BCUS in Focus
The research group of BCUS (Biometeorology, Climate and Sustainable Urbanism) focuses on the development of human-centred, multi-scale risk assessment and environmental monitoring, supported by the application of biometeorological models integrated with present and future data from multiple sources. This work responds to the growing need to advance the climate change adaptation agenda through interdisciplinary, resilience-oriented urban planning and design, grounded in a human-centred approach. Anchored in urban sustainable development goals, with a focus on the past and future of cities under climate change the research is structured around three interrelated pillars
•Improving risk identification and environmental monitoring that is broken into particularities of individual variables (e.g., radiation fluxes, air humidity, wind patterns, and air/surface temperatures) which are then tailored to understand consequences upon both the urban and human energy models;
•Undertaking long-term sustainable urbanism decision making, and design supported by energy-balance-model based indices, including in Measure Review Framework typologies located in divergent urban climatic/morphological settings that moreover embrace the peripatetic human experince and mobility behavioural dynamics that carry paramount effects upon diurnal/nocturnal cyclical patterns of human activity and wellbeing;
•Communication efforts of not just the risk patterns themselves to the public, but their integration within sustainable urbanism practice guidelines, benchmarks, policy, development strategies, and inter-scaled heat action communication and implementation: prioritisation, mapping, warning systems.
Areas of Expertise
Extreme Heat
Cold Events
Thresholds
Definitions
Human
Biometeorology
Measure Review Frameworks
Energy Balance Models (Urban/Human)
Climate Resilient Planning and
Design
Interdisciplinary Practice,
Application, Communication
Bottom-up
Approaches
Sustainable Development Goals
Human-centred Approaches
Local Climate Change Adaptation
Environmental Management and
Modelling