Industrial Doctorate Centre: Urban Sustainability and Resilience

城市空间压力逐年增大。19世纪初，世界上3%的人口居住在城市，2007年以后，这一比例将超过50%。这一趋势向我们提出了气候变化、人口增长、疾病和恐怖主义造成的一系列困难挑战，如果不加以应对，将对健康、社会凝聚力和经济稳定造成可怕的后果：如何管理和调整我们目前的城市空间和基础设施，以应对它们所承受和面临的负荷和威胁？如何设计、建设、扩展和维护新型生态城市？如何向政府、行业和投资基金推广这些理念？无论是在英国境内还是在世界其他地方，英国都容易受到自然灾害和技术灾害的影响。影响这个国家的主要自然灾害是风暴和洪水（包括河流和沿海地区），这两种灾害近年来都造成了重大损失。1990年1月，冬季风暴达莉亚造成的损失使保险公司损失了33.7亿美元，使其成为英国最昂贵的天气事件，而2007年洪水淹没了48,000所房屋和7300家企业，使保险公司损失了30亿美元。生物和技术灾害也造成重大损失，2001年口蹄疫爆发造成的损失达80亿美元，2006年邦斯菲尔德爆炸造成的总损失达10亿美元。由于伦敦再保险市场（尤其是劳合社）在全球自然灾害再保险中的核心作用，英国也容易受到国外重大灾害的影响。例如，英国再保险市场在卡特里娜飓风（新奥尔良）造成的600亿美元保险损失中所占的份额，导致该国2005年8月出现有记录以来最严重的贸易逆差。展望未来，到2080年，英国的洪水损失可能高达220亿英镑，比现在高出15倍，而预计更强大的冬季风暴将增加20%，与风有关的损失可能会大幅增加。在技术方面，H5N1大流行对英国经济的成本可能是GDP减少5%或更多，而一次重大核事故的总成本估计在830亿至5.4万亿英镑之间。英国现在牢牢地处于国际市场之中：脆弱性不仅来自英国国内的事件和趋势，也来自国外的经济和环境灾难。我们高度发达、成熟和以消费者为中心的城市社会已经变得越来越复杂。普通人、企业和公共服务依赖于相互依存的供应链和行业的深层层次结构，才能以他们的方式运作。随着复杂性的增加，风险和脆弱性也随之增加。这种脆弱性在一定程度上因城市群的人口密度和由此产生的空间压力而加剧。该方案侧重于两个关键主题：可持续性和复原力。可持续性解决了生态系统（大气、水、食物链）的维护，同时使城市环境和周围腹地的人类发展成为可能。复原力是一个较新的概念，涉及如何减轻环境灾害和恐怖主义影响的问题，包括地震和火山灾害（地震、海啸、山体滑坡）、洪水风险、疾病的传播和控制（水、空气和动物传播）、安全和态势感知。这包括四个关键思想：快速（反应协调和实施的速度有多快），机智（解决问题的多种方法的重要性），冗余（更好地吸收灾难的影响，过度工程以防止系统组件的故障）和健壮性（简单的健壮工程：无论遇到什么问题，都能建立起来的东西）。

Pressure on urban spaces is increasing year on year. At the start of the nineteenth century 3% of the world's population lived in cities, after 2007 more than 50% will do so. The trend presents us with a number of difficult challenges resulting from climate change, population growth, disease and terrorism that, if not met, forebode dreadful consequences for health, social cohesion and economic stability:How to manage and adapt our current urban space and infrastructure to cope with the loading and threats placed on and against them?How to design, engineer, expand and maintain the new class of eco-cities?How to promote these ideas to governments, industry and investment funds?The UK is vulnerable to natural and technological disasters both within its borders and elsewhere in the world. The principal natural disasters affecting the nation are windstorms and floods (both river and coastal), both of which have triggered major losses in recent years. In January 1990, damage due to Winter Storm Daria cost insurers 3.37 billion, making it the UK's most expensive weather event, while in 2007 floods inundated 48,000 homes and 7,300 businesses and cost insurers 3 billion. Biological and technological disasters also have major cost implications, with losses associated with the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak reaching 8 billion, and the total cost of the 2006 Buncefield explosion set at 1 billion. Because of the London reinsurance market's (and particularly Lloyd's) central role in reinsuring against natural catastrophes all over the world, the country is also vulnerable to major disasters abroad. For example, the UK reinsurance market's share of the US$60 billion insured losses from Hurricane Katrina (New Orleans) contributed to the country's worst trade deficit on record in August 2005. Looking ahead, by 2080, UK flood losses could be as high as 22 billion, 15 times higher than they are today, while a predicted 20 percent rise in the more powerful winter storms, could see a substantial increase in wind-related losses. On the technological front, the cost to the UK economy of an H5N1 pandemic could be a GDP reduction of five percent or more, while the total cost of a major nuclear accident has been estimated at somewhere between 83 billion and 5.4 trillion. The UK is now firmly within an international marketplace: vulnerabilities arise not only from events and trends within the UK, but also from economic and environmental disasters abroad. Our strongly developed, sophisticated and consumer-focussed urban society has become increasingly complex. Ordinary people, businesses and public services rely upon a deep hierarchy of inter-dependent supply chains and industries in order to function in the way that they do. With this increased complexity has come increased risk and vulnerability. This vulnerability is, in part, exacerbated by population density in urban conglomerations and the resultant pressure upon space. The programme focuses upon two key themes: sustainability and resilience. Sustainability addresses the maintenance of an ecological system (atmosphere, water, the food chain) whilst at the same time enabling human development of the urban environment and the surrounding hinterland. Resilience is a newer concept dealing with the issue of how to mitigate the effects of environmental disasters and terrorism, incorporating seismic and volcanic hazard (earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides), flood risk, the spread and control of disease (water, air and animal borne), security and situational awareness. This includes four key ideas: rapidity (how rapidly a response can be coordinated and put into effect), resourcefulness (the importance of having multiple ways of tackling a problem), redundancy (to better absorb the effect of disasters, over-engineering to protect against failure of system components) and robustness (simple robust engineering: building stuff that stands up irrespective of what is thrown at it.