Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Lead Researcher: Dr Jim Parker
The interaction of buildings and people with their local environment is inextricably linked to their sustainability and wellbeing. At LSI we have developed a network of city wide sensors to support a range of research activities to promote health sustainable urban environments in Leeds that can be used to inform strategies and decisions by local government, companies and individuals.
Major cities have profound effect on micro climates and we are able to measure this and ensure the urban environment responds appropriately. Our data helps us better understand the relationship between green space and air quality, it guides us on how to evaluate the impact other Urban Heat Island (UHI) on our buildings and planning policies and can inform ventilation, air conditions and overheating strategies in commercial buildings.
Dr Parker specialises in building energy modelling and monitoring in the urban environment. He leads applied research projects working with local, national and international partners form the public and private sectors.
Investing the potential for green spaces to reduce the heat island effect in the UK and China
This project is funded by Innovate UK, in collaboration with VRM Tech, the University of Hull and academic partners in Shanghai. The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, in which cities become warmer than their surrounding green space, is a increasing problem. Major cities such as London and Shanghai are particularly suffering from the UHI effect and, during hot periods, these cities experience increased energy consumption, high levels of pollutants and negative consequences on resident health.
The principal cause of the UHI effect is the replacing of green space with buildings, roads, tarmac etc. A potential mitigating intervention is therefore to build green spaces and/or trees within your city. However, where and how to place your green assets is a complex problem. A park surrounded by skyscrapers may have less effect than one surrounded by low-level buildings. In addition, building trees in certain areas may cause them to be under stress and release VOCs, which could counter-productively increase levels of pollution. The GIAUrban project is aimed at understanding the effect that parks and trees have on the local environment. This will be achieved via a combination of open data, and data obtained by a bespoke drone-mounted hyperspectral camera. The knowledge gained during this project will be used by VRMTech to create a commercial tool that allows planners to see the effect building green spaces is likely to have.
This project created a new product development (NPD) capability at ARC Building Solutions Ltd (ARC) by:
It facilitated strategic growth at ARC by consolidating their position as market leader in the new build sector, and by enabling entry into new sectors, primarily the retrofit market.
Embedding the skills, capabilities and infrastructure for NPD enabled ARC to optimise their entry into the retrofit market, identified as the biggest potential growth area due to the increasing regulatory and environmental challenges that will address climate change.
Combining in-house capabilities, strategic NPD and new strategic marketing knowledge to successfully enter the retrofit market also provided ARC with the knowledge and ability to consolidate their new-build market position. It also enabled ARC to shift their business model into rapid development, design and manufacture of its own brand products, with the confidence to commercialise them successfully.
The project was given the highest possible 'Outstanding' rating for a KTP by Innovate UK.
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Sensing Leeds is a web portal that collates an unrivalled network of over 100 urban environmental sensors, creating an accessible, high-resolution dataset for the Leeds city region.
These datasets are currently disparate, private and time-consuming to collate. It draws together sensors operated by LBU the University of Leeds and Leeds City Council, with the ability to integrate data from third parties in the future. Sensing Leeds provides an open-access digital platform that allows for near real-time visualisation of place-based datasets, that can be easily mapped and downloaded. Sensing Leeds incorporates data from air quality and microclimate sensors, plus weather data from five meteorological stations.
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Small urban parks offer a viable and sustainable means of integrating green space into heavily built-up areas.
They provide residents, workers and visitors access to green infrastructure within a dense urban environment. In addition to the wellbeing and biodiversity benefits of green space, urban parks can provide cool islands in summer city heatwaves and cleaner air all year round. There is however limited data available that validates these microclimate benefits, and they are unlikely to be motivating factors for most people to spend time in these spaces. The SUPER project will used high resolution sensors to measure the air quality and temperature within two small urban parks in Leeds city centre and made use of existing smart-city sensor networks to compare these with other grey and green spaces across Leeds; one of these parks was completed in 2022 and the other first established in 1810, allowing for comparison between the old and new. The project also used publicly available and accessible mapping tools to illustrate the atmospheric benefits of the urban parks, and to quantify the number of people that can easily access this space. Public engagement was used to understand what motivates people to spend time in the park, how this changes over the year, and their awareness of the holistic benefits urban green space can provide. The project measured and communicated the atmospheric benefits of urban parks and established a link between these and user motivation
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It is relatively well understood that green space in cities can help to regulate the urban environment, especially during summer months when the urban heat island effect is at its most prevalent. However, there is limited data from ground-level sensors that allow us to characterise conditions in green spaces, and treescapes in particular. This project used a high spatial and temporal resolution of ground level sensors to compare environmental conditions in urban treescapes with those in other urban areas. Results from this work help to quantify the benefits of treescapes and to support their protection and expansion in the future.
Results demonstrate that treescapes provide the coolest air temperature reductions in urban areas than any other land use. On the warmest days, air temperature was over 4°C cooler inside treescapes than in grey spaces and offered more comfortable environments than parks on their own. The greatest benefits were found during the middle of the day, and, overall, a much lower number of hours were categorised as being under heat stress than in grey spaces.
Dr Cat Scott (University of Leeds): "In November 2023 Jim gave an extremely well received presentation at the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science (at University of Leeds)'s Annual Science Meeting. Jim's presentation was very effective at demonstrating potential applications for climate / meteorological data and inspired attendees to think about potential external applications for their own work.
"Jim also presented at one of our Leeds Ecosystem Atmosphere and Forest (LEAF) Knowledge Exchange sessions, which allowed in depth conversations with Postgraduate Researchers and staff from across the University of Leeds.
"As part of Jim's network of sensors, we have initiated long-term in-canopy air temperature measurements at the University of Leeds Gair Wood site. These measurements will complement other measurements and allow us to track changes as the woodland evolves."
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The West Yorkshire Public Particulate Information Improvement Project (PiiP) is a collaborative initiative delivered by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and its five district partners (Leeds, Bradford, Kirklees, Calderdale, and Wakefield).
The project is funded through the DEFRA Air Quality grant scheme and aims to enhance the knowledge and understanding of particulate matter (PM) in the West Yorkshire region. It is also supported by academic partners, including Leeds Beckett University and the University of Leeds.
As part of the PiiP project, the LBU team are: helping to provide quality assurance for the collected and processed data; undertaking independent data analysis against environmental and contextual variables; comparing the performance characteristics of alternative monitoring equipment against each other; and exploring the potential for system alerts for high emission events and/or sensor hardware faults.
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Working with the Wikihouse team, this project focused on the balance between operational carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, construction costs and carbon emission Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
Dynamic thermal simulation models were used to conduct a sensitivity analysis that quantified the impact of three different variables on the thermal performance of the Wikihouse Skylark design. Variables considered included: four insulation products; four window types; and five levels of airtightness. This analysis was designed to provide the Wikihouse design team with quantified data on which to base their selection of materials. The same designs were also assessed for overheating potential following the TM59 methodology.
An LCA analysis showed that the Wikihouse had less than half the life cycle greenhouse gas (CO2eq) emissions of a conventional brick and block cavity wall house (built to the same fabric standards as the Wikihouse target performance values), when considering a 100-year assessment period. This result was achieved because the carbon stored in timber products is assumed to be carbon negative over the assessment period. It was also influenced by the carbon intensity of more heavyweight building materials and traditional mineral wool insulation.
However, this difference would be much less pronounced if the Wikihouse design was used to produce a dwelling that met minimum fabric standards defined within Part L1A of the Building Regulations. In this scenario, the operational emissions are reduced by approximately 3,000 kgCO2eq over the 100-year LCA period. This further emphasises the importance of the embodied carbon within traditional building materials, which would be even more significant if potential reductions in the electricity grid carbon intensity are achieved. The forecast decarbonisation of the UK national grid reduced the contribution of operational energy in the LCA, representing around 60% and 25% of emissions of the Wikihouse and conventional brick and block low energy house respectively. This finding implies that in order to reduce life cycle impacts of low energy homes, more focus should be paid to the embodied emissions in building materials, rather than striving for net zero carbon operational emissions. This has important implications for future policy development in this sector.
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