
AECOM Limited (UK)
AECOM Limited (UK)
26 Projects, page 1 of 6
assignment_turned_in Project2017 - 2022Partners:University of Bath, Building Materials and Tech Promo Counc, Green Business Certification Institute, AECOM, University of Bath +16 partnersUniversity of Bath,Building Materials and Tech Promo Counc,Green Business Certification Institute,AECOM,University of Bath,SWECO UK,AECOM Limited (UK),Buro Happold,SWECO UK,Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi),IITR,Building Materials and Tech Promo Counc,Buro Happold Limited,Green Business Certification Institute,Central Building Research Institute,R-INFRA,R-INFRA,UK Aecom,IITD,BURO HAPPOLD LIMITED,Indian Institute of Technology RoorkeeFunder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/R008612/1Funder Contribution: 985,227 GBPIn many developing countries, rising energy demand, and consequently carbon emissions, is seen as an unequivocal indicator of increasing prosperity. This trajectory has important consequences not just for global carbon emissions but for the ability of countries such as India to achieve its developmental goals. This is because, in most developing countries, growth in energy demand far outstrips growth in supply due to the large capital investment required to build energy infrastructure. Thus, even people *with* access to energy networks often find that they are unable to meet their comfort needs due to supply shortages. However, the most critical problem is often not mean demand - e.g. mean per capita energy demand in India is only 13% that of the UK - but rather **peak demand** as it lays immense stress on already fragile networks. Hence, people's ability to attain comfortable internal conditions is compromised at the precise time that they need it the most - during extreme heat or cold. This project directly addresses the problem of peak demand reduction by aiming to eliminate peak demand in buildings, where it is created. In most developing countries, the vast majority of the building stock of the future is still to be built, so there is a real opportunity to decouple economic growth from building energy use whilst ensuring comfortable conditions. We aim to achieve this through laying the foundations for a **new science of zero peak energy building design** for warm climates. This will be achieved through a careful consideration of the weather signal (now and in the future) which is critical for any realistic assessment of mean dan peak energy demand. A second focus is on delivering a method of construction that is compatible not only with the Indian climate but also its building practices and social customs, thus avoiding the trap of an "imported" standard. This will be delivered through the creation of 60 pathways for a range of building types in 6 cities comprising different climates. Finally, we will also consider how loads can be moved between buildings to achieve a smooth demand profile at network level.
more_vert assignment_turned_in Project2014 - 2015Partners:Imperial College London, NEA, AECOM Limited (UK), E.ON New Build and Technology Ltd, IRT Surveys +12 partnersImperial College London,NEA,AECOM Limited (UK),E.ON New Build and Technology Ltd,IRT Surveys,E-ON UK plc,Newcastle City Council,Laing O'Rourke plc,IRT Surveys,E.ON New Build and Technology Ltd,National Energy Action,Newcastle City Council,NEWCASTLE CITY COUNCIL,NATIONAL ENERGY ACTION,AECOM,Laing O'Rourke,UK AecomFunder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/L026686/1Funder Contribution: 23,281 GBPThe Climate Change Act 2008 requires a 34% cut in 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and at least an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050. Residential and commercial buildings account for 25% and 18% of the UK's total CO2 emissions respectively and therefore have a significant role to play in a national decarbonisation strategy. As the UK has some of the oldest and least efficient buildings in Europe, there is substantial scope for improving the efficiency of energy end-use within UK buildings. However efforts to improve building energy efficiency, specifically the thermal efficiency of the building fabric, have to date focused primarily on the analysis and assessment of single properties. The slow uptake of insulation measures through the Green Deal and Energy Companies Obligation testifies to the difficulty of achieving these changes on a house-by-house basis. If the UK is to achieve its energy and climate policy targets, then a more ambitious whole-city approach to building energy improvements is needed. Technical innovations in remote sensing and infrared thermography mean that it is now possible to conduct building efficiency surveys at a mass scale. The challenge is how such data can be improved (for example moving from 2D plan imagery to 3D models of the built environment) and combined with systems analysis tools to inform effective retrofit strategies. The Urban Scale Building Energy Network will investigate this research challenge by bringing together five academic co-investigators with disciplinary expertise from across the building retrofit value chain from remote autonomous sensing to building physics, energy systems design, consumer behaviour and policy. Working with two experienced mentors from the fields of energy systems and building energy services, the co-investigators will undertake a series of activities in collaboration with project partners from industry and government to better understand the research challenge and develop roadmaps for future research. The activities include: - Two workshops and a series of bilateral meetings for the academic team to learn about each other's expertise and how it can be coordinated and brought to bear on the research challenge. The project mentors will play a crucial role here, helping the co-investigators to create personal development plans that will build both technical and non-technical skills for successful careers. - A workshop with over 20 representatives from government and industry to discuss previous experience and the perceived obstacles to more ambitious building energy retrofits. - An active online communications strategy incorporating a project website, YouTube videos, and a Twitter hashtag campaign in order to engage the general public and understand how households and commercial building occupants understand the challenge of transforming the UK's building stock. - A feasibility study to summarize the state of the art in new sensing technologies and analysis techniques for building thermal energy performance assessment and to identify major outstanding challenges for future research proposals. The proposed network will therefore facilitate collaboration between academics, industry, government and the general public to address a question of great national importance. The project outputs will help to create a wider understanding of the specific challenges facing the UK's aspirations for the transformation of its building stock as well as highlighting potentially fruitful avenues for research. The network therefore aspires to build upon this twelve-month programme of work and develop significant long-term research collaborations with benefits for academic knowledge, society and the wider economy.
more_vert assignment_turned_in Project2022 - 2026Partners:Mott Macdonald UK Ltd, CIRIA, National Highways, AECOM, Stantec UK Ltd +5 partnersMott Macdonald UK Ltd,CIRIA,National Highways,AECOM,Stantec UK Ltd,Inverness Airport,Imperial College London,City of London Corporation,AECOM Limited (UK),CEMEX Global HQFunder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: MR/W013169/1Funder Contribution: 1,529,410 GBPPermeable (fast draining) infrastructure will reduce the impact from climate change and urbanisation related flooding, which has a projected annual global cost of £500bn by 2030. Flooding is expected to cost the UK economy £27bn annually by 2080, without investment in flood resilient infrastructure. Along with the 2020 government plan for green infrastructure development, it is timely to invest in flood resilient permeable infrastructure. An extreme example of flood-affected infrastructure are airport pavements, impacted by stormwater and ice/snow build-up causing aircraft skidding. Skidding accounts for nearly half of all post 1990 major global commercial air crashes. In 2017 a Heathrow snow event grounded over 50,000 passengers and required a hurried £10m purchase of de-icing equipment. The current methods for preventing ice/snow build-up damage the environment, aircraft components and runway surfaces, increasing infrastructure maintenance costs. Airport operators, seeking to address these concerns, have expressed a strong desire to use permeable concrete technology to keep infrastructure clear. Permeable concrete pavements are one of the most promising mitigation strategies to prevent surface flooding, they rapidly drain stormwater through otherwise impermeable infrastructure. Conventional permeable pavements are, however, prone to clogging, due to debris trapped within the pore network, blocking the pavement and reducing its drainage capacity. The frequent required maintenance degrades performance and service life and is difficult to perform in an active airport. Most importantly, conventional permeable pavements have insufficient strength, making them unsuited for airports. There is an urgent need for a new system that can reliably keep airports clear of standing water and ice/snow. I recently developed next generation clogging resistant permeable pavement (CRP) of uniform pore structure to address infrastructure flooding. It has improved strength (twice as strong >50 MPa) and higher permeability (ten times more) than conventional systems of equal porosity, yet does not clog despite exposure to stormwater sediments. This Fellowship will significantly reengineer my novel pavement to develop the first permeable pavement, with sufficient strength and resilience, for the extreme airport case, while also applicable to less extreme highway, railway and novel green wall scenarios. These step-change advancements will be achieved by steel reinforcement, used in permeable pavements for the first time. The structural performance, material integrity, skid resistance, long-term durability and hydrological (drainage) properties will be assessed for airport suitability and improved if required. This project will be the first to investigate conductive (direct contact) and convective (transmission through air) heat transfer through permeable pavements used in high-value heavy load-bearing infrastructure. I will use heat extracted from the ground (ground source energy system, GSES) in these new pavements to melt the deposited ice/snow and drain away the excess water. Conventional pavements can be heated by conduction only, whereas CRP can be heated through both conduction and convection (via the pores) as the novel pore structure also allows for natural convection. This Fellowship will, through extensive laboratory experimentation, computer modelling and the permanent large-scale deployment at Inverness Airport (spanning across multiple technology readiness levels (1-7), a measure of technology maturity), develop climate change resilient infrastructure materials that can be used to deliver a sustainable built environment resistant to flooding, ice/snow build-up and the harmful heat island effect. To achieve this ambitious goal, I will address significant structural, material, thermal and hydrological challenges with wide reaching economic, environmental and societal benefits to the construction and transportation sector.
more_vert assignment_turned_in Project2016 - 2020Partners:H R Wallingford Ltd, Environment Agency, General Lighthouse Authorities, UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH, Atkins Ltd +11 partnersH R Wallingford Ltd,Environment Agency,General Lighthouse Authorities,UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH,Atkins Ltd,Atkins (United Kingdom),AECOM,General Lighthouse Authorities,ENVIRONMENT AGENCY,H R Wallingford Ltd,AECOM Limited (UK),UK Aecom,Atkins Ltd,EA,DEFRA,Plymouth UniversityFunder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/N022947/1Funder Contribution: 453,076 GBPHistoric rock-mounted lighthouses play a vital role in the safe navigation around perilous reefs. However their longevity is threatened by the battering of waves which may be set to increase with climate change. Virtual navigational aids such as GPS are fallible, and reliance on them can be disastrous. Mariners will therefore continue to need the physical visual aids of these strategic structures. The loss of any reef lighthouse will be incalculable in terms of safety, trade and heritage. Plymouth University has trialled the use of recording instruments to capture limited information on the loading and response of Eddystone Lighthouse, with the support of the General Lighthouse Authorities (GLAs) having legal responsibility to safeguard aids to marine navigation around the British Isles. The study evaluated the extreme logistical constraints of lighthouse operations and the feasibility of using instrumentation to understand the response of the lighthouse to wave loads, with results strongly encouraging a comprehensive study of the load and response environment. Hence a full-scale project is proposed whereby field, laboratory and mathematical/computer modelling methods, novel both individually and collectively, will be used to assess six of the most vulnerable rock lighthouses in the UK and Ireland. Depending on the findings the investigation will then focus on extended full-scale evaluation of one lighthouse for the following two winters. The field instrumentation run by University of Exeter, and which will include modal testing and long term instrumentation will require novel procedures and technologies to be created to deal with the challenging environmental and logistical constraints e.g. of access, timing power. The modal test data will be used to guide the creation, by UCL, of sophisticated multi-scale numerical simulations of lighthouses that can be used with the data to diagnose observed performance in the long-term monitoring. The numerical structural model will also be linked with advanced physical modelling at Plymouth University's COAST Laboratory, and numerical (computational fluid dynamic) simulations. Finally, based on the structural and wave loading models, the long term monitoring will be used to characterize the wave loading in-situ at full scale. Outcomes of the project will be used to inform the comprehensive structural health monitoring of other lighthouses both in the British Isles and further afield through the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities. This will lead to the identification of structural distress and reduction in the risk of failure through preventative measures. Methods developed will also be of relevance to other masonry structures under wave loads so the project team includes a number of industrial partners: AECOM, Atkins, HR Wallingford and the Environment Agency who have interests in this area. As the UK has a large number of ageing coastal defences whose vulnerability to wave load was demonstrated in the winter 2013/14 storms, the applicability of the STORMLAMP findings to these structures is an important additional benefit of the project.
more_vert assignment_turned_in Project2014 - 2018Partners:GI Energy, Cambridge Integrated Knowledge Centre, University of Cambridge, BURO HAPPOLD LIMITED, British Inst of Facilities Man BIFM +10 partnersGI Energy,Cambridge Integrated Knowledge Centre,University of Cambridge,BURO HAPPOLD LIMITED,British Inst of Facilities Man BIFM,Breathing Buildings Limited,AECOM Limited (UK),Breathing Buildings,GI Energy,AECOM,Buro Happold,Buro Happold Limited,British Inst of Facilities Man BIFM,UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE,UK AecomFunder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/L024454/1Funder Contribution: 450,921 GBPEnergy Management of existing non-domestic buildings is wrought with many challenges, a number of which arguably exist due to the diversity found amongst individual buildings and amongst the humans who occupy them. Buildings are inherently unique systems making it difficult to generalize technology solutions for any individual property. Instead, to make robust investment decisions for the energy-efficient upkeep of a particular building requires some degree of tailored engineering and economic analysis. To understand why this is the case, one need only to consider the chain of questions one would likely need to address for decision-making in an arbitrary building. For instance, we might ask: what is the age of the building and the equipment currently installed in it? Does the heating system need to be replaced? If yes, is the current system a boiler, and if so, how efficiently does it perform? Would the building benefit from a new boiler or an electric heat pump? Would it benefit from replacing the heating distribution pipes? Do the cost / benefits of any of these technologies depend on government tariffs and subsidies? What is the risk faced if any available subsidies are cut in the future? How robust is either technology to the future price of natural gas and electricity? Would that risk be worth taking? Is it too expensive to even start thinking about the options and associated risks? How would a facility manager visualise the options available and possible spreads of benefits and risks for all these aspects? This project aims to respond to these challenges. Indeed, in order to make sound decisions on future building operation and technology investment, evidence shows that one needs adequate information on a number of engineering, economics, and social science matters pertaining to each individual project. To obtain this information has so-far been viewed as a costly exercise, and has contributed to the general perception that undertaking deep cuts to building energy consumption (achieving more than 15% in energy savings per investment) is an economically risky affair. This proposal is the first to develop and recommend an altogether new approach to performing building audits, energy simulation, uncertainty analysis, data visualization, and finally investment decision-making. It will lead to a marked reduction in the cost of acquiring information for robust retrofit and facility management decisions. The direct outputs of this project will be a series of software tools for three distinct but related purposes: (i) collecting building data on relevant uncertainty parameters (i.e., "what do we know now?"); (ii) propagating and quantifying uncertainty using building simulation models, measurements obtained from key monitored building sites, and cutting-edge statistical approaches (i.e., Bayesian analysis); and (iii) the display and interpretation of uncertainty. During the course of the project, workshops will be organised to lay out the current (uncertain) knowledge that has been, until now, largely undocumented in the buildings sector and inaccessible to the energy research community. This includes gaining understanding on the most common faults observed in managing conventional energy systems, and how spatial layouts in building evolve. The graphical presentation of risk information and understanding users' perception of uncertainty and risk will be key elements of these workshops and the research programme. Our software tools, user guidance, and numerical runs of test cases will be made available, as the web-based B-bem portal, via the University of Cambridge web site.
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