̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Ruchi Choudhary

Developing solutions for the energy transition

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 14:28:37 +0000

Solutions are being developed at Cambridge that can be implemented, grown to scale, and used to accelerate the rapid transition to a net zero and then zero emissions economy.

Growing Underground

lw355 — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:00:00 +0000

In the heart of London there is a farm like no other. It's subterranean, sustainable and energy smart. It also has a digital twin looking out for its every need.

̽��ֱ��climate crisis: towards zero carbon

lw355 — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 07:35:22 +0000

If we are to avoid climate disaster we must sharply reduce our carbon dioxide emissions starting today – but how?

In a new film, Cambridge researchers describe their work on generating and storing renewable energy, reducing energy consumption, understanding the impact of climate policies, and probing how we can each reduce our environmental impact. Alumni Sir David Attenborough and Dr Jane Goodall DBE speak about the climate crisis and reasons for hope.

We hear about the ambitious new programme Cambridge Zero bringing together ideas and innovations to tackle the global challenge of climate catastrophe – and inspiring a generation of future leaders – and how the ̽��ֱ�� is looking at its own operations to develop a zero carbon pathway for the future.

Explore more:

Visit our spotlight on Sustainable Earth

Read our Horizons magazine: download a pdf; view on Issuu

Sir David Attenborough, Dr Jane Goodall DBE and leading Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� researchers talk about the urgency of climate crisis – and some of the solutions that will take us towards zero carbon.

There are huge opportunities to getting things right – the only way to operate is to believe we can do something about it – and I truly think we can.

Sir David Attenborough

̽��ֱ��Climate Crisis: Towards Zero Carbon

NASA

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Global collaboration takes off

ag236 — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 14:35:01 +0000

An alliance between the ̽��ֱ�� of California Berkeley, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the National ̽��ֱ�� of Singapore has moved into its next phase following the first joint call for research proposals and the approval of five inaugural projects.

̽��ֱ��successful proposals, in the areas of “Cities”, “Precision medicine” and “Smart systems”, will be supported through a joint fund of £723,900 –including a contribution of £301,000 from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

These are the first projects set up under the auspices of the Global Alliance, a partnership between UC Berkeley, Cambridge and NUS formalised at the end of 2015.

̽��ֱ��aim of the partnership is to promote collaborative and multidisciplinary research on a global scale.

Its focus is on finding solutions to global challenges that cannot be solved by a single institution, or even through bilateral collaboration.

Prof Chris Abell, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said:

“ ̽��ֱ��projects supported under this first call show the many ways in which our joint resources will let us tackle global problems more effectively. They are the first in a series of research collaborations that will allow our three institutions to work together for the global good.”

̽��ֱ��five successful projects were:

“Toward an open and secure internet-of-things reference platform” (Cambridge PI: Prof Simon Moore)
“Modelling interacting high-dimensional phenotypes – Kronecker Products for imaging, genetics and imaging genetics” (Cambridge PI: Prof John Aston)
“Mathematical and statistical theory of imaging” (Cambridge PI: Dr Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb)
“Smart design: human-centric planning of urban districts” (Cambridge PI: Prof Koen Steemers)
“Translucent city” (Cambridge PI: Dr. Ruchi Choudhary)

Funding for the five projects will be released between November 2016 and February 2017.

A further call for proposals will be published in May 2017 (deadline September 2017).

For more information, contact Dr Kata Fülöp, International Strategy Office, Kata.Fulop@admin.cam.ac.uk

Funding approved for research projects involving UC Berkeley, Cambridge and the National ̽��ֱ�� of Singapore

̽��ֱ��projects supported under this first call show the many ways in which our joint resources will let us tackle global problems more effectively.

Prof Chris Abell

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

How does your smart city grow?

sc604 — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 13:08:19 +0000

It can be tough getting people excited about infrastructure because we often don’t notice it until something goes wrong. We expect to turn on the tap and have clean, drinkable water come out. We expect the underground to work. We expect to flick a switch and have the lights come on.

But just think how different expectations were for people living in Victorian London. ̽��ֱ��‘Great Stink’ in 1858, caused by untreated human and industrial waste flowing directly into the Thames, led to near-constant cholera outbreaks. Eventually, the smell in the Houses of Parliament became so bad that the windows had to be covered with heavy curtains, which goaded the politicians of the day into action. Engineer Joseph Bazalgette came to the rescue by creating a sewer network for central London, which relieved the city from cholera epidemics.

Fast-forward 150 years, and London, and the rest of the UK, is generally in fairly decent shape infrastructure-wise. However, literal and figurative cracks are rapidly appearing. ̽��ֱ��London Infrastructure Plan 2050, launched in 2014, states that the capital should be able to accommodate its growth, at least until 2025, within existing boundaries, but estimates that £1.3 trillion will need to be invested in the city’s infrastructure between 2014 and 2050, an amount more than half of the UK’s current GDP.

“Infrastructure, both existing and future, is of paramount importance for supporting economic growth and productivity – and so we must anticipate and plan effectively for the changing needs of society,” says Professor Lord Robert Mair of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering.

“We can’t just build our way out of this – we simply don’t have enough space,” adds Dr Jennifer Schooling, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC). “We have to use the existing infrastructure we’ve got and get more and more out of it, and when it’s appropriate, we can build new infrastructure alongside that.”

CSIC, an Innovation and Knowledge Centre jointly funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Innovate UK, works to bridge the gap between ̽��ֱ�� research and industry in the area of ‘smart’ infrastructure.

Thanks to technological advances over the past two decades, sensors can now be embedded directly into the fabric of our cities, providing valuable information about the ‘health’ of a particular road, tunnel, bridge, building, or any other piece of infrastructure. This information can help identify problems before they become serious, and help get the most out of existing infrastructure, which is particularly important in a small, crowded country like the UK.

CSIC works with different companies and organisations throughout the complex infrastructure supply chain: from owners and operators, designers and builders, to contractors and maintenance personnel, helping them maximise the potential of sensing technology and, by extension, that of the infrastructure we rely on every day.

Since it was founded in 2011, CSIC has built up a network of more than 40 industry partners, including some of the biggest companies in the construction industry, including Laing O’Rourke, Arup and Atkins. It has also worked on some of the largest infrastructure projects in the UK, such as Crossrail and the National Grid power tunnels.

“Because the construction industry is judged on reliability and safety, it is a conservative one, and so we have to really demonstrate our technologies and approaches, to show that they work,” says Schooling. “A conservative industry finds it difficult to grab hold of complex projects, and so we’ve worked really hard to develop consistent methodologies so that we can train industry to use the technologies we’ve developed.”

One of CSIC’s major industry partners, the construction and development company Skanska, has recently established their own company that will make CSIC-developed technology available commercially, after having successfully used it on a project they recently undertook in London. ̽��ֱ��company was demolishing a 12-storey building to replace it with a 16-storey building in central London, on top of a complex subterranean web of tunnels, transport, foundations, sewers and more.

Skanska worked with CSIC to embed fibre optics in the building pile foundations before it was demolished to determine whether the existing piles could be used again or had to be completely replaced to support the new building. ̽��ֱ��fibre optic data showed that the foundations did not have to be completely replaced, as is common practice, which not only saved the company £6 million and six months in added project time, but also won the company a sustainability prize for avoiding pouring the massive amounts of concrete required for completely new piled foundations.

Another CSIC project maximising the value of existing infrastructure is one that is looking to extract the heat from the London Underground to heat and cool the buildings above it. Researchers in Dr Ruchi Choudhary’s group in the Department of Engineering are modelling the amount of heat that can be extracted from the Tube, how many buildings can be heated or cooled, and how that might be affected by future climate change. These geothermal systems offer a potential energy-efficient cooling solution compared with energy-intensive conventional cooling.

“A city’s infrastructure generates many waste streams: the heat generated in the London Underground is a classic example, leading to severely overheated Tube stations,” says Choudhary. “Simulation models allow us to quantify the waste energy that can be usefully harnessed through geothermal boreholes, which makes it possible to demonstrate feasibility and the benefits of operating our infrastructure in more synergistic ways.”

“If there’s one thing we really excel at in this country, it’s making our Victorian infrastructure – such as that designed by Joseph Bazalgette – work well,” adds Schooling. “We need to think about the value that infrastructure brings to our cities, which will help us figure out where and when we should be making new investments, and what impact that will have on a city. If we really understand our infrastructure through data, there’s a huge opportunity to really make a difference to how our cities perform in the future.”

Adds Mair: “Our cities will define the future of society, and smart city infrastructure equipped with modern sensors is essential to achieve the required transformational impact.”

Inset image: geothermal modelling; credit: Ruchi Choudhary.

̽��ֱ��Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction is building on advances in sensing technology to learn everything possible about a city’s infrastructure – its tunnels, roads, bridges, sewers and power supplies – in order to maintain it and optimise its use for the future.

Infrastructure, both existing and future, is of paramount importance for supporting economic growth and productivity

Professor Lord Robert Mair

Crossrail

Crossrail tunnel

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

New research aims to improve energy efficiency, cut carbon emissions and reduce costs

pbh25 — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 08:34:00 +0000

Against a world backdrop of increased concerns about energy security, price fluctuations and, of course, the need to address climate change, six new research projects that aim to gain a fuller understanding of how energy is managed in the country’s non-domestic buildings are launched today.

Funded with £3 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), on behalf of the Research Councils UK Energy Programme (RCUKEP), the research will address how to use technology, data and information, mathematics, law and sociology to create better energy strategies and behaviours in the public and private, non-domestic buildings stock.

Among the schemes being funded is a Cambridge project aimed at creating software which will help to reduce the uncertainty in modelling the energy management of a wide variety of buildings.

Non-domestic buildings such as offices, supermarkets, hospitals and factories account for approximately 18 per cent of UK carbon emissions and 13 per cent of final energy consumption.

By 2050, the total UK’s non-domestic floor area is expected to increase by 35 per cent, while 60 per cent of existing buildings will still be in use. This means that substantial retro-fitting is likely and planning what techniques to use to save energy, as well as how to implement change with the cooperation of building occupants, is going to be essential.

Professor Philip Nelson EPSRC’s Chief Executive said: “Improving energy efficiency is an important piece of the energy puzzle. Worldwide energy demand is rising, as are global temperatures and sea levels. We need to find smart solutions to how we use energy while improving the environment in which people have to work, rest or play. These projects will go a long way to help improve our understanding of what goes on in non-domestic buildings and add to the armoury at the disposal of those managing these facilities.”

̽��ֱ��new projects will be run at Imperial College London, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh, ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford, ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton and the ̽��ֱ�� of Strathclyde.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge project is called B-bem: ̽��ֱ��Bayesian building energy management Portal. ̽��ֱ��research team is led by Ruchi Choudhary (Department of Engineering) and includes Sebastian Macmillan (IDBE), Koen Steemers and Yeonsook Heo (Department of Architecture), and Michael Pollitt (Cambridge Judge Business School).

Cambridge project is among those benefiting from £3 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding.

Improving energy efficiency is an important piece of the energy puzzle.

Professor Philip Nelson EPSRC’s Chief Executive

Phil Guest

Overlooking the Thames

More information:

̽��ֱ��Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK's main agency for funding research in engineering and physical sciences. EPSRC invests around £800m a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. ̽��ֱ��areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone's health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research. ̽��ֱ��Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via Research Councils UK.
̽��ֱ��Research Councils UK (RCUK) Energy Programme led by EPSRC aims to position the UK to meet its energy and environmental targets and policy goals through world-class research and training. ̽��ֱ��Energy programme is investing more than £625 million in research and skills to pioneer a low carbon future. This builds on an investment of £839 million over the past eight years. ̽��ֱ��Energy Programme brings together the work of EPSRC and that of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Yes