KIC Transitions (KIC-T)

Challenge Platform: Sustainable City Systems

Project duration: 07/2013

Lead partner: BCU, UK

Project type: Innovation – develops and brings to market climate-relevant knowledge, products and services

Project lead: Dave Taylor, BCU

Partners

The KIC-T project involves 8 partners:

Concept

The increase in urbanisation has placed huge demands on natural resources, which has led to increased pollution and damage to ecosystems. As a result, it is imperative that cities are more climate change aware in their urban planning. The KIC Transitions (KIC-T) project aims to make the decision-making process easier and more efficient for city planners and communities through the development of an innovative, scalable platform of web-based assessment tools.

The Climate Change Issue

As populations grow in European cities and demands on natural resources increase, climate change aware planning has become increasingly important for businesses and stakeholders. Urbanisation has led to increases in pollution, CO2 emissions and damage to ecosystems, however these problems cannot easily be solved, due to the lack of an evidence-base for urban strategies and decisions.

Climate Change-Aware Urban Planning

The KIC-T project will enable the reuse of current and future modelling tools and data by creating plug and play standards, providing an open and scalable means of assisting cities with climate change aware urban planning. By utilising an innovative, web-based portfolio of assessment tools and procedures, the platform will be easily accessible to communities and stakeholders. This technology will enable stakeholders to submit relevant information to assist the analysis of environmental impacts, such as energy demand, noise pollution or CO2 emissions, on urban life quality. This strategy will facilitate more informed decision making for city planners, designers and communities, allowing them to put sustainability at the forefront of urban planning.

The Role of Climate-KIC

The project has been funded by Climate-KIC, which also provides a network of partners from across Europe. Each partner plays an invaluable role in the development of the project and without the support of Climate-KIC it would not have gathered speed.