The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) invests in high-quality basic, strategic and applied research and related postgraduate training to help the nation exploit the next generation of technological change. To achieve this, the EPSRC supports a broad range of research, through both responsive and managed activities, to contribute to future economic development within the UK and to help improve health and lifestyles.
The Sustainable Urban Environments (SUE) programme within the EPSRC addresses quality of life drivers for the nation, focussing on the goal of a sustainable future society, by exploring research issues and lifestyle imperatives for the individual and at a global scale. The roots of the SUE programme are to be found in the 1987 Bruntland Report, which defines sustainable development as that which ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.1
Applying this definition to the urban environment is a highly multidisciplinary challenge, with the required combination of research excellence and understanding of user needs unlikely to be found within a single discipline or organisation. To tackle this, the EPSRC has funded 15 multidisciplinary research consortia, initially focussing on the following four clusters: the urban and built environment; waste, water and land management; transport; and metrics, knowledge management and decision making. The consortia are ambitious partnerships between academics and non-academics working towards a shared agenda. They involve engineers, scientists, designers, architects, economists, social scientists and town planners, to name just a few disciplines, collaborating with a range of user organisations, city councils, local authorities, housing associations, charities and both small and large companies. In total, over 30 UK universities are funded and over 120 other organizations collaborate within the SUE umbrella. To date, the EPSRC has invested over £22 million within the SUE consortia.
Some other EPSRC projects are also taking up the challenges set by the SUE programme. For instance, a programme of work is currently examining the feasibility of adopting Birmingham Eastside as a demonstrator of sustainable urban redevelopment. The project is being carried out by researchers from a wide range of academic disciplines (ranging from engineers to environmental geographers to social economists) and is focused on the barriers to, and enablers of, sustainable urban redevelopment. The SUE programme has also recently funded a network, Citizen Science for Sustainability Research and Support, to promote engagement, dialogue and collaboration between EPSRC scientists, engineers and lay citizens. The overall aim is to facilitate greater engagement with local communities in defining future priorities for environmental and sustainability research, so as to ensure that such research more effectively addresses their needs.
A number of findings are already emerging from research within the SUE programme, with clear opportunities to share experiences and knowledge, perhaps with a view to integrating research outputs and developing common indicators across sectors. Looking ahead, integrated case studies addressing sustainable development across a matrix of different length scales (for example a building, a street, a town, a region) and different types of development (for example new provision, changes to existing provision, redevelopment), may provide a holistic means of applying SUE methodologies and research findings. Opportunities may also exist internationally, within international development research, by extending the outputs from SUE to developing countries, and also more broadly through comparator case studies with countries of economies similar to the UK.
Positive impact on policy and practice is central to success within the SUE programme and case studies are one possible way of establishing the evidence base for wider change, both at a strategic and also an operational level. Equally, the meaningful knowledge transfer of current research outputs, the embedding of sustainable thinking at all levels and effecting informed changes in policy and practice in the light of findings are all key challenges for the SUE programme. EPSRC will be reflecting on this over the coming year, in consultation with the research community, and will consider how the research agenda and structure of the SUE programme may be refreshed and reviewed to inform future investment decisions within the area of sustainability.
In parallel with the strategic overview, it is critically important that researchers at all levels have the opportunity to exchange ideas, share current research findings and to be critically assessed by, and assess the work of, their peers. The research fellows conference, ‘SUE: Vision into Action’, held from 28th February to 2nd March 2005, targeted specifically at SUE-funded research students, research associates and research fellows (collectively termed RFs) provided the perfect conduit for this. The conference allowed RFs to present emerging research outputs across their consortia and to discuss emerging tools and dissemination strategies within both formal and informal settings.
The objectives of the conference were outlined in detail in the first special issue and are not repeated here. It is worth re-iterating a few points. Firstly, while the conference was conceived through initial discussions between Professor Chris Rogers, University of Birmingham and the EPSRC, it was then wholly driven by ideas from the SUE research community rather than top down by the EPSRC. Secondly, the conference was designed and organised successfully by the Birmingham Eastside RFs, providing an opportunity for dissemination activities coupled with useful training for those concerned. Thirdly, EPSRC remains receptive to ideas from the SUE consortia and wider research community for ideas to build on the RF conference through relevant research-led activities.
Thirty-two research papers were submitted to the conference and following anonymous RF peer review and author amendment, around half were submitted to Engineering Sustainability. The first six appeared in the June 2005 issue, while a further seven appear herein. The first special issue covered a broad range of topics: tools for the integrated assessment of urban sustainability, barriers to sustainable infrastructure, services for personal travel and goods movement, building facades, thermal processing of waste and urban biodiversity. The papers covered in this second special issue are equally diverse, covering the following areas: sustainability and the urban design process, decision support tools, modelling sustainable urban water management, an economic sustainable assessment tool for greywater recycling, the management of urban pollution and sustainable urban transport solutions within the UK.
The first paper discusses the creation of urban environments that are both sustainable and well designed. For instance, when and in what detail should stakeholders consider sustainability issues within urban design, who are the decision makers and what influences their decisions? To seek answers to these questions, case studies within the VivaCity2020 project carried out in London, Manchester and Sheffield will examine when and where sustainability issues are currently introduced–and crucially where they should be introduced–into the urban design process.
The second paper discusses the drivers for, and the barriers to, the adoption of decision-support tools (DSTs) and identifies the decision-making context as central to the adoption of DSTs: ‘The very nature of decision making has been changed by the contemporary emphasis on sustainability’. There is a need for organisations to adopt procedures that can deal with complexity and move beyond the technical orientation of previous tools. The third paper seeks to identify the strengths and weaknesses of DSTs, while considering how socioeconomic, environmental and participatory aspects might be integrated into the decision-making process. Areas where DSTs may be improved include the introduction of risk, optimisation methodologies, impact assessment models, visualisation techniques and better calibration and validation of models.
The fourth and fifth papers examine different aspects and options of water management. The fourth paper describes a prototype DST to support decisions for urban water management. The initial study was focussed on the water cycle of residential areas, with assumptions made on the type of household, water demand patterns and economies of scale. Within these parameters, the model successfully represents the dominant characteristics of the urban water cycle and provides an evaluation of the cost and sustainability of suggested solutions. The fifth paper explores the development of a whole life cost (WLC) model to assist the implementation of greywater recycling systems within the context of economic viability. The WLC model has been applied to ten different scenarios, with initial results suggesting that scale, system efficiency and water price have substantial influence on the WLC.
The sixth paper presents an integrated decision-support framework for more sustainable management of urban pollution. The framework integrates the critical stages of (i) the origin and flows of pollutants, (ii) the modelling of pollutant transport and fate and (iii) the impact of pollutants on environment and health, to gain knowledge of pollution and to help inform possible intervention strategies within different urban settings. The final paper assesses barriers to sustainable UK urban transport solutions. The authors have surveyed 16 local transport authorities and report findings in terms of the organisational, technical and external barriers affecting the delivery of local transport strategies. The incorporation of sustainable development objectives at the start of the policy cycle, along with a more integrated approach to policy delivery across relevant stakeholders and departments, may provide the means for overcoming these barriers. As such, there is a symmetry to this special issue of the journal since it starts and finishes with papers addressing the barriers to implementation of sustainable thinking, which, if properly understood, leads the way to means of breaking down the barriers and achieving sustainability in practice.
The SUE RF conference and the two special issues of Engineering Sustainability which emanate from it are testament to the vibrancy and research-activity of the SUE community. Both serve to contribute to our knowledge of sustainability and provide the foundation on which to build paths to better exploitation of the research outputs, to impact positively on practice and to help set the agenda for future policy.
