Complex Built Environment Systems (CBES) Platform Grant Renewal Bid: The Unintended Consequences of Decarbonising the Built Environment

CBES集团在伦敦大学学院巴特利特研究生院于2006年获得了平台奖，资金促进了持续的成功时期。平台资金在帮助我们留住关键员工、创新和提供冒险的灵活性方面具有至关重要的价值。我们还加强了我们的知识交流/转让工作和国际合作。这反映在我们活动的质量、增长和范围上。因此，平台资金使我们能够建立一个多学科，世界领先的研究小组，其规模急剧增加，导致世界领先的学术出版物，种子一个新的研究所（能源），开发跨学科和系统工作的新方法，并赢得了国际奖项。CBES在2008年的研究评估活动（RAE）-建筑和建筑环境小组中被提交给并获得了任何英国大学中世界领先的研究人员的最高百分比（35%）。在当前平台赠款直接支持或间接促进的工作的基础上，并对新的机遇做出回应，这一延续提案的战略方向代表了CBES的一个步骤变化。在当前的平台赠款期间，CBES主要感兴趣的是开发多学科的解决方案，以解决建筑物内和周围环境的设计，建造和管理的实际问题。在下一个五年期，我们将加强我们的世界领先地位。我们提出了一个及时的新研究方向的战略活动计划-建筑环境脱碳的意外后果。我们的目标是改变对这一将在国际上产生巨大影响的紧迫问题的理解，为了预测这样一个复杂的社会技术系统未来可能的状态，可能适用于能够被分析为简单组成部分的系统的传统科学方法不再适用。相反，我们需要采用全新的方法和思维方式。我们需要发展和扩展我们的多学科和跨学科的工作方式，并通过现代复杂性科学获得信息。最初的平台赠款帮助建立了一个小组，其中包括建筑科学家，遗产科学家，经济学家，系统建模师和社会科学家。更新将使该小组能够专注于这一紧迫问题，开发适当的研究方法，并在所需的时间范围内帮助开发现实世界的解决方案。调查员的人数从现有平台补助金开始时的11人增加到更新时的13人-这是一个重要的扩展，以便纳入更广泛的学科。尽管如此，在平台资助的推动下，我们现在需要组建一整套新的联盟来支持我们拟议工作的发展。当前平台资助的主要成就之一是新成立的伦敦大学学院能源研究所（EI）的分拆。因此，CBES处于理想的位置，可以从EI广泛而多样的能源需求减少工作中受益。然而，EI没有得到研究意外后果的资金，因此，该平台的更新将完美地补充EI活动。通过平台资助并与EI合作，CBES旨在发展该领域世界领先的卓越研究的新集中。我们将与当地大学建立一个研究合作的区域中心，这将确保平台资助的好处比UCL更广泛。

The CBES group at the UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies received its Platform Award in 2006 and the funding has facilitated a period of sustained success. Platform funding has been of critical value in helping us to retain key staff, to innovate and in providing the flexibility to be adventurous. We have also been able to enhance our knowledge exchange/transfer work and international collaboration. This has been reflected in the quality, growth and range of our activities. The Platform funding thus enabled us to establish a multi-disciplinary, world-leading research group which has dramatically increased in size, resulted in world leading academic publications, seeded a new Institute (Energy), developed new methods of interdisciplinary and systems working and won international prizes. CBES was submitted to and awarded the highest percentage (35%) of world leading rated researchers of any UK university in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) - Architecture and the Built Environment Panel. Building on the work directly supported or indirectly facilitated by the current Platform Grant, and also responding to new opportunities, the strategic direction of this continuation proposal represents a step change for CBES. During the period of the current Platform Grant, CBES was primarily interested in developing multi-disciplinary solutions to the practical problems of designing, constructing and managing environments within and around buildings. In the next quinquennium we will strengthen our world-leading position. We propose a strategic programme of activity in a timely new research direction - the unintended consequences of decarbonising the built environment . We aim to transform understanding of this urgent issue that will have enormous impact internationally.In order to predict the possible future states of such a complex socio-technical system, conventional scientific approaches that may have been appropriate for systems capable of being analysed into simple components are no longer applicable. Instead, we need to bring radically new approaches and ways of thinking to bear. We need to develop and extend our multi- and inter- disciplinary ways of working and be informed by modern complexity science. The initial Platform grant has helped set up a group that includes building scientists, heritage scientists, economists, systems modellers and social scientists. The renewal will enable the group to focus on this urgent problem, to develop appropriate research methods and help develop real-world solutions within the required timescale. The number of Investigators has increased from 11 at the start of the existing Platform Grant to 13 in the renewal - a vital expansion to enable the inclusion of a wider range of disciplines. Nevertheless, facilitated by Platform funding, we will now need to form a whole new set of additional alliances to support the development of our proposed work.One of the key achievements of the current Platform Grant has been the spinning off of the newly formed UCL Energy Institute (EI). CBES is thus ideally placed to benefit from the extensive and diverse range of energy demand reduction work at the EI. However, the EI is not funded to study unintended consequences and this Platform renewal will thus perfectly complement EI activity. Via Platform funding and in partnership with the EI, CBES aims to develop a new concentration of world-leading research excellence in this field. We will establish a regional hub for research collaboration with local universities which will ensure that benefits from Platform funding are felt more widely than UCL alone.