CSIC Investigators talk making urban life more sustainable and building cardon neutral cities.
A feature in the latest issue of the Cambridge Alumni Magazine (CAM) features CSIC Investigators talking about the benefits of applying data cohesively to better understand our infrastructure and retrofitting buildings to promote spatial energy optimism.
Titled ‘Urban revolution’, the article highlights the research emerging from a number of centres at the University of Cambridge which is contributing to enabling a more sustainable built environment, including the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction, Energy Efficient Cities Initiative, Centre for Natural Material Innovation, the Centre for Future Infrastructure and Built Environment and the Centre for Sustainable Development.
Infrastructure isn’t a series of individual projects. It’s a vital system of systems, the veins and bones of our places. Gathering, using and properly applying data cohesively can help our understanding of that infrastructure, leading to better design, construction and management practices Dr Jennifer Schooling, Director CSIC
Explaining the role of data in making our infrastructure more sustainable, Dr Schooling, Director of CSIC, said: “Infrastructure isn’t a series of individual projects. It’s a vital system of systems, the veins and bones of our places. Gathering, using and properly applying data cohesively can help our understanding of that infrastructure, leading to better design, construction and management practices.” Reflecting on the importance of tying data together to reduce the carbon output across every aspect of the urban space, Dr Schooling said: ““Efficiency is about reducing uncertainty. It’s also about being able to optimise a whole system, even if that means making one thing less efficient to enable other things to have a greater overall positive impact. If you work only in a particular bubble you can’t do that. But proper, data crossover and collaboration can help us do this.”
Professor Ruchi Choudhary, leader of the Energy Efficient Cities Initiative and a programme leader at The Alan Turing Institute, sets out the challenge: “We all share resources in a city, from services, to mobility, to static infrastructure. They are energy intense, but more efficient per capita. However, the problem with European cities in particular is their ageing. What do we do? Demolition is not efficient or desirable for many reasons, so the challenge is how we upgrade, how we refit?”
* Read the full Urban Revolution article published in CAM, Issue 94, here.