Sustainable Cities: Options for Responding to Climate Change Impacts and Outcomes (SCORCHIO)

The aim of the proposed research is to develop tools for analysis of adaptation options in urban areas, with a particular emphasis on heat and human comfort in the built environment. It will do so by addressing the following objectives:

• To develop on a PC a climate simulator for urban areas that can be used for assessing the problems and the adaptation to avoid or reduce them, taking account of both greenhouse warming and other weather changes and the additional effect of the urban landscape and heating due to the buildings, roads and traffic.
• To model typical buildings and their surroundings in order to develop a new, readily usable heat and human comfort vulnerability index that accounts for the effects of building construction, type of building and how buildings, spaces and roads are sited in the city and urban areas.
• To estimate the heat from buildings, together with a set of energy-related air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions to understand different building adaptation options.
• To develop computer map-based (GIS-based) methods for examining adaptation in planning and design to avoid climate change problems for urban and city areas.
• To demonstrate the methods and tools developed in this work through in depth case studies, working in partnership with practicing planners and designers in Manchester and Sheffield.