The new, interdisciplinary Cambridge Festival (replacing the Cambridge Science Festival and the Cambridge Festival of Ideas) featured more than 350 events and activities – including a number hosted by CSIC.
CSIC Investigator Dr Ruchi Choudhary presented ‘Growing Underground’, a talk about how urban agriculture is being investigated as an alternative source of food. In the context of increasing urbanisation, supplying zero carbon food, land scarcity and wellbeing, Dr Choudhary highlighted the need to grow food in close proximity to communities and enable access to nature. The talk, which was supported by data scientist and CSIC researcher Melanie Jans Singh, considered the benefits of urban farms in both purpose-built factories and existing re-purposed buildings, and presented the current joint CSIC and The Alan Turing Institute project that is using data-driven approaches to optimise growing conditions and reduce carbon footprint at Growing Underground, an urban farm located in former WW2 air raid shelter tunnels 120 ft below the busy streets of south London.
“Growing Underground can produce 30t a year, at 12x time the spatial efficiency of conventional greenhouses, but with 4x their energy use. It’s been so rewarding to work directly with the start-up Growing Underground to find ways to use data to optimise their resource use even further in a real-time way,” said Melanie Jans Singh.
CSIC Research Associates Dr Miguel Bravo Haro and Dr Nicky de Battista gave a virtual insight to the home of CSIC in the event ‘Bringing buildings to life: Smart infrastructure at the Civil Engineering Building’. Attendees entered a web hub to interact with 3D models of instrumented areas of the building and saw visualisations of the data.
“We launched an engaging platform that has pushed the possibilities of online visualisation of data from instrumented buildings, entirely powered by open-source tools,” said Dr Bravo Haro. “The platform features the potential of smart buildings and we hope it becomes a useful tool both to teach concepts and to monitor assets. We hope to continue developing it inspired by the participants’ enthusiasm.”
CSIC, Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) and Laing O'Rourke Centre for Construction Engineering and Technology Research Associate Didem Gürdür Broo was part of two CDBB-hosted events based upon the recent publication of the e-book 'Four Furures, One Choice'.
An evening talk for adults – Four Futures, One Choice. This event explored what the UK’s buildings, places and spaces could be like in 2040 and how the choices we make today could lead to a fairer greener future.
A fun and interactive event for children based on the CDBB publication ‘Four Futures, One Choice’ explored the future of work where digital data and technology is used in new and different ways and considered options for what the future world might be like to live and work in.