This Green Transition Ecosystem focuses on citizen attitudes and behaviours through speculative design engagement, focused design initiatives, prototyping of new products and interrogation of circular economies. This work will be grounded in the analysis and application of seven key policies for the Northern Ireland (NI) region, including the Energy Strategy - Path to Net Zero Action Plan(DfE, 2022), Waste Management Plan(DAERA, 2019), Deposit Return Scheme(DAERA, 2023), the related consultation for Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging(DAERA, 2022), Rathlin Island Policy and Action Plan (DfI, 2016),10X Economy - NI's Decade of Innovation(DfE, 2021) and The Circular Economy Strategy (CES) for NI (DfE, 2023). Our place-based themes of rural regions, land/water edge conditions and offshore islands, are delivered through three project-based Work Packages which use co-design, demonstrators and circular economy modelling. These overlap and are intersected by two strategy-based Work Packages informing education and policies for change. Details of the Work Packages are as follows: WP1, Product Waste Ecosystems; WP2, Green Digital Transition; WP3, Organic Waste Ecosystems; WP4, Design Sustainable Futures Education; and WP5, Green Policies. Given its contained scale and its geographically peripheral situation in relation to the UK and Europe, Northern Ireland is particularly suited to the creation of system-shifting changes, to meet our institutional and regional sustainability commitments. The role of design is to harness the potential of small countries to positively transform waste culture and behaviour, organisational change, and innovation generation through an accelerated journey of just community empowerment, applied design and worldbuilding. By extending and deepening our existing interdisciplinary research, this 'enculturing transition design' programme works through a range of community-based concerns (e.g. local waste management) alongside regional place-based challenges (e.g. coastal pollution and the negative impacts of tourism). WP1: Product Waste Ecosystems interrogate waste plastics as a commodity within a 3D print ecosystem, serving repair and product innovation cultures (WP1.1), potentially reducing carbon emissions from plastics production or incineration. Waste electronic and electrical equipment are reimagined into diverse new value propositions (WP1.2) extending product lifecycles and reusing manufactured parts in new ways. WP2: Green Digital Transition addresses the negative impacts of tourism. NI's flourishing Screen Industry will transcend sustainable and responsible tourism through digital design and technology. Content focuses on the Rathlin offshore island visiting experiences and the preservation of biodiversity through worldbuilding (WP2.1) alongside sustainable immersive digital heritage and culture (WP2.2). WP3: Organic Waste Ecosystems propose climate transition pathways and build design ecosystem networks in NI through existing, tested co-design and civic engagement methods. Working with interdisciplinary researchers through collaborative multi-disciplinary design, nature-based solutions are fostered leading to nested circular economies. WP4: Designing Sustainable Futures Education develops commitments for sustainable futures within educational institutions (primary to higher education), professional CPD, public sector and public engagement organisations. Design is deployed to build a visual language and knowledge base for future sustainable lifestyles. WP5: Green Policies analyse, understand and position the findings for NI within the above contexts, to frame, synthesise, and co-evaluate visions for preferable futures. These simultaneously recognise contemporary constraints and plans for a future world that will differ from the present. It works in tandem with the design practice activities towards policy implementation and real change in the region.

It is well known that climate change will have a significant impact on UK building design and energy use. It is also known within the building science and architectural communities that the current weather files used for thermal modeling of buildings only represent average weather rather than heat waves or cold snaps. As was shown by the 14,000 deaths in Paris during the 2003 heat wave, this is a highly serious issue and there is the need to ensure future buildings are designed to deal with future weather, or extremes of current weather. In addition, the current weather files used by the construction industry and building scientists divide the UK into only 14 regions, with, for example, the whole of the South West peninsular (including up-land areas) being assigned the coastal Plymouth weather file. It is known that this can easily lead to a 200% error in the estimation of annual energy demand. The scale of this error is such that it renders many of the dynamic simulations carried out by engineers questionable. This is unfortunate when simulation is used within the framework of the building regulations, but it is fatal when trying to use simulation to estimate how resilient a pre-existing building is, or the danger its vulnerable occupants might be in. The aim of this project will be to see if a method can be devised that is capable of creating local weather from 2015 to 2080 covering the whole UK at a resolution of 5km, and to include within this files that represent various excursions from the mean: e.g. heat waves and cold snaps. An interdisciplinary approach is envisaged with the project separated into six work packages: WP1 We will use a method already published by the team together with the UKCP09 weather generator to produce current and future typical weather at a resolution of approximately 5km. WP2 The work in the previous work package will initially require the creation of thousands of years of weather per site. Within these initial years will reside a large number of weather events of interest to the building scientist or engineer. These files will be used in computer models of 1200 differing architectures and building uses to identify what are the key drivers of weather variable coincidence that defines the likelihood of building system failure or thermal issues for occupants. WP3 Having characterised which events best describe the stresses on a building, its occupants and systems in WP2. Event years (i.e. times series of weather data variables on a one hour time step that represent atypical hot, dry, cold and wet periods) will be created for the whole UK. WP4 Having generated the event years, and simulations from the 1200 buildings, the two will be recombined to produce the first map of UK resilience to a changing climate. Although others have looked at the regional resilience of the built environment using average weather years, the concern is not about the response of building and occupants to such average time series, but to more extreme events. WP5 Given the large number of files proposed, guidance will need to be given on which to use in practice, and how this might be expressed in the building regulations and other documentation. We plan to use case studies as the main guidance tool. This will add greatly to their intellectual validity within the target audience of practicing engineers. In total, we expect the guidance to be tested on >100 real building projects. WP6 Impact. All weather files produced by the project will be publicly available for a minimum of 10 years. A series of road shows will be undertaken at the end of the project. At these events the results of the project will be presented to a large number of users. The idea will be to introduce the whole UK built environment community to the idea of designing resilient buildings aided by the weather data produced by the project. A short film will also be produced for those that cannot attend and for an international audience.

The first Complex Built Environment Systems (CBES) Platform Grant consolidated a truly interdisciplinary, world-leading research group which focussed on the complexity of the context of our research activities and seeded a new Institute (UCL Energy). The second Platform Grant underpinned the development of a strategic programme of fundamental research aimed at understanding the unintended consequences of decarbonising the built environment, enabled CBES to become a world leader in this area and seeded three new UCL Institutes (Environmental Design & Engineering, Sustainable Heritage and Sustainable Resources). Supported by a third Platform Grant, our vision for CBES is now to transform scientific understanding of the systemic nature of a sustainable built environment. In a recent award-winning paper, resulting from our work under the current Platform Grant, we identified over 100 unintended consequences of energy efficiency interventions in homes. Taking moisture as just one example, we can demonstrate why a systems thinking approach is now so vital. By 2030, it will be government policy that every home in the UK will benefit from measures to improve energy efficiency. This is approximately 25 million homes - all our homes will be affected in some way. The total cost will be ~ £10 billion a year. The UK only has the chance once to do this correctly. Unfortunately, it is now clear that we are not dealing with these complex issues correctly. For example, a recent low energy refurbishment of ~400 dwellings in the north of England has had a 100% failure rate due to disastrous moisture issues which will cost millions to rectify. This has huge implications for the entire decarbonisation plan, for the health of the building occupants, for the communities involved and for the economic value of these properties. For the issue of moisture therefore, we have taken the decisive step to set up the new 'UK Centre for Moisture in Buildings' to link building engineering physics, health, building use, quality and process in a coherent way. Our thesis therefore, more widely, is that the built environment is a complex system that can only be successfully tackled via a new interdisciplinary systems thinking approach - performance emerges from the interplay of fundamental engineering and physical factors with process and structure. Such a systems thinking process was piloted in our project 'Housing, Energy and Wellbeing' (HEW) in the current Platform Grant and has led to close collaboration with a very large body of stakeholders from government, industry, NGOs and community groups who provide an invaluable resource for future research. Enabling this new, systemically integrated approach to built environment research will require a major change in the way we undertake our research - this will be a fundamental departure from business as usual. The development of such a novel methodological framework and the associated re-structuring and development of an interdisciplinary research group will involve a strategic, long-term perspective as well as some risk. The flexible Platform funding will be vital here in that it will enable approaches not possible with responsive mode funding. There are also likely to be some key policy changes in this specific area over the next 5 years - Platform funding will enable us to react to research opportunities in a timely manner and dynamically maintain research leadership in the field. The careers of CBES team members will be managed and developed through strategic action. Career development activities specifically enabled by Platform funding will include: (i) a new series of regular 'systems thinking' workshops to develop personal research agendas within our broader system of research; (ii) new industrial/policy mentoring via secondments; (iii) new skills training for staff through external training courses; (iv) enhanced stakeholder engagement via our unique series of regular workshops.

Meeting pressing carbon emission reduction targets successfully will require a major shift in the performance of buildings. The complexity of the building stock, the importance of buildings in people's lives, and the wide spectrum of agents responsible all make buildings an important area of 'policy resistance'. Policies may fail to achieve their intended objective, or even worsen desired outcomes, because of limitations in our understanding of the building stock as a dynamically complex system. This limitation can lead to 'unintended consequences' across a range of outcomes. The concept of the 'performance gap' with regards to the energy performance of buildings is now well established and useful work to begin to understand this challenging issue has been undertaken. However, potential unintended consequences related to the inter-linked issues of energy/Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) present an even greater and more complex challenge - a challenge that is gaining increasing importance in the UK and China. There are exciting opportunities to address this issue of 'total performance' in order to reduce the energy demand and carbon emissions of buildings whilst safeguarding productivity and health. Our work will begin by examining the contrasting context within which buildings have been designed and constructed and within which they are used and operated internationally. We will address the policies and regulatory regimes that relate to energy/IEQ but also the assessment techniques used and the ways that buildings are utilised. We will then build on this analysis by undertaking an initial monitoring campaign in both countries to allow comparisons between the performance of the same types of building in the two different contexts. We will evaluate how energy/IEQ performance varies between building type and country. This work will enable the assembly of a unique database relating to the interlinked performance gaps. This initial monitoring work will also allow us to identify the most suitable buildings for the next stage of the work that will integrate monitoring and modelling approaches. This phase of the work will develop semi-automated building assessment methods, technologies and tools to enable rapid characterisation of probable pathologies to determine the most cost-effective route to remedy the underlying root causes of energy/IEQ underperformance. Energy/IEQ issues do not form a closed system however. In the development of relevant policies and regulations, it is vital to consider the wider system and we propose a second stream of work to address this. The team at UCL has undertaken pilot work within the housing sector as part of the EPSRC funded Platform Grant ('The unintended consequences of decarbonising the built environment'). We successfully employed a participatory system dynamics approach with a team of over 50 stakeholders and we will extend that work here to other building typologies. Such an approach can help support decision-making in complex systems, addressing challenges central to the TOP work. The proposed work is tremendously challenging and exciting. If successful it will lead the way in understanding and improving the total performance of low carbon buildings and help to develop relevant effective policies and regulations in the transition towards future Low Carbon Cities. Tsinghua and UCL have the suitable complementary world-leading expertise to undertake this work and form a long-term 'best with best' academic collaboration. The Bartlett at UCL is rated first in terms of research 'power' and environment in the UK; the Tsinghua University School of Architecture was ranked first in China in the National Assessment on Architecture in 2003, 2008, and 2011. The groups in both countries have extensive stakeholder networks and the outputs of the project will thus be communicated widely and appropriately.

The UK is on the brink of a new, third age of energy efficiency. UK greenhouse gas emissions must fall a further 65% by 2050, but the energy system will decarbonise even faster. Large wind, marine and solar generators, supported by energy storage, will dominate the central supply system and intelligent, community and building-integrated systems will be embedded in our towns and cities. This interaction of people, buildings and energy systems will transform the relationship between supply and demand. Our domestic and non-domestic buildings can no longer be passive consumers of heat and power, instead, our homes and businesses must participate actively in a flexible, integrated, low-carbon supply and demand system, buying, selling and storing heat and power to achieve 'Energy resilience through security, integration, demand management and decarbonisation'. This must be achieved whilst simultaneously meeting our human need for high quality spaces in which to live and work, thereby increasing the productivity of the UK economy, reducing fuel poverty, improving health and wellbeing, and supporting an ageing population. The new EPSRC CDT in Energy Resilience and the Built Environment (ERBE) will train at least 50 PhD graduates to understand the systemic, radical, multi and interdisciplinary challenges we face, and have the leadership credentials to effect change. Students will be immersed in world-leading research environments at UCL, Loughborough University collaborating with the Centre for Marine and Renewable Energy in Ireland. ERBE students will attain a depth of understanding only possible as cohorts work and learn together. An integrated, 4-year programme will be co-created with our stakeholder partners and students. It will provide the knowledge, research and transferable skills to enable outstanding graduates from physics to social sciences to pursue research in one of three themes: * Flexibility and resilience: the interaction between buildings and the whole supply system, through new generation and storage technology, enabled by smart control systems and new business models. * Technology and system performance: demand reduction and decarbonisation of the built environment through design, construction methods, technological innovation, monitoring and regulation. * Comfort, health and well-being: buildings and energy systems that create productive work environments and affordable, clean, safe homes. The Centre will be led by Directors who have worked together for over 30 years, supported by deputies, academic managers, administrators and a course development team who have successfully delivered the CDT in Energy Demand. Over 50 world-leading academics are available as student supervisors. The core team will be guided by an Advisory Board representing the UK government, energy suppliers, research organisations, consultancies, construction companies and charities; more than 30 prominent individuals have expressed an interest in joining the board. Board members and stakeholders will provide secondments, business skills training and careers advice. The Centre will provide training and research benefits to the wider energy and buildings community. A new online Buildings, Energy, Resilience and Demand Hub will be created to share training materials, videos, seminars and to promote collaboration, a residential, weeklong programme, Energy Resilience and the Built Environment, will be open to PhD students from across the world as will an annual, student-led conference. An annual Anglo-Irish summer school and a colloquium will showcase the Centre's work and bring students face-to-face with potential future employers. By providing training in a rigorous, world-leading, stakeholder-shaped, outward-facing and multi-centred research environment, the new ERBE CDT will help the UK achieve the goals in the government's Industrial Strategy and Clean Growth Strategy.