction in the number of weather files run is not to compromise the validity of the probability distribution of the required outputs, a clear understanding of the relative importance of the input variables is required a priori. It would be safer to retain the full WG output and to use either a simplied building model (where this is feasible) or to use some form of building emulator in place of the simulation program. This approach will be developed in further work.

A number of example buildings were simulated which were also used in a previous study, based on morphing the earlier UKCIP02 projections and published as CIBSE TM36. As both sets of simulations explored the possibilities of remedial retrofit options, this work demonstrated the additional opportunities afforded by the use of probabilistic projections in risk-based decision making.

Reference years

a) Design Summer Years The Design Summer Year (DSY) was designed to be used to assess

thermal comfort and overheating in naturally-ventilated buildings. It was selected as a complete year from a set of years of measured weather data. The years were ranked in order of a measure of summer warmth and the DSY is the year at the centre of the upper quartile. Despite the known problems with the current DSYs, in this project we worked with the existing definition, but used an additional criterion for measuring warmth, weighted cooling degree hours (WCDH). The nature of this parameter is broadly consistent with the relationship of discomfort with departure from the comfort temperatures. In addition, it integrates the extent of deviation and therefore better reflects the influence of hot weather periods.


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A first step was to compare DSYs produced by the Weather Generator for the control period with those currently in use. For this purpose, the existing DSYs for London, Manchester and Edinburgh were used, as these were derived from years which were closest to the control period. It was shown that the WG was able to produce DSYs close to those based on measured data, using the April–September mean temperature. All three generated DSYs were within 0.5ºC of the actual values.

Four methods were implemented for producing DSYs from WG output. The methods depended on how the year-on-year weather variability was handled, and how the sampling from the change factors was implemented. If random sampling from the change factors (for temperature) was used, then either all 3,000 output files could be treated as belonging to the same set, or one DSY could be derived for each ‘climate’. The latter process mirrors more closely the existing selection process and maintains separate treatment of the two principal sources of uncertainty. Alternatively, WG output can be obtained by sampling the change factors close to a specific percentile (for example 10, 50 and 90) thereby obtaining the probabilistic component from the WG itself. The latter method entails a separate WG run for each percentile required. The flow chart of Figure 2 summarises the methods implemented.

It was concluded that Method A was preferred, in that it yielded a full spectrum of probabilistic years from one WG run, maintained a distinction between the two sources of uncertainty, and maintained the inter-variable relationships within the DSY selection process. A comparison of the 50th percentile DSYs produced by this method with the existing morphed DSYs for London is shown Figure 3. This shows that the DSYs generated from the UKCP09 WG are slightly warmer than those currently in use.

Figure 2: Flow diagram for DSY methods (grey box indicates selection of year at middle of upper quartile).

Weather Generator run

Random sampling Percentile sampling

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b) Test Reference Years Three issues arise when considering TRY development from the

UKCP09 WG data:

• lack of wind data;

• concatenation of months;

• measure of assessment to rank probabilistic TRYs.

The UKCP09 projections and associated WG output provide no wind data. Using observed wind data (as was done in PROCLIMATION) will influence the statistical profile calculated by the standard TRY method. As a result, wind data was ignored in developing TRYs for UKCP09.

The method of concatenating the `typical’ months to gain a `typical’ year from the observed period, provides a statistical representation of empirical data. The WG, however, is a statistical model based on replicating the inter-annual variability found in the observed weather of the baseline period (1961–1990). Therefore, concatenating months from different years and potentially different change factors would serve to lose the statistical meaning held in the UKCP09 and WG output. Therefore, TRYs were developed on an annual statistical profile and whole years were chosen as most representative of the probabilistic data, rather than typical months.

Figure 3: Method A DSYs compared to morphed UKCIP02 files.

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The production of probabilistic TRYs implies the use of some measure of characterisation, hence it is not meaningful to use the central characteristic of a TRY, namely that it is representative of some long-term average. The lack of wind data meant that only two of the three criteria used in the CIBSE selection procedure, namely temperature and solar radiation, could be used. It was decided to combine these and to use sol-air temperature as a composite variable to characterise individual months and years. The sol-air temperatures were calculated from dry bulb temperature, solar radiation and wind speed, so in all instances the wind speed was set to an arbitrary constant value of 0.2 ms–1. As TRYs are developed on more than one variable, it is not possible to sample from the UKCP09 data at different probabilities to generate probabilistic TRYs (as was done for DSY development).

The universal method used to produce TRYs, the splicing of the 12 most characteristic months, is based on the limited availability of measured data. However, this is not a consideration when using the WG, as thousands of candidate years can be made available. The long-term mean sol-air temperatures were calculated on a monthly basis from all the candidate years generated by a given set of change factors, then the year was identified which most closely matched this distribution, based on aggregating the F-S statistic for each month.

As a first step, again a comparison was made between the TRYs developed from the WG control period and those produced for London, Manchester and Edinburgh. In this case, the validity of the comparison is open to question as the TRYs were not compiled on the same basis. However, based on the annual mean sol-air temperature the maximum difference was 0.4ºC , which was judged to give confidence in the use of this approach for future scenario years.

In developing Test Reference Years, it was noted that from a meteorological perspective, assessing climate on two or three variables might bias the final TRYs. Equally, basing the development of a TRY on meteorological consideration only may not represent the typical performance characteristics of a building for that climate. As a result two further methods were studied for TRY development.

• Choosing the reference year based on typical performance of a simple building model (such as the BESTEST heavyweight zone).

• Using Principal Component Analysis to consider all available meteorological variables.

In discussing the implications of this work with stakeholders, there was a strong point of view that the added sophistication afforded by probabilistic reference years would receive little take-up by industry, as use of the existing morphed reference years was by no means widespread.


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Control Scenario

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Glasgow 528 61 (12%) 719 134 (19%)

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Scenario 54 36 24

Table 1: Summer daytime cooling potential (K-hr/year) for London (Heathrow) and Glasgow.

Table 2: Discomfort for summer occupied hours.

Low-energy cooling systems

An increasing number of mixed-mode buildings rely on indirect evaporative cooling plant to maintain comfortable summer conditions. Mostly these are of recent origin, hence might be expected to face a challenge to successful operation in the context of a warming climate. However, climate projections for the UK also indicate an increase (in summer) of the difference between the dry- and wet-bulb temperatures, hence suggesting that an increase in cooling energy might be obtainable. A detailed study of this problem was undertaken using detailed and simplified building/plant models for a number of mixed-mode prototype buildings.

The cooling potential was quantified by summing the hourly differences between dry- and wet-bulb temperatures for building occupied hours (07:00 to 18:00) between April and September. This was done for London and Glasgow for the 2050s medium emissions scenario. Table 1 shows that the potential is, on average, 49% higher for London and 36% higher in Glasgow.

This increased potential has to be viewed in the context of rising temperatures and hence it is possible that adequate comfort conditions cannot be maintained. The results of Table 2 are typical of the prototype buildings studied; they show a clear increase in the occurrence of mild overheating, but with comparatively little change in the incidence of higher temperature excursions.

The conclusions from this part of the project indicate strongly that evaporative cooling plant (including dessicant cooling) can be expected to maintain satisfactory performance in future, or would be capable of simple retrofit that would improve their ability to sustain comfortable internal conditions.

PROMETHEUSThe Use Of Probabilistic Climate Change Data to Future-Proof Design Decisions in The Building Sector

PrincipaI Investigator Dr David Coley, University of Exeter

Research partners Tristan Kershaw, Matthew Eames, Peter Cox, David Stephenson, David Stainforth, Stephan Harrison, Thomas Morton, David Butler

Stakeholder partners Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES), Jacobs Engineering UK, Met Office, Department for Education, Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, Building Research Establishment, Royal Institute of British Architects

Project duration July 2008 to December 2010

Project website http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/cee/prometheus/


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Background

It is well known that climate change will have a significant impact on UK building design and energy use. The predicted temperature changes are large enough to ensure that some buildings will either become uncomfortable places to be or will fail parts of the building regulations (BB101 for example), and cannot therefore be considered as sustainable. In some cases this could have an impact on human health, particularly for the elderly in high summer. This suggests that buildings need to be adapted to deal with climate change.

In order to assess the magnitude of this challenge, and to produce designs on a daily basis, designers need to be able to model buildings using standardised, consistent sets of weather data. It is also known, that the current standard reference year and design summer year, being assembled from historical data, do not represent the current UK climate (returning cooler temperatures than have prevailed in more recent years). The building design community is therefore highly exposed to the possibility of occupant dissatisfaction and possible litigation.

Researchers have attempted to solve these problems, by producing weather data files for future years by mathematical transformations from the current reference years or by using weather generators. Unfortunately, due to the copyrighted nature of some weather data files, it has not been possible to circulate these files to researchers and practising engineers. This has meant that most buildings are not being designed to cope with increased variability in a warming climate; even when they are, researchers, designers and engineers have been free to make adjustments to the weather files in their own way—leading to inconsistencies in results. The potential for such inconsistencies is further complicated by the competitive nature of engineering consultancy. The desire to use probabilistic scenarios will further exacerbate this situation unless either new reference years are created, made widely available and guidance given on which ones to use and when—or, totally new methods are developed to allow engineers to model the impact of a changing climate. Even this is likely to be unsuccessful in driving adaptation decisions, unless a full understanding of how designers might use such data is gained and a consistent way found of examining any changes in costs. There is therefore a need to simultaneously study not only probabilistic data sets for the built environment, but also how such information can be used to drive adaptation decisions.

In many ways the move to the probabilistic outputs of UKCP09 presents an opportunity, not only for the building simulation community, but also to architects and clients. At present the group of questions that is addressed by designers (and how early in the design process they are addressed) is very much constrained by the requirements of the building regulations. Although clients are free to make additional demands this is rare—and even when such demands are made, most engineers do not have access to the weather data sets required to answer most questions. This tends to lead to an over reliance on heating and cooling systems to create an internal environment in-line with the aspirations of the client. An example of this is the design of health facilities that need to avoid excessive internal temperatures during the summer: the use of a single Design Summer Year gives no idea of the real likelihood of breaching a guideline temperature, or of the worse case scenario. The ability to create bespoke probabilistic reference years using, for example a weather generator, changes the way such problems can be tackled and even how the client or architect thinks about such issues. The use of probabilistic information would allow a client to set a requirement that, for example, the building must not exceed 27°C for more than 20 hours in a year when using the median estimate


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of 2030 under a given emissions scenario. Both the probability of a breach and the exceedence temperatures would be defined by the client, not set within the building regulations or other guidance.

It is unlikely that a move to using probabilistic data will be made unless it is shown to be useful, relatively easy to use, set within an industry-wide framework and backed-up by relevant case-study materials. In addition, it is well understood that climate science is a new science and providing accurate information about future regional or local climates is a substantial challenge.

Figure 1: Comparison of observed wind direction with calculated wind direction.

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Different models give different projections and all are subject to the emission scenarios used, and there is still debate over how best we can extract decision relevant probabilities. This means that any attempt to offer a method of using climate prediction within the construction industry needs to take account of the limitations of the information on which it is based and be flexible to changes in both the detail and the overall form of the climate projections. Therefore, there is the need for work in this area to be focused in part on creating a strong scientific basis behind procedures and methodologies (and investigating how sensitive any practicable results are to changes in the projections) as well as on producing truly usable outputs suitable for industry.

Aims and objectives

The main objectives of the project were to produce:

• A nationally agreed protocol for the creation of probabilistic future test reference years from either a weather generator, or the mathematical transformation of historic data, and to include the estimation of wind direction.

• A scientifically valid approach to the generation of the wind direction and speed data for the building sector and a clear understanding of the limits of such data.

• A large ensemble of probabilistic reference years for use mainly by the academic community/or an agreed method for using probabilistic data directly in simulation and design.

• A clear understanding of the benefits of using probabilistic data and what form this data should take.

• A study of whether climate predictions outside of the UKCP09 ones give rise to different predictions of future building behaviour.

• An understanding of the benefits of using data from weather generators to run multi-year simulations of buildings.

• A smaller group of probabilistic reference years for use by practising engineers, distributed by CIBSE, compatible with common building thermal models and possibly part of future amendments to the building regulations.

• A well researched understanding of the needs and hurdles faced by practitioners when using probabilistic results with the buildings sector.

• Case study-based evaluation of opportunities for change within the buildings sector, the range of adaptation strategies probabilistic data leads to and the costs.

Methodology and impacts

Using the outputs of the UKCP09 Weather Generator we devised a methodology for the creation of probabilistic future weather files that are compatible with the majority of building thermal modelling software. The files include an estimation of wind speed and direction (Figure 1) that is consistent with other weather variables within the file. The files are freely available for download from the project website and are also being distributed by IES. The number of weather file locations has been increased from the 14 offered by CIBSE to 42 with more being created as needed.

Using these files, the impact of different levels of climate change on the built environment and building occupants was investigated. It was found that


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the distribution of results produced by a building thermal model running 3000 files representative of future weather (a single output of the Weather Generator) can be approximated using just five probabilistic future weather files (Figure 2). This has major implications when considering the uptake by industry. Using the probabilistic future weather files produced by the PROMETHEUS project, it is possible to produce a risk-based analysis of design adaptation options. It is also possible to create a timeline of possible adaptations to fit into a refurbishment schedule and an associated cost benefit analysis.

Psychological surveys of several engineering and architectural firms investigated the industries attitude towards climate change and the adequacy of current practices. Interestingly, most responses regarding changes to current practise in light of climate change related to mitigation activities such as energy saving instead of limiting overheating risk.

The future weather files are the main output of the project along with associated guidance on how they can be used. The Technology Strategy Board’s Design for Future Climate projects are using these weather files which, in conjunction with building modelled by project stakeholders Jacobs UK, gives a portfolio of buildings worth ~£3Bn which are using these files to examine different adaptation options.

Figure 2; Comparison of building thermal model results from 3000 weather generator files and from 5 probabilistic reference years.

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Stakeholder views

Richard Quincey, Technical Director at IES:“To be truly sustainable, a building needs to last in excess of 100 years,

and current design regulations and sustainability rating systems only require you to design against weather data that represents at best the next decade or so. Sustainable designs really need to make some assessment of the impact of climate change on determining built form suitability for the long term.”

“Weather files such as those being distributed by the University of Exeter and IES can help the building sector adapt to the challenges of climate change.”

Publications:

Coley, D. & Kershaw, T. (2010) Changes in internal temperatures within the built environment as a response to a changing climate. Building and Environment 45 (1), 89–93.

Kershaw, T., Sanderson, M., Coley, D. & Eames, M. (2010) Estimation of the Urban Heat Island for UK Climate Change Projections. Building Services Engineering Research & Technology 31 (3), 251–264.

Met Office. Future UK circulation and wind projections and their relevance for the built environment. (2010) Met Office Report.

Morey, S., Coley, D. & Kershaw, T. (2010) Accessing the Thermal Mass above suspended ceilings via a perimeter gap: a CFD study of naturally ventilated spaces. International Journal of Ventilation 9 (2), 163–176.

Kershaw, T., Eames, M. & Coley, D. (2010) Comparison of multi-year and reference year building simulations. Building Services Engineering Research & Technology 31 (4), 357–369.

Eames, M., Kershaw, T. & Coley, D. The creation of wind speed and direction data for the use in probabilistic future weather files. Building Services Engineering Research & Technology doi: 10.1177/0143624410381624

Eames, M., Kershaw, T. & Coley, D. (2010) on the creation of future probabilistic design weather years from UKCP09. Building Services Engineering Research & Technology doi:10.1177/0143624410379934

Morton, T., Rabinovich, A., Marshall, D. & Bretschneider, P. (2010) framing, uncertainty and climate change. Global Environmental Change doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.09.013

Morton, T., Bretschneider, P., Coley, D. & Kershaw, T. (2011) Building a better future: An exploration of beliefs about climate change and perceived need for adaptation within the building industry. Building and Environment 46 (5), 1151–1158.

Kershaw, T., Eames, M. & Coley, D. (2011) Assessing the risk of climate change for buildings: A comparison between multi-year and probabilistic reference year simulations. Building and Environment 46 (6), 1303–1308.

SCORCHIOSustainable Cities: Options for Responding to Climate Change Impacts and Outcomes

PrincipaI Investigator Prof Geoff Levermore, University of Manchester

Research partners Dr Anne Webb, Prof John Handley, Prof M Gallagher, Dr Sarah Lindley

Stakeholder partners Around 35 bodies drawn from both public and private sectors including Manchester City Council, Sheffield City Council, AECOM, Aedas Architects, Ove Arup, Bury District Council, the Meteorological Office, United Utilities, UEA, Newcastle University, University of Sheffield, Acclimatise. Chaired by Prof R Courtney

Project duration March 2007 to September 2010

Project website www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/research/cure/research/scorchio/


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As temperatures rise, our urban and city areas are becoming increasingly uncomfortable places to live and work in. These environments are vulnerable to climate change with discomfort, illness and potential loss of productivity being caused by overheating particularly in the summer. In 2003, the heatwave is calculated to have caused 14,802 and 2,045 excess deaths in France, and England and Wales respectively.

Projected rates of urban growth mean that vulnerability will increase at the same time as the impacts of climate change become greater. Actions by planners, designers and infrastructure owners are required in both the short and long term, if cities are to adapt to a changing climate and provide a resilient and sustainable built environment.

Neither the effects of the fabric of the urban landscape nor the heat released by human activities within cities are routinely taken into account in current planning processes, but these aspects have been shown to be significant with respect to the thermal balance of buildings. For effective climate change adaptation options to be developed for cities across the UK, there is an urgent need for comprehensive decision support tools to aid the design and appraisal of potential adaptation strategies.

Aims and objectives

The SCORCHIO project aimed to develop tools to help planners, designers and other end-users to analyse adaptation options for urban areas, with a particular emphasis on heat and human comfort. The following objectives were addressed:

• Development of a climate simulator for urban areas that can be used for impact and adaptation studies, taking into account both a changing climate and the additional influences of changes in the urban landscape and direct heating due to buildings and infrastructure.

• Modelling typical buildings and their surroundings in order to develop a readily useable heat and human comfort vulnerability index that accounts for the effects of building construction, form and layout.

• Estimation of heat emissions from buildings, together with a set of energy-related air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions budgets to understand the implications of different building adaptation options.

• Development of GIS-based decision support tools for examining adaptation options in urban planning to help design cities resilient to climate change.

• Demonstration of the methods and tools developed in this work through in-depth case studies, working in partnership with practising planners and designers in Manchester and Sheffield.

Key results and implications for policy and practice

SCORCHIO has developed a PC-based proof-of-concept decision making tool: Sustainable Cities: Heat, Energy and EMissions Evaluation (SCHEEME) as shown in Figure 1.


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CLIMATE MODELS

Downscaling 5 km outputWeather Generator

Heat emissionsestimation model

Empirical model ofcurrent temperatures

Transect datacollection

Vulnerability mapping(socio-economic sensitivity)

Other work

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Case study areas

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CITY SCALE VISUALISATIONS:Risk = ƒ (hazard, exposure, vulnerability)

BUILDING SCALE SIMULATIONS & DATA INTERROGATION TOOL

Extract climate runs for each case study as data inputs for building simulations (Design Builder)

Run simulations for building adaptations

Add building type & age.Glazing, orientation, shading,ventilation (vegetation)

Building scale tool to allow interrgation of simulation runs

CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

Current & future what-if scenarios

Exposure mapping

Automation ofbuilding classifications

Case study form: temperature-related urban morphological properties

Street & building wall orientations & sky view factor estimation (JMW)

Addition of height data (CR)

Building function: classification & ages

Canyon Model

MEASURES OF HAZARDS

MEASURES OF EXPOSURE

MEASURES OF VULNERABILITY

Figure 1: Overview of the components of SCORCHIO and the SCHEEME tool prototypes.

An essential component of SCHEEME is the visualisation of current and future heat scenarios and vulnerability at various scales ranging from the city scale, through neighbourhood to the building scale. The SCHEEME tool supports climate risk assessment activities by allowing the exploration of coincident patterns of hazards (from climate models, transect runs and empirical modelling) with estimates of enhanced exposures and vulnerability (from the analysis of urban form and function, building simulation modelling and patterns in potential occupant sensitivity). Future scenarios including aspects of climate, land use, refurbishment etc. can be analysed for impact and the effect of adaptation options assessed.

Climate models were modified for SCORCHIO to assess the Urban Heat Island (UHI). Results suggest that anthropogenic heat accounts for 17% of the summer and 39% of the winter nocturnal heat island in Manchester, and 25% of the summer and 75% of the winter daytime heat island. There is no increase in the intensity of the UHI suggesting urban areas warm at the same rate as rural areas and UHIs also appear to exacerbate the frequency of extreme events (Figure 2).


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Figure 2: Urban Heat Island effect exacerbates frequency of extreme events

Figure 3: Residential building classification by age

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Transects (ground measurements and aerial surveys) for Manchester and Sheffield, and fixed temperature measurements, established that Manchester has an air temperature UHI effect of up to 7ºC and a surface UHI effect of up to 12ºC. It was also found that there is a significant winter UHI effect. Measurements and using the street canyon tool in SCHEEME showed that streets with tall buildings can contribute up to 2ºC to the air temperature UHI effect.

SCHEEME also includes a set of algorithms which have been developed to characterise the local building environment. This component of the tool allows a detailed classification of buildings, including age and type, to be developed from Ordnance Survey Mastermap building polygons (Figure 3). From this classification, urban and rural energy exchanges can be established to determine the UHI effect.

Building simulation software was used to assess building heat and carbon dioxide emissions and model the impact of climate change on internal conditions within a range of representative building types. Shading, thermal mass, increased insulation, variable ventilation and other adaptation options were also simulated to assess the adaptations required to reduce occupant discomfort (Figure 4). A database of the results and adaptation option possibilities can be interrogated within SCHEEME. This allows buildings that tend to over-heat to be identified and compared against patterns of estimated population vulnerability (e.g. age-related sensitivity). Other urban analysis tools (e.g. to estimate street and building orientations) were developed to link the building simulations to the case study areas.

Although SCHEEME has been developed for the Manchester and Sheffield areas, it can be easily adapted for use in other urban areas. Indeed, a key aspect of the work was to carry out further, detailed analysis for three major case study areas: Pendleton (Salford), Brunswick (Manchester) and Rochdale town centre.

Examples of potential applications include:

• Land use planning – creation of new parks, water features etc.

• Neighbourhood design – layout, building heights, orientation etc.

• Refurbishment policies – priority areas, measures etc.

Further funding is now being sought to take SCHEEME from a proof-of-concept program to a stand-alone piece of software appropriate for use by urban designers and planners.

Stakeholder views

Dr Mei Ren, AECOM writes:“The SCORCHIO project has developed tools that use the latest UK

climate projections to help planners, designers, engineers and users to adapt urban areas to the additional heat burdens anticipated with climate change. The key output is a prototype tool (a suite of models) designed to operate at a range of scales (building to city) and to assess areas at risks from climate change with respect to energy, emissions and human health and comfort.

The research topic directly addresses a need for the built environment and the research tried to balance two different requirements: addressing both the policy maker and building designer perspectives.


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Figure 4 – Example of adaptation assessment

Throughout the project, AECOM attended many stakeholder workshops as well as having detailed technical discussions with the research team. One example where AECOM contributed to workshops and discussion topics was the identification of key design parameters and suggestions as to how end users may use the tool for decision making. AECOM also welcomed the opportunity presented by the ARCC Coordination Network initiative to establish a window for dissemination of the knowledge captured during the course of this project. There is no doubt that the impact of climate change and the implementation of sustainable urban design will influence the type and scale of adaptation strategies adopted.

It has been very useful to participate in the project as a stakeholder and feedback from different stakeholders has been invaluable. Drawing the different technical themes of the project under a single framework was certainly very challenging and the research team has produced an excellent tool. These technical themes included:

• Downscaling of climate variables for urban areas taking into account changing land cover and anthropogenic heat sources on the urban climate, producing a database of spatial distributions of temperature for Manchester and Sheffield and methodology for generating future scenarios of urban temperature;

• Developing a building classification methodology for urban land cover;

• Modelling impacts and adaptation of the built environment;

• Developing vulnerability index for rapid assessment of urban areas on the basis of building classification and urban climate scenarios.

These technical themes are interconnected with output from one theme forming the input to another, thus generating a suite of models. As the outcome of the project, the SCORCHIO project has developed a prototype decision tool SCHEEME (Sustainable Cities: Heat, Energy and Emissions Evaluation), based on a GIS framework.

The project also undertook a number of case studies using real development examples to demonstrate the potential climate change adaptation strategies that can be adopted.

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The SCHEEME tool successfully provides a framework for the decision making tool giving users an overview of the impact of the projected climate scenarios, and subsequent possible adaptation solutions to mitigate the negative impact. This has been a substantial achievement and there is significant detailed technical information embedded within the suite of the SCHEEME models. There is no doubt that a number of excellent research papers can be produced and disseminated by the ARCC Coordination Network.

The GIS-based SCHEEME model is at an infant stage. The tool is ready to be enhanced further to provide different functionalities to suit different end-user requirements including policy making and for real world urban design. The proof of concept SCHEEME model is more focussed on city scale demonstrating projected climate risk and associated vulnerability and the building scale model is very much focused on individual buildings. Follow-up work is recommended to enhance analysis and to facilitate decision making on a neighbourhood scale, where potential adaptation strategies are more effective and have a larger impact on residents. Future enhancement to SCHEEME could also incorporate an outdoor thermal comfort index in addition to the vulnerability index.

As a building engineering firm and having major involvement in sustainable infrastructure and some large developments, AECOM welcomes the opportunity to work with the research team to further evaluate the applicability of existing SCORCHIO outputs to user requirements and to establish the feasibility of employing the tool in real-world situations across a range of the spatial scales that it can represent, and including aspects of massing, urban form, green infrastructure, built environment, vulnerability and the social impact of design.”

Publications

Smith, C. & Levermore, G. (2008) Designing urban spaces and buildings to improve sustainability and quality of life in a warmer world. Energy Policy 36 (12) 4558–4562.

Smith, C., Lindley, S. & Levermore, G. (2009) Estimating spatial and temporal patterns of anthropogenic heat fluxes for UK cities: the case in Manchester. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 98 (1–2), 19–35.

McCarthy, M., Best, M. & Betts, R. (2010) Climate change in cities due to global warming and urban effects. Geophysical Research Letters 37 L09705, doi:10:1029/2010GL042845.

Smith, C., Lindley, S., Levermore, G. & Lee, S. (2009) Conference report: A GIS-based decision support tool for urban climate risk analysis and exploration of adaptation options, with respect to thermal environments. 7th International Conference on Urban Climate, Yokohama, Japan.

Lee, S. & Sharples, S. (2009) Climate change and building design. In: A Handbook of Sustainable Building Design and Engineering (Eds. Mumovic, D. & Santamouris, M.) Chapter 19, pp.263–269, Earthscan.

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current projects

ARCADIAAdaptation and Resilience in Cities: Analysis and Decision Making Using Integrated Assessment

PrincipaI Investigator Prof Jim Hall, University of Oxford

Research partners Newcastle University, University of East Anglia, University of Cambridge, University College London, Met Office

Stakeholder partners Greater London Authority, Royal Town Planning Institute, Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, Town and Country Planning Association, Department for Communities and Local Government, AECOM

Project duration July 2009 to June 2012



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Cities are concentrations of vulnerability to climate change. Examples of impacts of climate change in cities include excessive heat, water scarcity and flooding. Whilst it is difficult to attribute individual extreme events to climate change, recent events including the 2003 heatwave that struck Paris and other European cities, and hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, have illustrated the potential for large scale weather-related disruption of urban function, from which it may take months or years to recover. These weather-related disasters illustrate how the functioning of cities can be impacted in multiple and complex ways. Ensuring that cities are more resilient to climate change requires a strategic long term view, in particular of how the built environment and infrastructure can be adapted. However, adaptation to climate change is not the only, or indeed the most important, determinant of the form of the built environment and infrastructure systems in future. Cities will be shaped by a host of economic and policy drivers, including mitigation of emissions of greenhouse gases. Thus, development of resilience to climate change in cities requires an integrated systems view of multiple processes of change.

Aim and objectives

ARCADIA aims to provide system-scale understanding of the inter-relationships between climate impacts, the urban economy, land use, transport and the built environment and to use this understanding to design cities that are more resilient and adaptable. The objectives are:

• To develop methods for generating city-scale climate change scenarios that are consistent with UKCP09.

• To develop and demonstrate new methods to analyse the interactions between climate impacts and the regional and urban economy.

• To analyse the relationship between the spatial configuration of cities and their resilience to climate impacts.

• To provide decision support tools for adaptation of urban areas, and to work with stakeholders to demonstrate how these tools can be used to develop strategies for transitions to resilience at a city scale.

Methodology

The project is divided into six tasks in order to achieve its aim.

Informing adaptation decision-making

Analysis of urban function, climate impacts & adaptation

Climate scenariosfor urban areas

Vulnerability & resilienceof the urban economy

Dynamic spatialmodel of cities

Adaptation pathways


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Informing Adaptation Decision MakingThe ARCADIA project aims to develop advanced new analysis,

techniques and tools to inform adaptation decision making. To maximise the practical utility of these techniques and tools, part of Task 1 has focused on working closely with key stakeholders from the start of the project. To facilitate a two-way relationship and provide a forum for discussion, regular six-monthly workshops have been held complemented with regular newsletter and email-exchanges when appropriate. This ongoing relationship, complemented with a series of telephone interviews, has allowed identification of the stakeholders’ needs with regard to climate impacts analysis and tools for adaptation. A detailed account of these findings is presented in a separate report on our website.

InternationalUN, World Bank, IPCC,European Commission

NationalCLG, Defra (and EA), DECC, DfT, DoH

Greater LondonGLA (TfL), LDA, GOL, LCCP, LRP, LRPHG, OfWat (LEP, LHP, LFEPA)

RegionalLRAP, ClimateSE,Go-SE, SEEDA, TRCCG

Business AssociationsABI, RenewableUK, London First, Water UK

ProfessionalRTPI, CIBSE, CIEH

Campaign groupsFoE, TCPA, HBF, Natural England,UKHPA, EST

Advisory groupsArup, Aecom, CABE, IDeA,UKCIP, HPA, HE Institutions

Community/voluntary sector

London Boroughs

Figure 1: Institutional map of climate change adaptation.


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Another key objective of Task 1 has been to examine governance arrangements for adaptation to climate change with a particular focus on London. A stakeholder and institutional mapping exercise to identify the full range of actors and institutions involved in adaptation in London and their interests, roles and responsibilities has been undertaken (Figure 1). A report provides an overview of the governance arrangements for adaptation to climate change in urban areas, focusing particularly on London. It identifies key institutions and stakeholders involved in adaptation decision-making at a strategic level, their roles and responsibilities and the key policies/programmes that they have produced to respond to the challenge of climate adaptation. A final report provides a gap analysis of the London Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, this is also available to download on the project website.

Analysis of Urban Function, Climate Impacts and AdaptationThe basic aim for the analysis in Task 2 is to create an understanding

of the overall changes that cities are and will keep on undergoing due to climate change. Our research is not limited to the physical climate change effects, but the scope of the analysis includes the wider climate change impacts on the three pillars of urban sustainability; that is the urban economy, society and environment.

The theoretical framework used for this analysis as presented in Figure 2 is the Sources – Pathway – Receptors (SPR), starting with the climate variables that are the source of climate hazard, which are then propagated through processes such as the Urban Heat Island (UHI), air quality, flooding etc. The pathway is the medium which enables climate change to interact with the biophysical receptors and generate the direct impacts on the built environment and on the urban ecosystem as well as on people’s health. At a fourth stage, climate change effects interact with the urban economy, society and the environment and this interaction generates the indirect impacts on the three sustainability elements. At the end, the higher order impacts are diffused in the economy and society at different scales as knock-on inter-sectoral and extra-urban impacts.

Socio-economicimpacts

Higher orderimpacts

Biophysical impacts

Climate effectsClimate changevariables

Vulnerability and Resilience of the Urban EconomyARCADIA aims to develop a systematic, robust and transparent

modelling framework to provide reliable estimation of total economic cost of climate-related extremes. Such extremes can cause physical destruction to built-environment and networks, such as transportation and lifelines; these damages are usually referred to as direct losses. Direct losses then lead to interruptions of economic activities, production and/or consumption; the losses from business interruptions are often referred to as the indirect effects of disaster. Methods of computing direct loss have long been recognised. It is important to understand the broader economic impact that climate related incidents can have on the economic supply chains.

Figure 2: Sources – Pathway – Receptors.


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Using an input–output model, ARCADIA will develop three sets of scenarios. The first set will be modelling economic loss and recovery in the short and medium term as a business as usual scenario. The second set will reduce the time-scale to monthly units to investigate the economic resilience in London in multi and frequent disasters scenario. The third set will focus on a long-term climate change scenario.

Climate Scenarios for Urban AreasThe UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) provide probabilistic projections

of climate change for the UK at a greater space and time scale than any previous national climate change assessment. The state-of-the-art methodology conducts a comprehensive assessment of climate change uncertainty arising from the climate models, natural variability of the climate, and a range of future greenhouse gas emission scenarios. However, a recognised omission in the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model that provides a basis for the method, is that of urban land use. It is well known and readily observed that the thermal and aerodynamic properties of buildings, concrete and tarmac, combined with the release of heat from energy use and transport in towns and cities contribute to elevated temperatures. This effect is commonly referred to as the Urban Heat Island. The average summer night in London is close to 2ºC warmer than the average rural summer night.

A set of additional climate model simulations have been conducted as a contribution to the ARCC projects SCORCHIO and ARCADIA. These simulations have included a representation of the urban land surface including waste heat release. A comparison of the model with and without the urban scheme against observations (1971–1990) for London is shown in Figure 3, for summer night time minimum temperatures when the heat island is at a peak. The use of a numerical model then allows us to isolate the relative contributions that come from the non-urban factors (middle panel of Figure 3), and the urban contribution (difference between the right and middle panel). These data have then been used to derive a simple method for estimating the temperature impact of urbanisation and energy use trends on the city and regional-scale climate of London.

ARCADIA is addressing climate change impacts and adaptation over large regions so a spatial Weather Generator has now been developed which can provide time-series of fields of weather variables at a 5 km and 1 hr resolution (or daily if sufficient). These allow, for example, the risk of simultaneous flooding across a region due to intense rainfall to be estimated, or the risk of exceeding a temperature threshold simultaneously across a large city. The temperature fields take account of the Urban Heat Island effect, which is important for large cities like London in locally increasing the temperatures.

Dynamic Spatial Model of CitiesThis task is concerned with the development of a land use simulator to

model the spatial evolution of cites in order to understand their vulnerability and adaptability to the impacts of climate change. There is a close link between the land use modelling, the qualitative systems analysis of urban function, climate impacts and adaptation work and the modelling of the vulnerability and resilience of the urban economy. Changes in population and employment are the main drivers for changes in land-use. An important step is therefore to spatially locate the jobs predicted by the economic modelling within the South East and this is the first piece of work being undertaken in this task. It will give an indication of the spatial distribution of future employment (by industrial sector) and population (by socio-economic class) within London, which in turn will allow us to make estimates on the future land occupancy required by these competing groups.


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Observations Model, no urban Model, with urban

The research focus of ARCADIA is the impact of climate change on the economy. As such, the outputs of the land use model will be integrated with the results of the climate scenario generator. By superimposing the frequency and severity of future climate events with the predicted spatial patterns of employment and land use predicted by the land use model, we can assess how climate events will impact cities in the future. We will evaluate impacts that effect the economy directly (e.g. through flood damage to business properties) and also indirect impacts (e.g. through disruption of supply chains or commuting trips). The direct impacts will be measured through damage functions and through spatial infrastructure damage modelled. The result of these impacts in terms of employment disruption can then be fed back to the economic modelling to assess their effects.

Future developments

In order to carry out this complex integrated modelling, capacity in the land-use modelling must be extended. The analysis of land-use and transport thus far has focussed on domestic properties and travel to work, so this must be extended to cover business properties and supply chains. The implications for land-use of changing scenarios on the location of industry, house prices and incomes must be explored in the model. These model extensions will allow us, in the ARCADIA project, to gain a greater understanding of the possible future effects of climate change on our urban environments and the most effective ways to adapt our cities to cope with these effects.

The final task of the project – designing adaptation pathways to enhance resilience – has begun with a stakeholder workshop to help identify relevant adaptation options. This stakeholder interaction will continue, using the new understanding of the vulnerability of urban systems to analyse how adaptation of cities can enhance resilience over a range of timescales.

Figure 3: Observed (left) and modelled (middle and right) climatology of summer night time minimum temperature. The middle panel is based on the non-urban version of the regional climate model. The right panel is the urban version of the regional climate model.

ARCC-WaterAdaptive and Resilient Water Systems

PrincipaI Investigator Mark New, University of Oxford; Steven Wade, HR Wallingford; Will Medd, Lancaster University; Suraje Dessai, Exeter University; Rob Wilby, Loughborough University; Julien Harou, UCL

Research partners HR Wallingford, Lancaster University, University of Oxford, Essex University, Loughborough University, UCL, Exeter University

Stakeholder partners Environment Agency, Ofwat, Natural England, Defra, GLA, WWF, UK Water Industry Research, Water UK, Waterwise, Anglian Water Services, Thames Water, Southern Water, South-East Water, Veolia Water, Stockholm Environment Institute, Pardee RAND Graduate School, Tynemarch Systems Engineering, AquaTerra

Project duration September 2009 to October 2012

Project website http://www.arcc-water.org.uk/


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Reliable water supply is fundamental to human health and wellbeing, and in the UK is underpinned by inter-linked infrastructure for abstraction, storage, treatment and conveyance of potable and wastewater. Climate change has the potential to affect the UK water system in a number of ways: through changes in the water available for abstraction and storage, especially through altered drought frequency and intensity, changes in demand and changing risk of infrastructure failure. Since 1997, Water Utilities have been obliged to include climate change in long-term water resource plans for their Periodic Reviews. The sophistication of this analysis has increased over time, but remains focused on the effect of climate change on average demand and deployable output on a water resource zone basis, with limited consideration of the effects of climate change on the entire water resource system. An integrated ‘whole system’ analysis is required to identify long-term water resource plans in which portfolios of infrastructure and demand management options maintain secure supplies (increased reliability and reduced vulnerability to failure) and enhance the environment.

Aims and objectives

ARCC-Water is developing new methods and tools to assess the risk of climate change impacts on water infrastructure systems and improve the performance of the water supply and demand system under future extreme events that will drive system failure (e.g. floods, droughts, heat waves). It is seeking to design robust water-supply infrastructure systems at regional and local scales by identifying packages of measures that guarantee reliable water supplies at competitive costs, meet carbon commitments and are socially and environmentally acceptable.

Key features of the research project include:

• A ‘multi-criteria robust decision analysis’ framework for formulating and evaluating alternative water supply plans/policies that ensure security of supply and meet economic, environmental and social objectives.

• Systematic treatment of uncertainties associated with future climate, hydrology, socio-economics, demand/behaviour, and technology.

• Multiple scales, enabling regional integrated assessment across multiple water utility supply areas and local authority boundaries, as well as smaller-scale assessment within individual supply areas.

• New datasets and insights on future regional drought risk, critical infrastructure risk and demand-side adaptive capacity.

• Build on, and add value to, existing research projects, methods and tools.


So far, a regional water supply model to represent the interactions between water resource zones currently and in the future has now been set up for the whole of the South-East (Figure 1). Meetings during the past 12 months with the Environment Agency and each of the water companies, including Anglian Water, Southern Water, South-East Water, Thames Water and Veolia Water, have helped inform the basis and extent of the modelling work. A database has now been populated to feed into the model, including water sources (surface and groundwater), abstraction licenses and details of the water resource management plans.


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The model uses open-source software and provides a broad scale assessment of water resource systems that mimic key regional scale features of supply, demand and transfers between supply areas.

A suite of hydrological models that are widely used in the water industry for estimating the impacts of climate change were used to translate climate data into surface water. Efforts are now concentrated on a methodology for deployable output from groundwater sources and future scenarios of climate change across the region. The regional water systems model will allow us to explore a suite of adaptation options through the multi-criteria robust decision analysis. These options will be informed by stakeholders and tested iteratively through a series of workshops that will be held later this year and early 2012.

Together with BMG research (the market research company contracted to do the survey), we are working on the final drafts of the survey which will be piloted in spring and then ‘go live’ in spring-early summer 2011. Face-to-face interviews assisted through hand held computer devices (to input results into) are being used to capitalise on response rates, and also so that more sensitive questions about people’s water use can be completed by the participant on the hand held device. These interviews will be conducted across the South and South-East and will fall within the boundaries of the water companies. The results of the survey will be used to support planned workshops to explore current practices associated with water use and ultimately the construction of

Anglian Water

Bournemouth

Portsmouth Water

South West Water

Southern Water

Sutton & East Surrey Water

Thames Water

Veolia Water Central

Veolia Water East

Veolia Water South East

South East Water

Figure 1: Regional water supply model.


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future water using scenarios. These will be held in September in the South-East. These workshops will be a key space in which to explore the concept of ‘everyday practice’ of water use in its own right, but also the application of the ARCC-Water project to demand management within water companies and other climate modelling.

Three case studies are being carried out to provide a local-scale focus. It will allow us to apply our approach at the local scale, explore the inter-actions between local and regional scale and testing the simplifications in the regional approach. Lan Hoang is exploring the Sussex water supply system and is currently setting up a network model to use with a robust decision making approach. Evgenii Matrosov is conducting a similar study in the Thames Basin and recently presented his work “Simulating the Thames water resources system using IRAS-2010” at the IEMSS in Ottawa. Jo Parker (Loughborough) is looking at modelling water demand using a high resolution water consumption dataset (SODCON) with a focus on the Anglian Water region.

Stakeholder views

Sandy Elsworth, Water Resource Consultant with South East Water, says:

“This project is coming at the right time to support the industry as we consider how to approach planning in the longer term beyond the normal quinquennium. The opportunity to explore novel approaches to decision making in the face of the uncertainties of the future - climate change, customer behaviour, societal and regulatory pressures, etc - is essential if we are to move beyond a simple mechanistic, binary, approach to water planning. There will never be one answer to the question posed by the future. We need to respond to the future unknowns with a sufficiently unconstrained toolset beyond current guidelines and past practices, and it would seem that this project allows this to be explored in an open and transparent manner.”

Glenn Watts, Environment Agency, says:“Climate change challenges current approaches to water resources

planning, demanding new thinking and new methods. I welcome the ARCC-Water project because its innovative, multidisciplinary approach will bring fresh insights and ideas to this complex area, helping to identify effective ways to secure water supplies and protect the environment in coming decades.”

BIOPICCCBuilt Infrastructure for Older People’s Care in Conditions of Climate Change

PrincipaI Investigators Prof Sarah Curtis, Durham University; Prof Dimitri Val, Heriot-Watt University

Research partners Sim Reaney, Ralf Ohlemuller, Chris Dunn, Mylene Riva, Lena Dominelli, Jonathan Wistow, Katie Oven, Jonathan Erskine, Durham University; Roland Burkhard, Richard Holden & Sarah Nodwell, Heriot-Watt University

Stakeholder partners AgeUK, Tyne and Wear Emergency Planning Unit, International Federation of Social Workers, Northern Consortium, Ben Cave (Independent consultant), Resilient Communities, NHS, Durham County Council, Defra

Project duration November 2009 – October 2012

Project website http://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/research/researchprojects/biopiccc/


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Research rationale

The functioning of health and social care systems and the infrastructures supporting them are likely to be influenced by climate change, in particular by the increasing frequency and severity of weather related hazards such as floods and heatwaves. Cold spells will also continue to be challenging in the foreseeable future. Protecting people’s health and wellbeing from the impacts of climate change is critical, especially for older people who are particularly vulnerable to climate related hazards. Climate change in the UK is accompanied by population ageing and the proportion of people aged 65 and over is projected to increase from 16% in 2006 to 22.2% in 2031 (GAD 2007). These trends suggest that it is important for health and social care systems serving the older age group to be able to adapt to the impacts of climate change. This study focuses specifically on the built infrastructure (such as buildings, transport networks, utility systems) on which health and social care systems depend (Figure 1).

Prevailing climate

Climatechange

More frequentextreme weatherevents:• heatwaves• coldwaves• floods

Builtinfrastructure

Ageing population

Physical vulnerability:• location• design features

Vunerability offrail older people:• age composition• health care ‘need’

Risk assessment

Responses

Figure 1. Conceptual model showing the links between climate change, population ageing and adaptations to built infrastructure for older people’s health care.

Aims and objectives

The main aim of this project is to develop a methodology for selecting locally sensitive, efficient adaptation strategies during the period up to 2050 to ensure that the infrastructures and health and social care systems supporting the well-being of older people will be sufficiently resilient to withstand harmful impacts of climate change. The project is addressing the following objectives:

• identify areas of England that are most at risk from extreme weather events including floods, heatwaves and coldwaves;

• within the zones at greatest risk from climate change, identify ‘case study’ communities (neighbourhoods or small settlements) in urban and rural settings with high concentrations of older people and with a range of socio-economic conditions;

• engage stakeholders within the selected ‘case study’ communities and also at national and international levels to determine crucial aspects of health and social care, which sustain well-being of older people. We will identify the key elements of health and social care systems and related infrastructures (i.e. buildings, roads, power and water supply systems, drainage and sewage systems, etc.) and how these may be affected by weather hazards;

• identify different design and management solutions, including a probabilistic evaluation of their life-cycle costs, to improve resilience of health/social care systems and related infrastructures with emphasis on the previously identified key elements;


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• in collaboration with providers and users of services and other expert informants, develop strategies to integrate these design options into ‘models’, providing useful illustrations that may be adapted to inform resilience planning elsewhere;

• Disseminate our findings to a wider audience and report on their responses.

Key results and their implications for policy and practice

a) National scale hazard and vulnerability mappingBeginning with a review of the literature from the UK and elsewhere,

extreme weather-related hazards likely to place particular pressure on health and social care infrastructure were identified. Using daily temperature data derived from the UKCP09 Weather Generator, heatwaves and coldwaves were mapped for the 2030s, under three different emissions scenarios for 50 km2 areas across England. River and coastal flooding were also included, based on the outputs from the UK Government’s Foresight Flood and Coastal Defence Project (2004). Demographic projections for the older age group were then mapped at the local authority level for the period 2006–2031. Also, a set of socio-demographic indicators including ethnicity, deprivation and rural–urban location were devised and mapped to identify local areas where social conditions may make older people particularly vulnerable to climate change. These datasets were combined using a Geographical Information System (GIS) and a nested search approach adopted to identify areas of relatively high risk within England. Over time, people and infrastructure adapt to the prevailing average climate. We are therefore not only concerned with the hottest or coldest or most flood-prone areas, but are looking especially at places which are likely to experience the most rapid changes in extreme climate events. These are the areas where adaptation may be especially challenging.

The findings suggest several parts of the country will experience a relatively marked increase in extreme weather events which are likely to challenge human health and the infrastructures supporting older people’s care. Some areas can anticipate a significant increase in the occurrence of cold weather events (in particular, the North East and North West of England) while others will see a more rapid increase in heatwave events (in particular, the South East, the East of England and the East Midlands). Some regions are projected to see an increase in both temperature-related and flood hazards (such as the coastal local authority districts in the South East and East of England). Areas experiencing the most rapidly changing hazards often also have large and growing proportions of older people, especially in the oldest age groups who are most vulnerable, for example, the South East and East of England. Some of these areas are also experiencing rapid growth in the older population. Many of these are rural or semi-rural areas outside the major urban agglomerations in England, which emphasises the challenges presented by climate change and demographic trends for rural populations. These national scale prospective hazard and vulnerability maps can inform resilience planning at the national scale. We are also exploring how local mapping can assist local planning.


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b) Trialling our approach to local case studies A pilot study was conducted across two neighbouring rural communities

in the North of England. This included interviews with older people and discussion groups with a wide range of service providers. The pilot acted as a preliminary study into how local residents and care providers view the impact of climate change on built infrastructure and health and social care service provision for older people in the area. The study weighed up a number of ethical issues, including how best to approach older, and potentially vulnerable, people about this possibly sensitive issue. A semi-structured interview guide was designed and piloted during this stage of the research to help frame the interviews. The topic guide gives scope for informants to let us know about their own views on what is important for their health and social care, their experiences of severe weather related events, and what would be their likely responses to weather hazards. Different members of the research team including non-academic advisors contributed to the design of the interview guide.

The pilot study generated a number of interesting findings. Informants stressed the importance of trust between service providers and users. Perceptions about services varied within and between groups of older people and service providers. There was an apparent hierarchy of reliance on different service providers during emergencies (family, neighbours and formal services, in that order). People have varying demands for services during different extreme weather events. These issues will be amongst those explored in greater depth during the detailed case study research.

c) Infrastructure modelling One aim of the modelling work is to develop a conceptual framework

for capturing the performance of infrastructures (road and railroad, power, water and wastewater networks) that are important during emergency situations. We have used concepts related to network theory (i.e. a ‘node and link’ approach) to develop an initial model. The connectivity of infrastructure interdependencies can be captured with these elementary components, for example, the dependency of water supplies on the functioning of electricity can be modelled. Many existing models focus on large scale networks whereas the BIOPICCC project is concerned with interdependencies at the local scale. As a result, the size of a network (in terms of numbers of nodes and links) is expected to be much smaller, but the detailed properties and processes at nodes will become more visible as we ‘zoom-in’. Our models aim to show how these elements of infrastructure (nodes) are significant for production, transhipment and storage (of commodities). The model will account for the effects of weather-related hazards on such processes at the individual node and link level. This will enable us to study the resilience and costs of adaptation to climate related hazards at the level of the networked infrastructure. Furthermore, our infrastructure model will show how the network changes over time. This is a natural way of thinking about disaster events, where normal conditions are interrupted by weather-related hazards.

This ability to model change in the system will support future developments such as integration with a flood model. A multidimensional flood model will be used to calculate the key aspects of a flood scenario, such as flood depth and extents. The upstream boundary conditions, such as rainfall and catchment characteristics, will be used to generate a hydrograph of flow versus time. Using this relationship as input, the time of peak flooding as well as the amount of flooding (peak flow volume) will be used to determine the worst case scenario in the catchment for a number of future rainfall scenarios. As we develop the model we will link in more information specific to our case study areas using GIS. The aim is to develop software where all of the components can


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link-up to help in the exploration of realistic, scenario-based investigations. Such models will demonstrate how local conditions and climate related hazards in a particular setting relate to key parts of the infrastructure for older people’s care.

Future developments

We have agreed on collaboration with two ‘test-bed’ local authorities (one in the North and one in the South of England), and we will begin the consultation process in spring 2011. This will involve:

• local level hazard mapping using data derived from the UKCP09 Weather Generator and UK Government’s Foresight Flood and Coastal Defence Project;

• a strategic consultation with service providers and a local level consultation with older people and their carers;

• development of the engineering models described in (c);

• the development of a prototype BIOPICCC toolkit based on our work in the ‘test-bed’ areas, and designed to assist and inform resilience planning elsewhere;

• a ‘roll-out’ of the prototype BIOPICCC toolkit to other interested local authority districts to determine how relevant the BIOPICCC approach is outside the ‘test-bed’ areas.

To complement this local level in-depth appraisal, we will undertake an online survey to consult with a range of international experts on disaster response in different national and international settings. We will collate their views on how to adapt key elements of infrastructures for elderly care in a changing climate (e.g. efficiency/sufficiency of current building regulations and policies, disaster planning, disaster responses), how to meet gender/social or cultural group sensitivities, relevance of our project for other areas, and advice on how to disseminate our findings.

Stakeholder views

Kate Cochrane, Resilience Planning and Continuity Officer, Tyne and Wear Emergency Planning Unit:

“This research gives local authorities a unique opportunity to explore the needs of older people in the context of extreme weather events. As the frequency of these events increases, BIOPICCC will inform both current emergency planning and the emerging Community Resilience agenda. (http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/content/community-resilience).”

Ben Cave, Independent Consultant – public health, sustainability and planning, Ben Cave Associates Ltd:

“BIOPICCC is an exciting study. It is also shaping up to be an important contribution to our understanding of climate change adaptation. Its mixed methods approach, and multidisciplinary team, aims to ensure that the ‘hardest’ outputs of quantitative risk assessment and climate modelling are informed by, and sensitive to, the needs of older people and their service providers.”


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Susanne Lorenz, Climate Change Adaptation Officer, Durham County Council:

“The BIOPICCC project addresses crucial issues and concerns regarding the vulnerability of health and social care systems to the impacts of extreme weather events and climate change. It is the responsibility of Local Authorities to develop adaptation strategies that address these concerns and help to increase the adaptatibility of these systems. The outputs of the BIOPICCC project and the proposed toolkit will thus be a very valuable tool in the design and planning of adaptation at a local level.”

Publications

Foresight (2004) Future Flooding Volume 1: Future Risks and their Drivers. London: Foresight Directorate. Flood and Coastal Defence Project of the Foresight Programme, Office of Science and Technology, HM Government.

GAD (2007). Population projections by the Office for National Statistics, 2006-based. Available online: http://www.gad.gov.uk/Demography_Data/Population.

PrincipaI Investigators Prof Geoff Levermore, University of Manchester; Prof Tariq Muneer, Edinburgh Napier University; Prof Jian Kang, University of Sheffield; Prof Chris Underwood, University of Northumbria; Dr Sukumar Natarajan, University of Bath

COPSECoincident Probabilistic Climate Change Weather Data for a Sustainable Built Environment

Research partners Edinburgh Napier University, University of Bath, University of Manchester, University of Sheffield, University of Northumbria, Met Office, University of Kent, University of Liverpool

Stakeholder partners IES, EDSL, DesignBuilder Software Ltd, Derrick Braham Associates, Bristol City Council, 3DREID, AECOM, Buro Happold, AEDAS Architects, Feilden Clegg Bradley, Hoare Lea Research and Development, King Shaw Associates, Roger Preston Environmental, UKCIP, CIBSE

Project duration July 2008 to August 2011

Project website www.copse.manchester.ac.uk


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Buildings designed now may last 50 years or more and it is therefore important to allow for the predicted warmer climate of the future. This requires a departure from the traditional use of Test Reference Years derived from the previous 20 years or so of meteorological measurements. UKCP09 weather data, as provided, are not designed specifically to be used with building design, but in a wide range of applications. The COPSE project has therefore been preparing a methodology to construct new annual weather files of hourly data that combine these latest UKCP09 projections for future climate and also take into account the local effects of urban heat islands. These data are specifically aimed at the building design community.

Aims and objectives

• Establish UKCP09 based outputs and design criteria for domestic and non-domestic buildings with a consistent weather data framework.

• Develop methodologies for transforming UKCP09 based probabilistic data into building design data for practitioners, developing a new design reference year (DRY) and novel coincident occurrence selection, taking into account the range of requirements and capabilities to be found in the practitioner community.

• Develop a means of modifying the data to reflect the urban heat island effect and the capability of generating building design data for any UK location utilising the UKCP09 Weather Generator.

• Provide academic papers and stakeholder presentations for professional practitioners including UKCP09 scenario ‘story lines’ specifically related to buildings and their implications for the future.

• Assess the adaptation potential for carbon emission reduction from new and refurbished buildings, using the new methodology and data.

• Ensure the relevance and utility of outputs through creating a strong stakeholder group with a network of corresponding members, and validate the form and content of outputs through case-studies of new-build and refurbishment projects identified with the aid of stakeholders.

Methodology

A stakeholder group was formed to understand the requirements for weather data and approach used for deciding risk in building design. A robust method was devised to apply the ISO method for generating a Test Reference Year to the larger datasets of UKCP09. Missing weather parameters in the UKCP09 data were calculated from the data present where possible, or taken from historical data, in order to provide a complete dataset for use in building simulation. A series of building types were modelled and their performance simulated using Design Builder and the TRY weather files from UKCP09 data. The projected change in solar irradiance was assessed, including the changing direct to diffuse ratio. Comfort criteria were reviewed and the way in which people can adapt to changing temperatures and maintain comfort levels was assessed. The implications of warmer weather for natural ventilation were considered and how noisy contexts might reduce the ability for users to exploit passive ventilation.

Key results to date

• A methodology has been created for producing Design Reference Years from the UKCP09 projections’ data. These are designed to replace the current Design Summer Years (DSYs) that are now used in building


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design and published by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE). These DRYs can provide, for any 5km square in the UK and future period and emissions scenario, a year’s hourly weather data for direct use in building simulation programmes. They provide a way of testing a building in more demanding weather conditions, e.g. in higher external temperatures.

• Analysis of the UKCP09 data has shown that a marked change is projected in the ratio of diffuse to direct solar radiation, with sky conditions becoming very significantly clearer in the future.

• Adaptive Comfort Degree Days (ACDDs) can be used to predict the potential energy savings that can be made through reduced cooling energy use in the summer (Figure 1).

• The half-hourly air temperatures recorded in an array of monitoring stations across Greater Manchester have shown the significance of location in determining temperature (Figure 2). The following factors are important: position within an urban centre, local wind speed, street gorge height to width ratio, degree of evapotranspiration, and the sky view factor.

• Extensive simulation modelling of different building types has shown that future climate change will have a greater impact on buildings in the south compared to the north of the UK.

• The variability in wind speed projections has only a small influence on the ventilation rates in a building.

250

200

150

100

50

0

ACDD

s (K

.day

)

0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000Cooling energy consumption (kWh)

y = 0.0314x – 10.135R2 = 0.9814

Stakeholder views

In general, stakeholders have expressed that they need clear guidelines on design parameters – and then they will design to them. It has become clear that, as with building regulations, it is very helpful if everyone is working to the same requirements. There is also little appetite in the building design arena to explore a vast range of possible future weather conditions. In any case, few clients are going to fund this. There is a need for a limited range of future possible weather to be available, or a simple method to generate bespoke weather data based on the UKCP09 raw data. However, the method does need to be transparent and open. It is clear that clients could find the 21 future scenarios (future time period and future emissions) of UKCP09 daunting if they had to choose one. Clients need strong guidance and their consultants advising them need strong direction on the approach to take from a government or professional body.

Figure 1: The relationship between Adaptive Comfort Degree Days and the energy used for cooling a building


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Future developments

• Feedback from users’ experience of applying the new Design Reference Years to designing buildings will be used to develop and widen the use of this alternative to DSYs.

• Further development of the TRYs and DRYs will permit designers to be given better confidence limits.

0.35

0.30

0.25

0.20

0.15

0.10

0.05

0.00Mea Cntr 2030LE 2050ME 2080HE

DR

GFigure 2 : An array of 59 monitoring stations has revealed the extent of the urban heat island in Manchester.

Figure 3: Comparison of the future and measured diffuse to global radiation ratio (DRG) at 1pm, corresponding to the 89.5th percentile of daily total radiation. (Edinburgh).

CREWCommunity Resilience to Extreme Weather

PrincipaI Investigator PP1: Prof Li Shao; PP2: Prof Keith Jones; PP3: Prof Gwilym Pryce; PP4: Dr Hayley Fowler, Dr Stephen Blenkinsop; PP5 & 6: Dr Stephen Hallett

Research partners Newcastle University, University of Greenwich, Cranfield University, University of Glasgow, University of Exeter, UCL, Coventry University, SAC, University of Birmingham, UEA, University of Wolverhampton, University of Manchester, University of Salford

Project duration February 2008 to November 2011

Project website www.extreme-weather-impacts.net


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CREW is an EPSRC-funded research project, established to develop a set of tools for improving the capacity for resilience of local communities to the impacts of future extreme weather events. Taking a case study of five south-London boroughs, CREW is investigating local-level impacts on householders, SMEs and local policy/decision makers of a range of geohazards including flooding, subsidence, heatwaves, wind storm and drought. The research investigates opportunities and limitations for local communities’ adaptive capacity, considering the decision-making processes across communities and the impediments and drivers of change. Our web-portal presents probable extreme weather events (EWEs) for a range of UKCP09 scenarios, with an evaluation of coping mechanisms.

Aims and objectives

PP1: Identification and assessment of coping measures for extreme weather eventsTo cope effectively with EWEs, the following important and closely-

linked elements would be required: evidence on the probability and the impact of the EWEs, and technologies and coping measures that mitigate the impact, as well as communities that are willing and able to take up the coping measures. This programme package is concerned with the second of these, identifying and assessing methods for coping with EWEs. It is an integral part of the project as it provides technical information on coping measures which is essential for research into barriers/drivers of their uptake by the community. This interaction between communities and coping measure research will also result in tools that assist choosing coping measures – a matrix of technologies and methods, which have been assessed and ranked for their technical performances and potentials for wide community uptake.

PP2: Community Resilience to Extreme Weather events through improved local decision makingTo undertake a stakeholder led research project that seeks to better

understand how community groups (policy makers, households and SMEs) respond to EWEs and study the complex relationships between these groups in order to improve understanding of the impact that these relationships have on community resilience to EWEs. The aim of the research is to develop an integrated decision-making framework that supports the individual and collective actions of local policy makers, households and SMEs, in such a way that the actions result in the improved resilience of local communities to EWEs.

Research objectives• To understand the current decision making process (policy makers,

households and SMEs) and community perceptions (e.g. risk, role, information, strategy, drivers, barriers etc) in response to EWEs.

• To identify inter-linkages and inter-dependencies between decision-makers across community and sector groups and assess the impact of these on community resilience.

• To evaluate the impact of existing (non-technical) coping strategies/processes for EWEs and non-EWE events and identify whether there are different perceptions (between EWEs and non-EWE events) of their impact on community resilience.

• To identify barriers and drivers/levers related to action towards resilience building prior to exposure to EWEs and how these change (or don’t) following exposure.


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• Develop and test prototype coping strategies in the form of an integrated decision-making framework that integrates 1-4 above with the outputs from PP1, PP3, PP4 and PP5 to support improved community resilience in response to the increased likelihood of EWEs.

PP3: EWESEM (Extreme Weather Event Socio-Economic Model) objectives:

• To estimate impact on society of anticipated increases in the frequency & severity of floods.

• To review the literature and develop a robust conceptual framework to underpin empirical analysis.

• To explore the impact on a range of sectors, particularly house prices, employment and deprivation.

• To develop estimates that are grounded in empirical evidence and that are updatable as more evidence becomes available.

• To incorporate potential interactions between sectors and spatial spillovers.

PP4 SWERVE (Severe Weather Events Risk and Vulnerability Estimator) objectives:

• To develop an existing weather generator approach to produce spatially consistent catchment and city-scale time series simulations of current and future climate.

• To use physically-based models to simulate EWEs (floods, heatwaves, water resource droughts, wind storms, subsidence and lightning) for the selected boroughs (the SE London Resilience Zone) at a Postcode level relevant for communities.

• To produce mapped indices of individual/combined EWE probabilities for current and future climates; inputs for socio-economic modelling (PP3), the GIS toolkit (PP5) and stakeholder surveys (PP1/2).

• To integrate weather scenarios with socio-economic models (PP3) to estimate immediate and lagged impacts and develop simple ‘what if’ scenarios.

• To engage stakeholders through PP1/2 to identify critical thresholds, to identify and evaluate useful formats for the mapped indices and to develop and test the SWERVE (PP4) methodology/outputs.

PP5 WISP (Weather Impact ‘What-If?’ Scenario Portal) objectives:• The overall aim of this Programme Package is to develop a knowledge

network and an interactive tool-kit via the Internet for integrating the range of outputs from the various programme packages. The web portal also provides the facility for mapping possible future extreme weather events in the context of a range of scenarios, and allows the evaluation and presentation of a range of coping methods.

• This Programme Package provides an integral activity because the mapped, tabular and statistical output will serve as an essential tool for raising awareness of extreme weather event impacts during and beyond the lifetime of the project; for engaging stakeholders in the wider CREW research programme; and for delivering a tailored, operational tool to meet end-user requirements in preparing for more resilient communities.


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Key results to date/case studies and implications for policy and practicePP1

• For the first time systematic quantitative assessment of passive coping measures for heat waves which will vastly improve building adaptation/retrofit decisions.

• Taking human factors into consideration and revealing major importance of occupancy for building adaptation design options.

• Revealing the interaction between mitigation and adaptation – some mitigation measures would undermine adaption, and vice versa. But this could be prevented with minimum cost and disruption if mitigation and adaptation are considered together.

• Wide engagement with industry, health practitioners, and policy makers at local and national levels which benefited both the research team and the stakeholders.

PP2This work is still ongoing and as such not all deliverables have yet been

achieved. The top four achievements to date are:

• development of the risk assessment framework for improved decision-making;

• greater understanding of the issues faced by SMEs in interpreting extreme weather scenarios and developing contingency plans to reduce their vulnerability and improve their resilience and adaptive capacity;

• greater understanding of the issues faced by local policy planners in preparing community level assessment plans for extreme weather events;

• greater understanding of the interrelationships between households, SMEs and the local authority policy makers.

Developing the above has relied on the technical interpretation of the climate models provided by PP4 and the presentation of these through a GIS interface provided by PP5. The risk assessment framework was supported by the technical evidence of coping strategies provided by PP1. The field work is currently gathering data for PP3. PP2 could not have progressed without these inputs.

PP3• A very fruitful critical review of the literature in which we identified

a number of crucial shortcomings in existing theoretical and methodological frameworks when applied to a world characterised by global warming. We have presented these as “The Four Fallacies of Extrapolation”: Pryce, G., Chen, Y. and Mackay, D. (submitted 10th Dec 2010) Flood Risk, Climate Change and Housing Economics: Four Fallacies of Extrapolation (paper submitted to Urban Studies, under review). We think these could be seminal to the future trajectory of the literature.


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• Development of a theoretical framework grounded in the economic psychology and sociology of risk literatures that draws together the links between risk adjusted prices, observed prices and flood risk, and posits how these relationships are likely to change in the context of climate change (Pryce, G., Chen, Y. and Galster, G. The impact of floods on house prices: an imperfect information approach with myopia and amnesia. Housing Studies 26 (2), 259–279).

• Estimation of the first simultaneous equation model of the effect of flood risk on house prices with spatial effects.

• Capacity building: the EWESEM team, Prof Gwilym Pryce and Dr Yu Chen, are (as far as we are aware) the only qualified economists in the UK working on the socio-economic impacts of flood risk due to climate change. Therefore, the CREW project is playing a major role in building capacity in this important area. CREW would not have happened if it was not for the sandpit. Moreover, given that Pryce and Chen had no previous track record in research on climate change or flood risk, it is highly unlikely that either would have undertaken substantive research in this field over the past 3 years if it were not for CREW.

PP4• Development of an existing weather generator approach to produce

spatially consistent high-resolution catchment and city-scale time series simulations of current and future climate.

• Development of flood models for pluvial/fluvial flood risk at the local scale (for the SE London Resilience Zone) and mapping indices from the models to be used in the WISP tool.

• Development of heatwave models using land use information as well as other factors to produce future estimates of heat events across London and producing mapped indices as outputs.

• Development of models for water resource drought incorporating control rules, modelling supplies, demands etc. and looking at adaptation options for adapting to future climate change.

• The project will not conclude until Nov 2011 and key objectives to combine results with the results of other projects in the CREW programme are still ongoing.

PP5• Deployment of an interdisciplinary web-based portal that integrates

information, model results and qualitative information summaries from the research outputs from the other programme packages. The achievement is the successful drawing together of coherent information representing the social sciences, atmospheric sciences, earth sciences, hydrological sciences and engineering.

• The use of the web-portal toolkits to support stakeholder engagement activities of the project, where decision makers, SMEs and householders were able to utilise the functionality of the WISP tools to aid communication and understanding, guided by the project facilitator. Further to this, the engagement with user groups in our meetings and general assemblies have allowed us to take on board and reflect potential stakeholder views. The achievement is to develop ‘real-world’ tools that communicate effectively scientific outputs to affected parties.


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• The use of the web-portal toolkit to represent phenomena indicative of the likely conditions prevailing under a range of scenarios and potential future climates. Output is also associated with particular probabilities and accepted thresholds. The achievement has been how we have sought to capture uncertainty and represent this to stakeholder groups.

• The collation, specification and commissioning of a wide range of proprietary and open-source or free software tools to develop a ‘toolbox’ of web-based mapping services and information presentation capability, in a web-based environment designed to serve the dissemination and integration objectives of the project. The achievement is the marshalling of the technological approaches in concert to hold, manage and manipulate the data outputs of the other programme packages.

Stakeholder engagement

PP1The researchers and investigators have had exceptionally usefully

interactions which have worked in both directions. The output of the work proved to be of great interest to policy makers, practitioners and industry. The researchers and investigators have been invited by the government departments (CLG, Defra, DECC) and other organisation (CCC, GLA, the former HPA, former RDAs, various LAs) to discuss policy implication including planning and other initiatives. A range of topics including metrics, integrating mitigation and adaptation, and appropriate weather data were of great interest to the stakeholders. Professional bodies (e.g. CIBSE) and industry were engaged in the discussion of best practice, guidance and knowledge transfer.

PP2• The project team are in an ongoing discussion with scientific advisers at

CLG and Defra and with a wider stakeholder group through the annual assemblies. Formal policy guidance has not yet been formulated but this is an output that will be achieved before the end of the project.

• The participatory research has involved a large number of SMEs and local authority policy makers who have both contributed to the research and have used the results of the research in formulating action plans.

• A wider dissemination route is currently being developed for stakeholders in London (based on the Southeast London case study area) in conjunction with the Institute for Sustainability. This dissemination will involve a one-day training course for key decision-makers followed by a 4 hour intensive case study analysis of each stakeholder’s specific circumstances.

PP3• Based on Google hit rates, EWESEM research has had a fairly major

impact. For example, the top Google return (out of over 5 million results) for the search terms “climate change housing economics” is the EWESEM Pryce et al. “Four Fallacies” paper presented at the International Sociological Association Conference, Glasgow, Sept 2009. And if one enters the search terms “climate change house price”, research by the EWESEM comes up as the sixth top entry from over 7 million results.

• Defra and Entec UK have requested outputs from the EWESEM project as inputs into their 2010 UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA)


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• The EWESEM team have also been invited to present CREW research at three Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research conferences (in 2009, 2010, and 2011), and to the ASC Secretariat of the Committee on Climate Change. We were also invited to speak on the implications of EWESEM research for society and social justice at the Glasgow Café Church event on the environment, 2009.

• EWESEM research outputs have also been used in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching at the University of Glasgow and in guest lectures at the internationally renowned Mackintosh School of Architecture.

PP4The outputs of the project have already had an impact on users as they

have been involved throughout the project – through its inception, in moulding the objectives and how these would be carried out and what the outputs will be. They continue to be involved at 6 monthly meetings and in an advisory capacity. They are not using the outputs of the research yet as the tool is yet to be finalised – this will happen towards the end of the project and it will not be released publically (due to concerns from some of the stakeholders).

PP5The integration of CREW datasets within WISP had a significant impact

on users. Stakeholders commented that WISP filled a gap in the insurance toolkit for assessing future risk of extreme weather. Predictive data is currently not part of tools being used by planners: the combination of modelled data with maps, photographs and web services allows users to visualise the CREW data in context. The stakeholders identified WISP as a desirable tool that would allow for improved efficiencies in resource planning.

DeDeRHECCDesign and Delivery of Robust Hospital Environments in a Changing Climate

PrincipaI Investigator Prof Alan Short, University of Cambridge

Research partners University of Cambridge, Open University, University of Loughborough, University of Leeds, with input from Arup and Davis Langdon

Stakeholder partners Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, Department of Health

Project duration October 2009 to October 2012

Project website www.robusthospitals.org.uk


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Rationale

The ‘Design and Delivery of Robust Hospital Environments in a Changing Climate’ (DeDeRHECC) project is investigating economical and practical strategies for the adaptation of the NHS Retained Estate to increase its resilience to climate change whilst meeting the onerous carbon reduction targets set for the NHS. Hospitals are required to provide their patients, staff and visitors with a safe environment, but in a warming climate can that goal be achieved without recourse to energy-intensive cooling solutions?

Aims, objectives and methodology

The project team is working with buildings on four NHS Trust sites, chosen for their typicality of the 14000+ NHS locations.

• The current environmental performance of typical spaces within the case study buildings is being recorded and their future performance projected using climate data for 2020, 2050, 2080.

• For the case study buildings, a range of potential interventions is being devised and will be tested against the future climate projections and in the light of the latest pathogen control research.

• The implications of change on NHS campuses are being investigated.

• Recent major refurbishment projects within the NHS are being investigated and detailed case histories are in progress.

• Examples of best practice refurbishment projects in other sectors are being collated and interrogated for their potential applicability to health buildings.

• The definition of resilience within the healthcare context is being investigated.

• A DVD film, 30 minutes, will summarise findings in an engaging fashion.

In addition to academic journal and conference papers (several in progress), a catalogue of costed refurbishment strategies will be created. These strategies will be abstracted from the case study buildings as a series of generic interventions. In addition, a decision-making tool will allow NHS Trusts to evaluate the implications of whole-campus change.

Key results to date

• There has previously been an almost total absence of measured data on the thermal performance of hospital buildings or of the medical equipment which populates them.

• There is little quantified evidence of the actual relationship between internal hospital temperatures and patient well-being and recovery.

• The existing guidance on comfort conditions appears to have been adapted from other sectors. Furthermore, Trusts appear to devise their own temperature thresholds which can differ significantly from Department of Health technical memoranda involving derogation by the Trusts.

• In the average summer of 2010, our measured data reveals that a significant number of spaces exceeded the existing temperature thresholds. Older, traditional construction fared better than 1960s/70s lightweight buildings or, interestingly, recent modular structures.

Figure 1: Bradford Royal Infirmary – section through Nightingale ward pavilion showing as-designed (left) and current configuration (right). The team is modelling current and future performance and designing possible interventions.

Figure 2: Leicester Royal Infirmary, Kensington Building level 2 during refurbishment, one of several case studies being investigated. The team has interviewed key members of the design and client teams, and is working through the project archive.


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• Performance is dependent to a significant extent not only on physical fabric but also on the control/service regimes currently in place. Controls tend to be relatively unsophisticated, with, for example, set points for whole buildings being generated on the basis of the coldest space within it. This suggests that initial interventions might be relatively economical, addressing heating/cooling controls to improve current performance towards the acceptable. Longer term, more fundamental architectural interventions might start to achieve performance more likely to contribute to ambitious carbon reduction targets.

Figure 3: Part of the project ‘case study matrix’.

3a Compact court (‘Best buy’)Rosie Maternity as variant1982

3b Extended court (Harness/Nucleus)Glenfield, Leicester1983

4a Deep plan with interruptionsGloucester Wing, St Albans1989

4b Deep planMoynihan Building, St Albans1967


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• In some cases, relatively sophisticated environmental strategies inherent in initial designs have been lost by pre-construction value engineering or by subsequent refurbishment, with negative consequences. In some cases a recovery may be possible.

• Case study refurbishment projects tended to be largely cosmetic, aimed at improving the patient/staff immediate perceptions. Design and client teams tend to focus on the ‘art of the possible’ in hastily organised projects at the end of the financial year to tight time-scales, particularly when working within an existing ‘live’ structure. Interventions with longer pay-back times which might generate more fundamental improvements in performance are simply rejected out of hand.

• Examples from other public building sectors show that fundamental changes can be made to the internal environment (and the image) of a building by refurbishment both economically and rapidly whilst enabling some continuity of occupancy by skilful phasing.

Stakeholder views and impact

The project reports regularly to a Sounding Panel including representatives of the Department of Health, Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG), CABE, National Patient Safety Agency, and other key bodies. We have recently participated in events at the DCLG, the NHS Sustainable Development Unit and have contributed to Defra’s UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. The research team was also commissioned by Skanska to act as Sustainability Consultants to their bid for a major new hospital.

Ian Hinitt, Deputy Director of Estates, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, says:

“Bradford is almost unique as both the Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke’s Hospitals sites have seen continuous development and expansion since the 1930s, making us ideal participants, as the researchers can examine the impact of climate change on buildings which cover practically every design decade. We expect the findings will be of utmost importance to architects across the UK and indeed further afield. Never before has this type and length of study been carried out and it could have huge ramifications. This project will assist detailed site redevelopment strategies to be devised and the potential barriers to their implementation considered along with our other business objectives.”

Next steps

We will continue our monitoring work for the rest of this year, and will be designing and testing possible refurbishment strategies against future climate projections. Possible interventions will be fully costed and also assessed for their infection control implications.

Figure 4: July to mid August 2010 mean hourly air temperature profile – Single bedrooms in 1980s concrete-framed maternity building

DOWNPIPEDesign of Water Networks using Probabilistic Prediction

PrincipaI Investigator Dr Lynne Jack, Heriot-Watt University

Research partners Dr David Kelly, Heriot-Watt University

Stakeholder partners World Plumbing Council, National Archives of Scotland, Ibrox Stadium, Connection Publications, Society of Public Health Engineers, Arup, Scottish and Northern Ireland Plumbing Employers Federation, Buro Happold, The Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering, WSP Group

Project duration October 2008 to September 2011



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Aims and objectives:

The DOWNPIPE project aims to assess the potential impact of climate change on the performance of property-based drainage systems. Project objectives are:

• To align existing flow simulation models, ROOFNET and DRAINET, in order to holistically represent a property drainage system and its characteristic transient flow interaction.

• To enable the input of probabilistic UKCP09 rainfall data to appropriate component sections of the resultant drainage simulation model.

• To assess, through an extensive simulation series, the potential for under-capacity of systems subject to UKCP09 data (suitably disaggregated).

• To facilitate the assessment of adaptation strategies based on risk reduction, cost and requisite planning consent.

• To validate simulation modelling of flow interactivity, flood predictions, proposed adaptation strategies and decision-making options through information gathered from installed systems.

Model alignment

UKCP09 Site data

ROOFNETConventional systemsSiphonic systems

DRAINETLocal external drainage

System performance data

Validation

Implement adaptationstrategies

OUTPUTDecision-making toolOnline portalLook-up matrix tables

Figure 1: DOWNPIPE methodology.


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Methodology

The scope of systems encompassed by the project include all rainwater and small-scale local drainage networks, including those that receive run-off from within the curtilage. Foul drainage will also be considered where networks are connected, however the impact of climate change upon the combined flow discharged directly from appliances is likely to be relatively low unless water reclamation schemes are implemented. Due to the varying degrees to which different types of rainwater systems are likely to be affected by changes in precipitation, this research has a particular focus on the performance of siphonic rainwater systems. The design of siphonic rainwater systems requires the specification of a storm ‘return period’ and duration that, in turn, defines a rainfall intensity that is applied as a driver for run-off to gutters, outlets and vertical downpipes. System head losses are then calculated using steady-state hydraulic principles. It is well-recognised that climate change will bring greater variability in precipitation patterns and that, dependent upon geographical location, the total volume of water that a network will be expected to accommodate will vary across future decades also.

Given the natural unsteady response of siphonic systems and the various, and significantly different, phases of the flow-pressure relationship through which a network cycles during priming, this research therefore requires a better understanding of how siphonic systems perform under current climate conditions. As this performance information will be coupled with weather data monitored during, and immediately prior to and directly after, system priming, this detail will therefore provide a benchmark against which UKCP09 datasets providing precipitation information representative of future climatic conditions can be applied to gauge the potential for system under-capacity. Performance data, gathered under current climate conditions is also being used to validate the numerical simulation models developed at Heriot-Watt University and upon which the research is dependent, as these are being used to simulate the performance of systems under future climate change scenarios. These models, referred to as ROOFNET and DRAINET, are two Method-of-Characteristics based simulation techniques that together allow modelling of the property-based drainage system.

Progress to date

This work, that now has a number of operational site monitoring stations, provides important data on the performance of rainwater systems. The first system is located in Edinburgh at the Thomas Thomson house (Figure 2), which is operated by the Scottish Government and provides a document repository for the National Archives of Scotland. The second system is installed in the main stand at Ibrox stadium (Figure 3), home to Glasgow Rangers football club. To date, the Edinburgh-based system has provided the more significant data. Within the first full 6 months of monitoring, a number of rainfall events have been recorded. Of these, two events, one on 26th May and the other 4th July, caused significant depressurisation of the system. Data retrieved from site has allowed a full analysis of performance; in particular, the pressure response of the system when account is taken of the degree of detritus accumulation at outlets has proven interesting (Figure 4). Early findings indicate that despite a rigorous and thorough maintenance regime being implemented at this site, a build-up of material, that impedes rainwater throughflow, persists. Furthermore, it has been noted that system failure, characterised by overtopping of rainwater from the roof gutters, has occurred on a number of occasions causing substantial risk to the fabric of the building.

Figure 2 (from top): Thomas Thomson house, Edinburgh; document repository for the National Archives of Scotland.

Figure 3: Ibrox stadium, Glasgow.

Figure 4: Detritus accumulation at siphonic outlet.


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Future developments

Work continues with the instrumentation of a further case study site in London: the West Ham Bus Depot (Figure 5). This site will not only allow comparison of geographical location, but as it includes sustainable design elements such as green roof technology and rainwater recycling, it will provide valuable understanding of how these systems operate as part of an integrated sustainable drainage design, giving greater confidence in their inclusion as part of any drainage adaptation strategy.

The information gathered from the case study sites, that indicate how real systems operate under current climate conditions, will be used in conjunction with the developed numerical simulation models and the UKCP09 data, to build a framework to facilitate appropriate drainage system adaptation strategies that will help to ensure their resilience to current climate variability and future climate change.

Figure 5: West Ham bus depot.

FUTURENETFuture Resilient Transport Networks

PrincipaI Investigator Prof C. J. Baker, University of Birmingham

Research partners University of Birmingham, University of Nottingham, Dingwall Enterprises, Loughborough University, TRL, HR Wallingford, WSP, British Geological Survey, Network Rail, Highways Agency, Institution of Mechanical Engineers

Project duration June 2009 to June 2013

Project website www.arcc-futurenet.org


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FUTURENET is part of the Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change research programme that addresses a wide range of issues about how the UK built environment should be adapted for climate change. FUTURENET specifically addresses the issue of identifying vulnerabilities in transport infrastructure.

Aims and objectives

The aims of the project are to answer the questions:

• What will be the nature of the UK transport system in 2050, both in terms of its physical characteristics and its usage?

• What will be the shape of the transport network in 2050 that will be most resilient to climate change?

Objectives of the project are:

• The development of a number of possible UK transport scenarios for 2050.

• The identification of a route corridor for the study together with an inventory of infrastructure assets for that route corridor.

• The development of conceptual models of weather/climate induced failure mechanisms of transport systems, together with meteorological and climatic trigger levels.

• The development of a modelling methodology that will integrate the work of the first three objectives, and allow the effect of climate change on the resilience of transport networks to be systematically studied.

• The development of methodologies that can be applied to other transport corridors and the wide dissemination of the results amongst stakeholders.

Progress to date

The project has identified the London–Glasgow transport corridor, via Birmingham and the West Coast, as the focus for the project. This route has been chosen because it combines a wide variety of the geological and climatic variation in the UK with high loading factors and parallel transport modes (rail, road and air).

FUTURENET partners have been examining the current role of transport in society and reviewing forward-looking studies in areas such as ICT, health, security, identity and culture, and employment to develop a set of robust scenarios with which to consider future transport demand. A distinctive feature of our approach is the recognition that transport is embedded in, and contributes to, social relationships.

Consideration of the engineering infrastructure in FUTURENET involves two types of modelling: detailed physical models for the effect of meteorology on specific types of infrastructure (e.g. landslips, flooding), and large-scale statistical models for the effect of meteorology on traffic velocities on links along the route. These models will determine both the threshold beyond which a link will fail, and the relationship between meteorology and velocity below this threshold. Information from the HA HATRIS database, the NR ADB and specific engineering models will be linked to meteorological data from the NIMROD rainfall radar network (Figure 1) and meteorological stations to determine whether

Figure 1 (opposite): 3rd June 2008 rainfall event with traffic speed data on the M1/M6 route.


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3rd June 2008

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Expanded view of West Midlands route congestion during this rainfall event.


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a link along the route will fail or be reduced in velocity under given weather conditions, and whether this will also affect diversionary routes. From this a weather-affected journey time can be calculated, which can then be compared to that under normal conditions.

To assess the resilience of the London–Glasgow transport corridor from a user perspective, a travel behaviour survey is being undertaken. The main survey, of at least 2,000 individuals, is to be conducted in April/May 2011 (after two pilot surveys) across four sampled neighbourhoods in both Glasgow and London. The survey, using an internet panel, will cover both leisure and business travel (a subsequent smaller-scale survey will examine freight operators). This will provide an assessment of how different classes of user view delays and disruption in order to establish what constitutes “failure” of the service.

Future work

Output from the travel behaviour survey will be combined with the work on social scenarios to produce a set of future travel demand scenarios. The relationship between weather conditions and failure of the network will be explored further, and output from the travel survey will be used to identify what level of service degradation is consistent with the network failure from the users’ point-of-view. A stochastic weather series will be developed and applied to the London–Glasgow corridor, to provide patterns of weather against which transport system performance can be assessed (Figure 2). Finally, an integrated system model of the network will be used to assess the resilience of the corridor under a range of climate and demand conditions.

Stakeholder view

Network Rail is a key stakeholder in FUTURENET and sees this research as integral to informing its adaptation strategy. The benefits of this work are expected to influence not only long-term planning but also shorter-term activities such as operations, maintenance and routine renewals, where we will seek opportunities to introduce system resilience and adaptation measures across the network.

Probabilistic inputs:Climate

Climate variable:Scenario

Scenarios reflectDurationIntensityQuantity

ManifestationsProcess environmentand characteristics

Physical model typology (PMT)

Conditioning ParametersIA – Infrastructure Asset conditionG – Ground conditionT – Topographic condition

Probabilistic outputs:Events

Outcome event probabilities (OEPs)

Limit StatesSLS – Serviceability Limit StateULS – Ultimate Limit State

Probabilistic outputs:User

Single User Consequences (SUCs)

Multiplier based on user behaviour and choice

Joint probabilities

RESILIENCE

Figure 2

ITRCUK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium

PrincipaI Investigator Prof Jim Hall, University of Oxford

Research partners Newcastle University, University of Southampton, University of Oxford, Cardiff University, University of Cambridge, University of Leeds, University of Sussex, UK Climate Impacts Programme.

Stakeholder partners The ITRC has been developed in close collaboration with numerous high level stakeholders from government and industry across the energy, ITRC, transport, water and waste sectors

Project duration January 2011 to December 2015

Project website www.itrc.org.uk


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National infrastructure systems (energy, transport, water, waste and communication technologies) face serious challenges including:

• significant vulnerabilities

• capacity limitations

• ageing components

• fragmentation of infrastructure planning provision

• carbon emissions reductions from infrastructure

• a need to respond to future demographic, social and lifestyle changes

• a resilience to climate change impacts.

If the process of transforming national infrastructure is to take place efficiently it needs to be underpinned by a long-term, cross-sectoral approach to understanding national infrastructure performance under a range of possible futures.

Aims and objectives

The aim of the ITRC is to develop and demonstrate a new generation of system simulation models and tools to inform analysis, planning and design of national infrastructure (energy, transport, water, waste and information and communication technologies (ICT) systems). It will provide a virtual environment in which to test strategies for long-term investment and to understand how alternative strategies perform with respect to policy constraints, reliability and security of supply, cost, carbon emissions, adaptability to demographic change and climate change.

Methodology

The research is being driven by four key questions:

• How can infrastructure capacity and demand be balanced in an uncertain future?

• What are the risks of infrastructure failure and how can we adapt national infrastructure to make it more resilient?

• How do infrastructure systems evolve and interact with society and the economy?

• What should the UK’s strategy be for integrated provision of national infrastructure in the long term?

The research programme is being implemented in five Work Streams (WS) as seen in Figure 1. WS1–3 correspond to the first three questions, WS4 provides datasets and tools to support the whole programme, whilst WS5 is the focus for integration, addressing the fourth research question.

Work Stream 1: Balancing infrastructure capacity and demand under uncertaintyWS1 is developing a generic modelling framework for the analysis of

long-term change in capacity and demand, under uncertainty, which can be applied to interdependent national infrastructure systems. Future uncertainty of capacity and demand is being identified and evidence will be assembled from existing studies.

ITRC


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Projections of changes in demand will be generated through multi-sectoral regional economic modelling and national household-based micro-simulations of demographic change. Making use of existing models where possible, reduced complexity but geographically explicit national-scale models of infrastructure systems will be developed. Experience suggests that a single, integrated model will be unwieldy and perhaps unachievable, so key interdependencies will be identified and the system of models only integrated as far as is necessary.

Work Stream 2: Understanding the future risks of infrastructure failureGiven the severe long term threats posed by climate change, WS2 will

begin by focussing on climate-related hazards, though opportunities to extend to other natural and man-made hazards will be explored later. The project will develop new spatially coherent probabilistic scenarios of extreme climate related hazards and their associated uncertainties. Working with our industrial partners and building upon previous studies, the vulnerability and interdependence of the five national infrastructure networks will be characterised.

WS1: Balancing infrastructure capacity & demand under uncertaintyNick Eyre

WS2: Understanding future risks of infrastructure failureJim Hall

WS3: Managing infrastructure as a complex adaptive systemSeth Bullock

WS4: Enabling toolsStuart Barr

WS5: Developing integrated strategies for transitions in national infrastructure systemsRobert Nicholls

Cycle 1 – Year 1Fast track assessment of infrastructure futures

Cycle 2 – Year 3Quantified assessment using WS1 & WS4outputs

Cycle 3 – Year 5Quantified assessment using outputs from WS1 to WS4

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Figure 1: Diagram showing interaction of ITRC workstreams.


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Central to WS2 will be the development and testing of network models for analysis of interdependent national infrastructure failure and risk using the economic and demographic scenarios developed in WS1. The indirect economic consequences of failure and recovery will be analysed at regional and national scales using an input-output modelling approach. The results of this work stream will be presented as a range of metrics of vulnerability and risk.

Work Stream 3: Managing infrastructure as a complex adaptive system:This work stream will:

• Explore a variety of approaches to simulate and interpret the long-term interactions between infrastructure, society and the economy by first looking at test examples before working up to more realistic models.

• Build on an existing framework for the spatial coupling of demand and supply to provide household-scale and agent-based simulations that reflects the co-evolution between infrastructure provision and demographic change.

• Combine the simulation models with evolutionary economics to explore the relationship between infrastructure provision and structural change in the economy.

• Apply approaches used in network dynamics to simulate the evolution of infrastructure networks influenced by a range of external drivers. The best approaches will be used in our models to understand how, in the real world, these new insights may be used to steer national infrastructure systems towards sustainable outcomes.

Work Stream 4: Enabling toolsWS1–3 will be underpinned by shared databases and tools for

uncertainty and sensitivity analysis developed in WS4, making use of cloud computing facilities. A spatial database will be developed to house infrastructure, hazard and socio-economic (including demand and vulnerability) data. Two PhD projects will focus upon methods for decision analysis.

Work Stream 5: Co-production with stakeholders of integrated transition strategiesWS5 is the focal point for integration across the research programme,

delivery of policy-relevant results and technology transfer. There will be three cycles providing opportunities to demonstrate the models and tools developed in WS1–4 and for the lessons learned from those demonstrations to steer subsequent innovations:

• Cycle 1: Fast track analysis in the first year that sets the context for the rest of the programme by scoping the possible futures for infrastructure in the UK, the drivers for change and the sources of uncertainty.

• Cycle 2: (Years 2 and 3) of co-production of transition strategies will make use of the new multi-sectoral spatial systems analysis developed in WS1. It will result in a major quantified analysis report at the end of year 3.

• Cycle 3: (Years 4 and 5) builds on Cycle 2 to be able to make use of methods from WS1, WS2 and WS4 as they reach completion, together with emerging insights from WS3.

Low Carbon FuturesDecision Support for Building Adaptation in a Low Carbon Climate Change Future

PrincipaI Investigator Prof Phil Banfill, Heriot-Watt University

Research partners School of Built Environment/Urban Energy Research Group and School of Mathematics and Computational Sciences, Heriot-Watt University

Stakeholder partners Archial Sustainable Futures, BSRIA, CIBSE, Land Securities, Mott MacDonald Fulcrum, Turner Townsend

Project duration December 2008 to June 2012

Project websites www.ukcip-arcc.org.uk/content/view/589/9/ www.sbe.hw.ac.uk/research/ibud/building-energy-environmental-science.htm


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Overheating in buildings can occur for several reasons, with climate being just one factor. However, to design buildings that will function over their lifetime it is important to provide some kind of indication to designers as to how climate change might affect buildings in the coming decades. For some buildings this might create an overheating risk which did not exist before, whereas for other buildings a warmer climate could exacerbate an existing overheating problem. With recent climate projections (from UKCP09) being probabilistic in format, translating future climate scenarios for building simulation tools becomes more complex. The Low Carbon Futures project is examining methods that can incorporate the spectrum of climate projections from UKCP09 into building simulation and produce a future overheating risk tool, where the effect of adaptations on overheating in a specific building can be assessed. Such a tool must be useful (and useable) for architects and engineers, as well as being attractive and informative for their clients.

Aims and objectives

The aims of the project can be summarised as follows:

• Analyse UKCP09 climate information to produce a number of climate files of future scenarios for use in building simulation.

• Using a large number of building performance simulations on selected building types, quantify increased overheating as a result of future climate scenarios.

• Develop a surrogate model that can emulate multiple building simulations, based on regression techniques looking at the relationship between climate input and internal temperature output in building simulation.

• Incorporate the surrogate model in a design tool to predict future overheating able to be used with existing simulation procedures.

• Tailor the tool for acceptability to building professionals by consultation with the industry, using focus groups, questionnaires and interviews to get feedback on our proposals.

Methodology

Within the project, work packages 1 and 2 involve statistical and energy performance analyses of climate and building performance data, respectively. Work package 3 employs a triangulation method to obtain feedback from industry in relation to existing overheating approaches and, in turn, helps tailor the technical approach of the project towards building professionals.

Key results

A methodology has been formulated from the project and tested for a number of buildings using ESP-r building software. Initial results suggest that:

• The relationship between hourly climate variables and hourly internal temperatures, as dynamically simulated for a specific building, can be incorporated into a regression equation.

• The above regression equation, when calibrated by an initial building simulation, is suitable as the basis for a design tool that can be used for any given climate file, without recourse to additional simulations.


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• The output of such an overheating risk tool, which incorporates the probabilistic nature of the latest UK climate projections, can be useful for building professionals if translated into a suitable format, such as that shown in Figure 1.

• In industry, the concern for future overheating varies between sectors and location, but is ultimately decided in reality by cost-benefit analyses. As with the low-carbon agenda, high capital cost refurbishments (or changes to designs of new buildings) have a low chance of reaching the stage of implementation for most building projects.

• In Scotland, there is significantly less concern for future overheating than in the south of the UK, with domestic buildings seen as particularly low risk. Even for non-domestic buildings, the risk is not given the same level of importance as other design concerns (as shown by a recent Scottish Government consultation on “Adapting to the Changing Climate”).

• In London-based sessions feedback shows a greater concern for future overheating, perhaps influenced by existing cases of overheating in both domestic and non-domestic buildings in a part of the county that is at a warmer latitude and subject to localised urban heat island effects.

Stakeholder views

John Easton, Archial Sustainable Futures, writes: “This research, and the tools and methods that it will inform, are of vital

importance for application to design and construction practice in the real world. The climate and weather models that are embodied in current construction industry design standards are now broadly outdated and unreliable, even for today’s climate. So it is crucial that designers are able to move quickly to a position where they can be enabled to work with more realistic data to assist with the delivery of design solutions that are appropriate and accurate and that can support sound investment decisions for a sustainable future.

This project breaks new ground by working with reliable but otherwise complex and massive future climate models to synthesise from them simpler more usable data for application to practical design simulations without the loss of accuracy or fidelity.

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Cooler Warmer Figure 1: Future overheating risk in a domestic building, with adaptations, for a London 2030 Medium emissions scenario.


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The potential application of this work extends across the entire construction and property sector in the United Kingdom, taking in residential, commercial, and public sector buildings, both as new build and for refurbishment. It will assist directly with the actual achievement of climate mitigation and adaptation objectives at national, regional, and local levels through its application in daily design practice”.

Clare Wildfire, Mott MacDonald Fulcrum, writes: “Optimising the selection and design of an appropriate HVAC system

is the result of a myriad of small conscious and unconscious decisions by the designers, often involving informal knowledge acquired by the individuals over many years and precedent that has built up over the lifetime of the industry. Designing a product that will be fit for purpose in relation to changes in climate has the potential for far reaching consequences for how we select systems and even for the UK’s building vernacular. However, fee levels, deadlines and working practices mean designers are not often able properly to assess the implications of the choices they are making. At Mott MacDonald Fulcrum we can see that the Low Carbon Futures tool will provide guidance that will allow designers to move from deterministic to risk based decision making without the need for a major, time-consuming study to accompany every step.

Furthermore, the UK’s response to climate change involves changes to accepted industry practices in relation to both mitigation and adaptation, with the potential for rushed mitigation action resulting in unintended consequences for adaptation. This tool will provide a vital resource that will enable those involved in the evolution of the built environment with respect to low and zero carbon buildings to track the implications on issues such as overheating”.

Future developments

The overheating risk design tool has been tested for a small number of simulated naturally-ventilated buildings and adapted versions of these buildings. However, to test the veracity and limits of the methodology, these procedures will be repeated for a number of other buildings with different design concerns. Specifically, the project will be looking at the following:

• The procedure will be adapted for buildings with mechanical cooling, by investigating the risk of cooling plants becoming undersized, or plant margins being reduced to a level that is unacceptable.

• The use of the tool for very low energy, airtight dwellings will be investigated.

• The sensitivity of the various buildings to overheating will be examined further by looking at the factors likely to cause this overheating; namely, are internal heat gains or external heat gains more influential in the different building types, and how should this inform our approach towards adaptation.

• The triangulation method of liaising with building professionals will be continued (using focus groups, interviews and questionnaires) to provide understanding as to how the work could be integrated into the current building design process.

• The various forms of output from the overheating risk tool will be tailored as a result of the feedback, and one example of the output is the probability graph (Figure 1), which clearly shows how window opening and shading to reduce solar gains reduces the risk of overheating.

SNACCSuburban Neighbourhood Adaptation for a Changing Climate

PrincipaI Investigator Prof Katie Williams, University of the West of England; Prof Rajat Gupta, Oxford Brookes University; Prof Glen Bramley, Heriot-Watt University

Research partners University of the West of England, Oxford Brookes University, Heriot-Watt University

International Visiting Researchers:

Prof Örjan Svane, KTH Stockholm, Sweden; Prof Brendan Gleeson, Griffith University, Australia; Trevor Graham, City of Malmö, Sweden; Joaquim Flores, Gondomar City Council, Portugal; Janet Holston, Arizona State University, USA

Stakeholder partners Bristol City Council, Oxford City Council, Stockport Council, White Design, ARUP

Project duration September 2009 to September 2012

Project website www.snacc-research.org/


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It is widely accepted that existing built environments are both contributing to, and adapting poorly for, climate change. Suburban areas contain over 80% of homes in the UK, and are therefore a critical focus for adaptation and mitigation actions. They are the places where most of the population will feel the effects of climate change, in terms of heat, flooding, water shortages and storm damage. The research aims to develop feasible adaptation scenarios for suburbs in the UK. The focus of the project is on physical adaptations to homes, gardens and neighbourhoods. The SNACC project takes a socio-technical approach that aims to build an understanding of the processes, agents and potential outcomes of suburban change. Overall, the project is seeking to determine how to adapt suburbs to make them safe, liveable and attractive in the future.

Aims and objectives

The SNACC project seeks to answer the main research question: How can existing suburban neighbourhoods be best adapted to reduce further impacts of climate change and withstand ongoing changes? The contention is that the ‘best’ suburban neighbourhood adaptations solutions will need to rate highly on three, inter-related tests: 1. technical performance; 2. practicality; and 3. acceptability, for the key ‘agents of change’. These agents are primarily home owners (acting alone or collectively), local authorities, NGOs and private companies. The operational aims of the research are to:

• Develop climate change scenarios meaningful at the suburban scale.

• Develop socio-cultural and governance change scenarios appropriate at the suburban scale.

• Construct a typology of UK suburbs.

• Develop a portfolio of potential adaptation (and mitigation) strategies for suburbs.

• Develop a hedonic model to determine the impact of adaptation strategies on house prices.

• Determine the technical performance of the adaptation options.

• Determine the practicality of the adaptations (costs, scale, extent of re-modelling) for key agents of change.

• Determine the acceptability of the adaptations (impact on house prices, visual intrusion, relative trade-offs between cost and benefits) for key agents of change.

• Identify the adaptation packages that perform best.

Methodology

The project uses case studies of 6 suburban neighbourhoods in 3 cities (Bristol, Oxford and Stockport). In these areas, a number of adaptation options are tested for their performance, using the DECoRuM model (www.decorum-model.org.uk) and drawing on existing empirical data. Some of the adaptation options will also be visualised at the individual home and garden level, and the neighbourhood scale, using the Virtual Environmental Planning (VEP) model. The team is also developing a hedonic model to provide data on the potential impact on house prices of various adaptation options. Then, at workshops and focus groups, provided with information about the performance, cost, visual impact, and market impact of the options, key agents of change (the public, local authorities, NGOs and private companies) will decide upon the most practical and acceptable adaptation options.

Figure 1: An adapted suburban neighbourhood (Sweden). Source: Trevor Graham, City of Malmo, International Visiting Researcher.


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Progress and next steps

In the first year the team has completed work on generating climate change scenarios drawing from UKCP09 climate projections and developed its thinking on neighbourhood resilience and response capacity. We have also developed a typology of 6 suburbs (inner historic, pre-war ‘garden city type’, public transport, social housing, car and high density suburbs). A ‘master list’ of potential adaption options has also been developed. In addition, a first version of the hedonic model has been produced, and both DECoRuM and VEP have been developed further for the purposes of SNACC (all Phase 1). We are now working on Phases 2 and 3 of the project simultaneously. We are selecting the case study neighbourhoods and developing the DECoRuM, VEP and hedonic modelling aspects for the case studies. The team will soon be embarking on the integrating part of the research: testing adaptations with stakeholders (Phases 4 and 5). We will be ‘in suburbia’ for much of 2011, with the analysis and dissemination culminating in 2012.

Stakeholder views

Throughout the project the SNACC team has maintained a strong engagement and dissemination programme. This has included working with industry and local authority partners. The project Advisory Group has met twice and members have continuously provided input and feedback. Dr Paul Rainger from Forum for the Future (FFTF) commented on the project; ‘For those of us battling to make UK cities more sustainable, this research project to understand the effective adaptations that policymakers can make to increase the resilience of typical British suburbs to the growing effects of climate change cannot come soon enough.’ The SNACC team also hosted a successful International Visiting Researchers week, where our project partners came from Portugal, Sweden, Australia and the USA to advise us on good practice, and take part in a conference.

Phase 1:Enabling the research

Phase 2:Data collection

Phase 3:Modelling

Phase 4:Testing

Phase 5:Determiningfindings

WP1:Climate changescenariosWP2:Socio-cultural& governance changescenariosWP3: Typology of suburbanneighbourhoods &adaptation packagesWP4:Model of hedonicpricingWP5: DECoRuM & VEP

WP6:Selecting case studyneighbourhoods& devising baselinedata for the case studies

WP7: Modelling potentialadaptation options for different climatechange, socio-cultural& governance change scenarios

WP8:Testing adaptationpackages fortechnical performance,practicality & acceptability

WP9:Determining optimumadaptation packages

Figure 2: SNACC Workplan Diagram.

The Adaptation and Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARCC) Coordination Network

The Adaptation and Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARCC) Coordination Network brings together a range of research projects funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). These look at the impacts of climate change and possible adaptation options in the built environment and its infrastructure including water resources, transport systems, telecommunications, energy and waste. The research contributes to the Living with Environmental Change Programme (LWEC) to make infrastructure, the built environment and transport systems resilient to environmental change, and to develop more sustainable, less energy-intensive systems and approaches that are socially acceptable, economically advantageous and more environmentally harmonious.

The UK Climate Impacts Programme provides the management and support role for the network which aims to enhance the cooperative development of the programme and help promote benefits to all participants.

UK Climate Impacts Programme

The UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) works at the boundary between research and society helping organisations to adapt to inevitable climate change. Since 1997, UKCIP has been working with the public, private and voluntary sectors to assess how a changing climate will affect a range of businesses and organisations and to help them prepare for the consequences.

© arcc 2011

Living With Environmental Change

www.ukcip-arcc.org.uk

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