The aim of SOLOCLIM is to develop a doctoral training programme that enables young researchers to generate solutions for urban outdoor. The aim of SOLOCLIM is to develop a doctoral training programme that enables young researchers to generate solutions for urban outdoor environments. Projections show that urbanisation could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050 and the cumulative effect of all the negative urban climate impacts of urbanisation such as the occurrence of urban heat islands as well as distinctive wind patterns in cities create discomfort and health risks. As climate change will exacerbate these urban and microclimatic problems citizens need to be protected. As cities create their own climates, the solutions to these problems are to be found in the (re-)design of cities. Some solutions are known such as the use of vegetation, but there are still many remaining questions about the impact of vertical green as well as the proper distribution of green in cities to have an optimal effect. Moreover, upcoming systems using water vapour as a coolant as well as flexible systems that respond to microclimate have not been studied yet. SOLOCLIM will develop such solutions on different scale levels from small scale around buildings to a larger neighbourhood/city scale and test their effects. The industry in architecture, urban and landscape design is in need of these innovative solutions as climate adaptation in cities is one of the largest challenges for the future. All plans and designs that the industry develops have to respond to the urban (micro)climate challenges. Apart from the availability of solutions the industry also needs the expertise. This expertise involves design and research skills related to urban (micro)climate. SOLOCLIM trains experts in this field and offers a training for advanced climate responsive design that will be offered to the PhD students as well as some parts to a broader community and beyond the duration of SOLOCLIM.

The overarching goal of this project is to innovate the design of interactive visualisations and sensing for environmental change, reorienting them beyond their current use as levers of individual persuasion, towards an extended role as technologies that can link behaviour change and sustainability policy. The link aims to be bidirectional: on one hand helping people in relating existing climate change and energy policies to everyday life; on the other empowering them in influencing and engaging with policy making by generating an enhanced understanding of their own everyday practices. While there is certainly merit in using digital technology interventions to try and persuade individuals to act sustainably, it is also clear that the large-scale changes needed to tackle the climate emergency require policy interventions, beyond promoting individual action. We believe that there is vast untapped potential for digital technology to catalyse engagement with environmental sustainability policies. This project puts forward the ambition to realize such potential, and the vision of transforming the role of digital technology in relation to behaviour change for environmental sustainability. The work will target in particular practices and policies related to the built environment, in a variety of domestic and non-domestic buildings, and with policy contexts ranging from organization-focused change (e.g. temperature policy in office buildings) to policies focused on increasing the use of renewable energy (e.g. by enabling collective self-consumption of rooftop solar or demand shifting within household or community settings). Such a multi-domain approach is enabled by the involvement of four different user partners, who recognize the relevance of the proposed project and will facilitate research deployments across the private (Fosters + Partners), non-profit (Carbon Coop; Repowering) and higher education (UCL) sectors. Moreover, strategic advice by project partner Arup will further broaden the scope and impact of our work (see also letters of support). The project will leverage network-connected sensor nodes and displays, generally considered part of the Internet of Things (IoT). The research will follow a user-centred approach, involving the iterative development of robust, fully functional "high fidelity" IoT interactive prototypes and their evaluation in-the-wild through research methods from the social sciences, thanks to the close collaboration of our multi-disciplinary research team. Moreover, the project puts forward a novel participatory prototyping research approach: by combining ethnographic and user-centred design methodologies we will involve (some of the) participants not only in the design, but also in the technical development of interactive visualization and sensing prototypes. In parallel with more traditional researcher-led user-centred design and prototyping, hands-on workshops (such as 'hackathons') and online engagement activities will play a pivotal role in the research plan strengthening links between community interests and visualization design. These activities will leverage strong existing research relationships with communities along with the abundance of easy to use open source interactive tools and software libraries, and widely available hardware. This approach is designed to actively increase the social and environmental sustainability of the research process: promoting the community ownership of the open source prototypes developed throughout the project will prevent them from becoming unmaintainable e-waste once the research funding ends. Moreover, this approach will also maximize impact. The participatory prototyping activities will target multiple age groups, including teenagers, offering them STEM skills learning opportunities. Our collaboration with community-based partners will help us to reach under-represented groups particularly from BAME communities

With the increasing urbanisation of society, human health & well-being is ever more affected by the air quality within our cities. We now spend over 90% of our time indoors and so the most chronic exposures can occur inside buildings. Mixing by buoyant fluid flows within buildings plays a dominant role in determining these exposures and the proposed research focuses on the buoyant turbulent plumes that arise in buildings from, the likes of, HVAC systems, window & door openings, radiators, electrical appliances, computers, cooking and the occupants themselves. An extensive campaign of laboratory experiments will examine the physics governing the mixing and transport of heat and tracers by turbulent buoyant plumes within the confining geometry of a room. Current exposure models take no account of the influence on the flow structure of the confinement of a room. The knowledge gained through this research will enable the development of models better suited to predicting indoor exposure levels, thereby enabling better management of exposure. Investigation of these flows also has considerably broader relevance and future application to examine include, for example, the mixing and dilution of flows within our urban environments, the mixing of fluids in the food, beverage & pharmaceutical industries, and the pollutant and nutrient transport in the Earth's oceans. This work will investigate factors which affect the mixing by fluid flows typical of the flows within building, specifically by: 1) De-coupling the effects of confinement from those of the no-slip condition which are typically simultaneously introduced into a fluid flow by the presence of a boundary - this is of fundamental scientific interest; 2) Varying the extent of the confinement imposed on the flow by the introduction of a jointed wall so that the degree of confinement can be continuously varied. The jointed wall can mimic the confinement of a corner formed by the meeting of two walls within a room. The angle of this corner wall can then be systematically varied to replicate the confinement imposed when, for example, people or computer equipment are placed, for example, near a corner within a room, next to a plane wall, or indeed near an obtuse 'external' corner. The new understanding will enable better modelling of the mixing produced by heat sources, including people, radiators and computers, within rooms - providing a practical output of real application and value to society.

The LASIMM project aim is to develop a large scale flexible hybrid additive/subtractive machine based on a modular architecture which is easily scalable. The machine will feature capabilities for additive manufacture, machining, cold-work, metrology and inspection that will provide the optimum solution for the hybrid manufacturing of large engineering parts of high integrity, with cost benefits of more than 50% compared to conventional machining processes. For large scale engineering structures material needs to be deposited at a relatively high rate with exceptional properties and excellent integrity. To ensure this the machine is based on wire + arc additive manufacture for the additive process. A unique feature of the machine will be the capability for parallel manufacturing featuring either multiple deposition heads or concurrent addition and subtraction processes. To facilitate parallel manufacturing the machine architecture is based on robotics. To ensure that the surface finish and accuracy needed for engineering components is obtained for the subtractive step a parallel kinematic motion robot is employed. This robot is also used for application of cold work by rolling between passes. This ensures that material properties can be better than those of forged material. A key part of this project is the development of ICT infrastructure and toolboxes needed to programme and run the machine. The implementation of parallel manufacturing is extremely challenging from a software perspective and this will be a major activity within the project. To deliver this extremely demanding and ambitious project a well-balanced expert team has been brought together. There are ten partners comprising six companies, two Universities and two research institutes. Two of the companies are SMEs and there are three end users from the renewable energy, construction and aerospace sectors. The consortium also features the whole of the supply chain needed to produce such a machine.

The Government's Industrial Strategy highlights the need for the construction industry to embrace digitally-driven, automated manufacturing if it is going to deliver the planned infrastructure development, building and renovation of the built environment. The group funded through this award understands this need and envisages an industry that routinely deploys digitally-driven, off-site-manufacturing technologies to deliver customised and unique precision components to enable the rapid, just-in-time assembly of the built environment. Seamless digital workflow and accurate process simulation will reduce the time from design to product from weeks to hours, delivering buildings faster. It will facilitate the optimisation of components, removing unwanted material (reduced resource use and embedded CO2), designing out interfaces and reducing assembly time and complexity, both during installation and at end of life. 3D Concrete Printing (3DCP) is a digitally-driven, off-site manufacturing technology that is establishing itself worldwide as a viable manufacturing process, but its potential beyond aesthetic objects is fundamentally limited by the manufacturing tolerances achievable. The work undertaken by this group will develop the next generation, Hybrid Concrete Printing (or HCP), technology that uses 3DCP to create a near-net-shape (an object slightly larger than the desired object) and then uses subtractive process (cutting, milling and drilling) to remove a small amount of material to create the net-shape - the desired object to sub-millimetre precision. HCP technology will enable the intelligent integration of building performance and energy production and storage technologies, freed from traditional constraints on form and finish. This will unlock the potential for accurate interfaces and assemblies and, hence, open the gateway for a revolution in design and manufacture of buildings and the wider built environment. The team will develop research that answers three central goals of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund's Transforming Construction initiative: - Designing and managing buildings: We will develop and promote new design tools and design capabilities for UK design practise that will create globally marketable expertise; - Constructing quality buildings: HCP, a digitally-driven off-site manufacturing technology, will realise greater precision in manufacture than is currently possible, enabling repeatable, high quality components to be manufactured with a much shorter lead-time; and, - Powering buildings: The technology gives the designer close control of surface finish and component geometry, enabling them to add value through function and to design in order to integrate other active components as part of automated assembly.