Resource implications of adaptation of infrastructure to global change

该奖学金将为工程师开发新一代分析和决策工具，以应对日益加剧的全球变化的挑战。人们普遍认为，以目前的速度消耗能源和其他资源是不可持续的。因此，世界面临着设计和实施向更可持续发展的过渡的挑战，在这种情况下，温室气体排放和资源消耗（如能源，水，材料）大幅减少，我们的社会能够很好地适应气候变化的影响。水、能源、交通和废物等基础设施系统是负责运输货物和服务的一系列实物资产（以及相关流程），确保城市及其居民的安全、健康和财富。因此，基础设施的设计和管理在脆弱性和资源消耗方面具有影响（例如，人口密集的城市在私人交通上使用的人均能源较少，但可能加剧洪水和热应力）。然而，基础设施系统的有效管理具有挑战性，因为它们(a)在空间上各不相同，(b)高度相互关联，(c)与不断变化的环境和人口密切相互作用，(d)随着年龄的增长而恶化。这一点最明显的莫过于城市，全球一半以上的人口居住在城市，全球四分之三以上的资源消耗在城市。随着城市适应气候变化等全球压力，从资源需求的角度理解这些适应的含义至关重要，以避免混淆平行的可持续性倡议。虽然人们在一定程度上了解了建筑环境对气候影响的脆弱性，但目前对城市内的能源、废物和水等资源流动了解甚少，而且通常是根据城市地区的总投入和产出来考虑的。城市形态、功能和这些资源流动之间的关系只是从观察证据中建立起来的，例如，将人口密度与交通能源总需求直接联系起来。这为评估、规划和设计具体的适应性提供了不足的证据，因为它没有考虑城市系统的关键属性，如土地利用、人类活动，或协调这种关系和其他关系的基础设施系统的拓扑结构和属性（例如，土地利用和洪水风险）。要在城市地区规划和设计适应措施，需要有能力分析整个城市在几十年时间尺度上的行为，模拟和测试备选管理办法的有效性，并监测和修改系统的性能。在构成城市的技术、人类和自然耦合系统中充分理解和模拟变化过程的能力尚不存在。该研究金将通过开发城市动态、气候影响和城市内资源流动的新型耦合系统模拟模型来解决这一优先领域。该系统综合评估模型将用于分析城市空间配置与其基础设施系统、资源消耗和对气候变化影响的脆弱性之间的关系。我将与行业和地方政府的主要利益相关者密切合作，开发、演示和应用决策分析方法，以展示如何制定长期规划战略，将城市从“传统”形式重新设计为更可持续的配置。在此过程中，我将提供证据，以支持更可持续的工程和政策决策，并减少未减缓的全球变化对城市地区的有害影响。

This fellowship will develop a new generation of analysis and decision making tools required for engineers to respond to the challenges of intensifying global change. Consumption of energy and other resources is widely acknowledged to be unsustainable at today's rates. The world is therefore faced with the challenge of designing and implementing the transition to a more sustainable situation, a state in which greenhouse gas emissions and resource consumption (e.g. energy, water, materials) are drastically reduced and our society is well adapted to the impacts of climate change. Infrastructure systems such as water, energy, transportation and waste are the array of physical assets (and associated processes) responsible for moving the goods and services that ensure the safety, health and wealth of cities and their inhabitants. Thus, design and management of infrastructure has implications in terms of vulnerability and resource consumption (e.g. denser cities use less energy per capita on private transport, but can aggravate flooding and heat stress). However, effective management of infrastructure systems is challenging because they (a) vary in space, (b) are highly interconnected, (c) interact strongly with an ever-changing environment and population, and, (d) deteriorate with age. Nowhere is this more evident than cities, where over half the global population live and more than three quarters of global resources are consumed. As cities adapt in response to global pressures such as climate change, it is crucial to understand the implications of these adaptations in terms of resource requirements to avoid confounding parallel sustainability initiatives. Whilst the vulnerability of the built environment to climate impacts is to some extent understood, resource flows, such as energy, waste and water within cities are currently poorly-understood and are generally considered in terms of gross inputs and outputs to the urban area. The relationship between urban form, function and these resource flows has only been established from observational evidence e.g. relating population density directly to total transport energy demand. This provides insufficient evidence to appraise, plan and design specific adaptations as it does not account for crucial properties of the urban system such as land use, human activity, or the topology and attributes of the infrastructure systems that mediate this, and other, relationships (for example, land use and flood risk). To plan and design adaptations in urban areas requires a capacity to analyse the behaviour of whole cities over timescales of decades, to simulate and test the effectiveness of alternative management options and to monitor and modify the system performance. The capacity to adequately understand and model processes of change within the coupled technological, human and natural systems that comprise cities does not yet exist. This fellowship will address this priority area, through the development of a novel coupled systems simulation model of urban dynamics, climate impacts and resource flows within cities. This systems integrated assessment model will be used to analyse the relationship between the spatial configuration of cities and their infrastructure systems, resource consumption and vulnerability to climate change impacts. Working closely with key stakeholders in industry and local government I shall develop, demonstrate and apply decision analysis methods to show how long term planning strategies can be developed for re-engineering cities from their 'traditional' form into more sustainable configurations.In doing this, I shall provide the evidence to underpin more sustainable engineering and policy decisions and reduce the harmful impacts of unmitigated global change in urban areas.