engineering advances to enhance visual & tactile sensory experience of public spaces in a...
TRANSCRIPT
#FeelGoodSpaces @ARCC_CN @FGFwellbeing
3rd event in the Feeling Good in Public Spaces series
Engineering advances with the potential to enhance the visual and tactile sensory experience of public spaces in a changing climate
About UKCIP & ARCC
UKCIP
UKCIP works at the boundary of climate research, policy and practice, providing support and advice on adapting to climate change
UKCIP work falls into 3 categories:• Decision-making for adaptation• Exchanging knowledge & ideas• Creative adaptation
UKCIP is based in the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford
ARCC network
The Adaptation and Resilience in the Context of Change Network has been Funded by EPSRC since January 2009 to:
o promote cooperative working between academia and stakeholders
o facilitate the provision and sharing of information and evidence
o build the community to sustain engagement in the longer-term
#FeelGoodSpaces @ARCC_CN @FGFwellbeing
Engineering advances –academic frontiers
Blue Green Cities
A Blue-Green City aims to recreate a naturally-oriented water cycle while contributing to the amenity of the city by bringing water management and green infrastructure together.
Blue-Green Cities aim to reintroduce the natural water cycle into urban environments and provide effective measures to manage fluvial (river), coastal, and pluvial (urban runoff or surface water) flooding.
• increasing the amount of blue and green infrastructure in
cities could help tackle flood risk and climate change.
• the Newcastle Declaration on Blue and Green Infrastructure
• University of Newcastle’s £10m Urban Water Facility - set to
open in 2017 , will enable experimentation and testing of new ‘smart’ technologies and urban flood management features.
• Useful tool: CityCAT urban flood model -enables rapid assessment of combined
pluvial and fluvial flood risk and effects of different flood alleviation measures
Water depth map of Newcastle City Council area
(~130km2). Storm event of 60 minutes and 100 years
return period [CityCAT – Newcastle University]
£1.7m project, funded by the EPSRC, led by
University of Nottingham #BlueGreenAdvantage
www.bluegreencities.ac.uk
Modelling Advances –big data frontiers
Urban WHealth Modelling
• Using big data to detect the effects of urban planning interventions on individuals.
• Detection of the independent effects of urban design - street and services configuration - on individually measured obesity and mental health
Key findings:
• urban configuration is a significant public health intervention. Shape matters. More precisely, accessibility matters.
• General and special accessibility (respectively, connectivity to everything and everyone else and connectivity to specific health reducing and enhancing facilities) have an independent correlation with both obesity (Body Mass Index), and mental health.
• Past talk abstract
• ESRC grant details
• Project goals:
o To demonstrate and promote an individual-effects modelling approach to evaluating and guiding urban governance interventions;
o To create a base-line study framework for a national longitudinal study of urban configuration causal effects on the health and wealth of individuals and cities;
o To undertake studies of the relationship between built-environment and public health
£198K project, funded by ESRC, led by Professor
Chris Webster, Cardiff University
Useful research currently in progress
BlueHealth
• Exploring the potential health and well-being benefits of aquatic environments including factors such as urban cooling and recreation.
• Exploring the challenges these environments present, through flooding events, chemical pollution and microbial incubation and dissemination
• ‘Blue infrastructure’ refers to the network of natural and man-made aquatic environments that provide a range of services, such as transportation and fresh water provision.
• Project information here
Beyond Blue: New Horizons in Nitrides
• gallium nitride and its alloys - materials which can emit light over a wide range of colours - from the infra-red (IR) to the ultra-violet (UV). Already used in:
o Blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) e.g. White LEDs are used in bicycle lights, torches, back-lighting on portable ectronic devices
o Laser Diodes (LDs) e.g in Blueray HD-DVD player
• Beydon Blue: devices that will emit light in the green and UV parts of the spectrum.
o Current limitation is that nitride devices emitting in the green and UV are less efficient than blue LEDs. Aim is to develop green LEDs for application in displays and high quality white lighting for homes and offices
o UV LEDs –could provide a low-energy way to purify drinking water
o LDs - development of nitride transistors which will reduce the energy wasted as heat in high power applications such as computer power supplies, motor drives or power inverters of photovoltaic systems.
European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme (No 666773)~£0.4m EPSRC, led by the University of Manchester
Useful research currently in progress
Tactile superresolution sensing
• Tactile Robotics - going beyond the resolution limit of a
sensor, helping autonomous robotic systems to interact physically with complex environments
• Superresolution techniques in artificial tactile sensing –potential uses include
o Autonomous quality control in manufacturing
o Senorized grippers for autonomous manipulation
o Sensorized prosthetic hands
o Medical probes in healthcare
o Assisted living
• analogous to biological hyperacuity of vision and touch where the discrimination is finer than the spacing between sensory receptors.
• Pervious uses from cell biology to medical scanning
~£98K EPSRC, led by the University of Bristol
Tactile Virtual Reality
• Researchers have developed a prototype method for creating three-dimensional haptic shapes in mid-air using focused ultrasound
• The system generates an invisible 3D shape that can be added to 3D displays to create something that can be seen and felt.
• the approach applies the principles of acoustic radiation force, whereby the non-linear effects of sound produce forces on the skin which are strong enough to generate tactile sensations.
• Youtube video here, BIG Hub here
led by the University of Bristol’s Department of Computer
Science
Bristol
Interaction
and
Graphics
group,
University
of Bristol,
copyright ©
2014
Next Event
Call for research
Sensing the place – experiences and
wayfinding in a changing climate
Submission deadline 18th March
We’re looking for research findings that explore how design of the urban
environment can affect our experiences and how we orientate ourselves within
it. We’re particularly interested in research that improves our understanding of
how climate change or climate disruption could present challenges for urban
wayfinding and the sensory experience of a place, for example:
• urban layouts and navigational legibility
• urban micro-climate impact on spatial capabilities
• psychological processing of spatial information
• wayfinding engineering advances
#FeelGoodSpaces @ARCC_CN @FGFwellbeing
http://www.arcc-network.org.uk/sensing-the-place-experiences-wayfinding-in-a-changing-climate
Catch up and make a note of other events in the series:
Feeling good in public spaces –dialogue series
Back to basics: human physiology, psychology and place-making – 18 November, London
Smellscapes and soundscapes – 27 January, Alan Baxter, London Visual spectacle and tactile texture of places – 29 February, LDA Design,
London Sensing the place – experiences and wayfinding – 27 April, BuroHappold
Engineering, London - part of Green Sky Thinking Week. Call for speakers open -Submit your EOI before 18 March.
Sensing through impairments – mid-May Multisensory approach to place-making – June
Thank you for listening
If you have any questions and/or would like to explore collaborative work on this
with the ARCC network, please contact me:
www.arcc-network.org.uk
@ARCC_CN
@turner_briony
#FeelGoodSpaces @ARCC_CN @FGFwellbeing