RESILIENCE AND INTERDEPENDENCIES IN

CITY SYSTEMS

GUILDHALL 26 JUNE 2014

Professor Jeremy Watson CBE FREng

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Cities: Systems of systems

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Cities: Systems of systems

Energy

Food

People

Waste

Water

Mobility

Logistics

Community

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City-scale contexts

• Products- Personal devices

- Smart cards

- Cars

• Buildings- Domestic

- Commercial

- Public

• Infrastructure- Transport

- Utilities

• Districts- Communities

- Entire cities

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Key themes

Challenges• Sustainability – resource use, social, future-proofing• Climate change – adaptation and mitigation• Resilience – infrastructure, utilities, food, financial systems• Demography and health

Opportunities• Value aggregation• Innovation• Economic opportunity and transparency• Security and safety• Wellbeing

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Enablers and threats

Enablers• Digitally-enabled integration• Systems thinking• Innovation in business processes

Threats• Lack of holistic thinking in private and public sector• Unaddressed resilience issues• Weak, short-term and politically-modulated government

support

Climate: Influences on Buildings andInfrastructure

Drivers and Trends: CO2

CO2 rise derived from Antarctic ice core measurements and readings from Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

James Watt’s steam engine developments took place in the 1750s

Around 45% of all present carbon emissions come from existing buildings, with ~25% from homes

• Tipping point – 500ppm? Currently 400ppm (Scripps Institution)Ice caps melt, more sunlight absorbed, trapped CH4 & CO2 released

Keeling curve

Temperature data & modelling

Summer 2003: normal by 2040s, cool by 2080s

Observed temperatures

Simulated temperatures

Stott Nature 2004 – updated to 2007 – HadGEM1

Met Office

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Urban Heat Island (UHI)

Acknowledgement: ARCADIA: Adaptation and Resilience in Cities

In 2003 there were ~900 excess deaths directly attributable to overheating in the UK, and ~25,000 across Europe

Priorities for the Built Environment

Adaptation (time-frame 0 to 50+ years) – extreme weathero Global temperature increase has already led to seasonal extremes; 23,000

excess deaths in EU in 2003, ~900 in UKo Need to design buildings to ensure that compliance with high code levels

does not make homes unsafe in extreme weathero Greater incidence of intense rain with urbanisation - pluvial flooding

Energy cost / shortages (time frame 5 to indefinite years)o Global depletion of fossil fuels and exhaustion of indigenous fossil fuels –

but Shale Gas a mid-term benefito Drive to de-carbonise central energy resources – need to ‘go nuclear’o Need to minimise energy consumption in buildings

Mitigation (time frame 0 – 200+ years)o We have to live with effects of already-emitted carbon for 200+ yearso Ultimately we must bring carbon concentration to an equilibrium pointo Possible active sequestration – CCS plus atmospheric abatemento Buildings viewed at district-level should be carbon neutral or negative

Adaption: CCRA-identified risks

• Non-residential and residential properties at significant risk of

flooding

• Expected Annual Damage (EAD) to residential and non-residential

property due to flooding

• Hospitals and schools at significant risk of flooding

• Ability to obtain flood insurance for residential properties

• Urban Heat Island

• Overheating of buildings

• Energy demand for cooling

• Reduction in water available for public supply

• Public water supply-demand deficits

• Vulnerable people at risk

Resilience & Interdependencies

City resilience considerations

‘The ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions’ – UNISDR

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Cities: Interdependent systems

Water

Power & fuel

Transport

Buildings

Food

Waste

Workforce

Human services

Comms

A B

‘B is dependent on A’

Estimating resilience

1. Subsystems may be interdependent such that ‘cascade failure’ is possible

2. Subsystems may be redundant, such that the failure of one is supported by the continuing operation of another

An estimate of resilience can be derived from a network analysis of these properties in real systems.

Probability calculations apply

Redundancy costs money

Synergistic interdependency can save money, but has (manageable) risk

Resilience concerns the maintenance of operational capabilities of systems and sub-systems, with acceptable levels of degradation

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Need to adapt infrastructure

Network Resilience

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0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 1000

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Resilience

Resilience

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0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 1000

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Additional cost of resilience

Resilience

Co

st

Acknowledgement: Richard Ploszek, IUK HM Treasury

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Static and dynamic interdependencies

• City infrastructure elements are interdependent, and can be viewed statically and dynamically- Antagonistic- Synergistic

• Engineering and business model challenges- Value aggregation

• Dynamics- Optimisation of capacity- Collaborative streetworks

Big Data & Smart Cities

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Big Data opportunities

• Fusing disparate data types to create new insights

o Validation, continuity, prediction

• Private-sector mashing services

o Combining proprietary and open data sources for knowledge and value creation

• Live data plus GIS; city-scale object data

o Building and infrastructure attributes and live information

• Social network feeds

o Can identify health trends (e.g. Norovirus) before reporting by healthcare providers

Data integration in Cities

Mapping Energy Efficiency of Buildings

Mapping social data (eg. Crimes)

Flood simulation

Exploration of multiple agendas in city development (transport, housing, employment etc)

PublicConsultations

Acknowledgement: Professor T Fernando, University of Salford

Service synergies in Smart Cities

SecurityMonitoring and

alerts

Real-time Telemedicine and Assisted Living

Energy assurance services for PAYS

Personalised transport

optimisation

In conclusion…

Foresight – Future of Cities Project

Public policy is delivered via cities, which are centres of innovation and growth

Foresight project will take a cross government interdisciplinary approach, building on existing work

Aim to provide a holistic understanding of the challenges and opportunities UK cities will face in the future

Seeking input in order to shape project and focus outputs on most important questions facing policy makers

Flooding &Coastal Defence

Land Use Futures

Sustainable Energy & the Built

Environment

Examples of previous projects

Acknowledgement: GO - Science

RESILIENCE AND INTERDEPENDENCIES IN CITY SYSTEMS

jeremy.watson@willis.com

jeremy.watson@ucl.ac.uk