'Living lab' at UNSW helps make our cities more climate-resilient
School of the Built Environment
Our smart campus provides聽healthy conditions聽and showcases聽cutting-edge technologies in our research and teaching.
A multidisciplinary research group at UNSW has transformed the Kensington campus into a living lab to help combat heat exposure in our cities. Urban overheating is a major challenge impacting the sustainability and liveability of our cities, says聽Dr Negin Nazarian聽from the聽School of Built Environment听补迟听UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture.
鈥淲ith 90 per cent of the population residing in urban areas, more than 10 million Australians already live in areas classified with聽high听迟辞听hazardous聽heat risks. This relentless heat, often dubbed a 鈥榮ilent killer,鈥 claims more lives than any other natural disaster,鈥 she says.
鈥淲ithout effective mitigation efforts, the economic, social and health costs associated with heat could soar by more than 400 per cent from current levels. At UNSW, we鈥檙e integrating advanced modelling with smart sensors across campus to measure and analyse local urban climate challenges, such as urban heat, ventilation, energy and air quality.鈥
Dr Nazarian is an聽, Chief Investigator at the聽, and Fellow at the聽. She leads the聽聽that tackles urban heat and air quality issues. Its expertise spans mechanical engineering, climate science, architecture and advanced data analytics.
UNSW researchers have transformed Kensington campus into a living lab to help combat heat exposure in our cities. Photo: Ethan Rohloff Photography.
The CRC lab uses established and emerging methods, such as modelling and sensing, to produce multi-scale climate mapping of cities to inform urban design and planning. Dr Nazarian鈥檚 team has conducted three-dimensional modelling of airflow and heat on campus and developed a digital twin 鈥 a virtual replica 鈥 of the Anita B. Lawrence Building (formerly the Red Centre) which operates as an advanced monitoring system for its indoor environments.
Their campus living lab aims to improve heat exposure and air quality in different indoor and outdoor campus environments. More than 100 sensors were installed in teaching spaces, meeting rooms, open-plan and individual offices to measure parameters, including carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCS 鈥 indoor air pollutants), noise levels, lighting, temperature and humidity.
鈥淓stablishing our campus as a living lab allows us to showcase聽cutting-edge technologies in our research and teaching and help demonstrate how they can be used聽to provide healthy聽and聽comfortable conditions聽on campus,鈥 she says. 鈥3D modelling enables us to visualise urban climate challenges on campus, while the digital twin provides an enhanced real-time insight into the environmental status of the building spaces via the sensors鈥 live feed.鈥
The campus living lab project builds on the rise of internet-enabled, citizen-science solutions 鈥 known as the Internet of Things (IoT) 鈥 as well as high-resolution satellite imagery over the past decade. These methods enable the collection and sharing of real-time or fine-grained climate data across different urban areas. Crowdsourcing and processing this data provide valuable insights into urban climates.
鈥淭he sheer number of crowdsourced weather stations available can provide a high-resolution understanding of the variability of urban heat that is not possible to obtain via traditional networks,鈥 she says.
The CRC Lab also works with satellite datasets, such as Landsat 8 and MODIS. 鈥淏y 鈥榣ayering鈥 this information with the increasing number of datasets available around the three-dimensional structure of cities 鈥 their vegetation, urban forms and geographies 鈥 we can better understand how the built environment interacts with climate and its impact on people.鈥
The lab partners with global experts, government and industry, including the聽聽(AURIN) and Google, and engages undergraduate, postgraduate and higher degree research students on research projects and climate-intervention strategies.
"Overheating is driven by the climate crisis and exacerbated by urban development." -聽Dr Negin Nazarian
滨迟蝉听, addressing聽. This can inform us when, where, and who is most impacted by urban heat and provide fine-scale solutions for addressing this challenge, she says.
鈥淥verheating is driven by the climate crisis and exacerbated by urban development. It represents a multi-faceted challenge that impacts the well-being, performance and health of individuals,鈥 she says. Vulnerability to urban heat is exacerbated when sensitive people and infrastructure are exposed to extreme heat in a way that means they鈥檙e unable to adapt, she says.
鈥淥ur focus on the human scale allows us to consider issues of heat exposure and thermal comfort within an equity framework 鈥 a framework that considers not just the urban environment, or heat as a hazard, but parameters such as affluence, health and capacity to adapt,鈥 she says.
鈥淥ur multidisciplinary approach demands solutions that help mitigate heat exposure, reduce sensitivities and increase the adaptive capacities of specific populations.鈥
The Mean Radiant Temperature (TMRT) indicates how the environment affects the human body's heat balance. The darker areas denote regions of higher TMRT, hence higher thermal stress. Image: UNSW Sydney.
Advancing indoor air quality and thermal comfort
Dr Nazarian has led an聽聽into the indoor thermal comfort and air quality in the Anita B. Lawrence Building, using the IoT sensor network.聽, damages the nervous system, increases stroke risk, depression, and mood disorders.
鈥淚n Australia, like most developed nations, we spend most of our time 鈥撀犅犫 indoors,鈥 Dr Nazarian says. 鈥淭his is set to increase in the coming decades as public space decreases with the deterioration of urban liveability and escalating overheating and extreme weather events.鈥
Having favourable indoor environments that promote sustained attention, productivity, and physical and mental health is fundamental to providing a quality educational experience, she says. 鈥淗owever, many learning facilities employ one-size-fits-all solutions across highly diverse educational environments.鈥
Additionally, most studies rely on outdoor measurements or consider limited areas and time periods, she says. 鈥淭his makes it hard to establish the relationship between internal conditions, seasonal anomalies and extreme weather conditions, and other variables, such as spatial occupancy.鈥
Dr Negin Nazarian. Photo: Anthony Burns.
Data was collected during a 15-month period that spanned standard building occupancy and seasonal change as well as the Black Summer bushfires (2019) and the COVID-19 lockdown (2020). In addition to the IoT sensor network, outdoor data was collated from a weather and air-quality monitoring station less than two kilometres away to investigate correlations between indoor-outdoor conditions.
鈥淐OVID [lockdowns, when the facilities were empty,] provided us with a useful benchmark from which to analyse other usage patterns, and the Black Summer bushfires, an extreme weather event, to enable us to deliver site-specific re-design guidelines to improve the building鈥檚 climate resilience.鈥
The accumulation of heat and pollutants, such as carbon dioxide and VOCs, varied depending on a room鈥檚 elevation, floor level, windows and use, the study found. Additionally, passive ventilation systems based on manual interventions were likely to produce sub-optimum environmental quality and extreme variability linked to occupancy patterns.
鈥淒uring periods of extreme pollution and intermittent disuse, closed environments tended to become very unhealthy,鈥 she says. 鈥淢ost of the recorded environmental inefficiencies or health threats could be mitigated by implementing automated controls and smart logics to maintain adequate cross ventilation and appropriate air filtration.鈥
The study, which was used to improve the building鈥檚 conditions, offers a roadmap for moving towards more resilient and healthy educational buildings. 鈥淭he study supports the need for the continuous monitoring of learning spaces to compensate for less perceivable threats, identify improvements and future-proof our learning environments.鈥
Lead image:聽UNSW Kensington campus aerial photography聽漏 UNSW 2021.
This article was originally published in 2024.
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