MSCA-IF fellow at TU Berlin and MCC-Berlin. PhD at Yale School of the Environment

SUFFICCS

Sustainable Urban Form For Integrated Climate Change Solutions SUFFICCS is a two year MSCA individiual fellowship project, and began in October 2021. I work on this project with supervision from Prof. Felix Creutzig.

Description and aims:

Urbanisation is a global demographic trend poised to continue throughout the twenty-first century. Levels of urbanisation and various aspects of urban form (including density, land-use diversity, street connectivity, and access to public transit and jobs) have been demonstrated in many empirical studies and theoretical models to be important determinants of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from urban buildings and transport. However, urban dimensions are absent from models projecting global energy and emissions by country and sector. This omission underrepresents the significant connection between urban dynamics and future emission trajectories, and hinders identification of integrated planning strategies for reducing emissions from buildings and transport systems. The main objective of SUFFICCS is to develop and demonstrate a framework for integrated modelling of service levels (m2 floorspace, passenger-km), energy demand, and emissions from urban buildings and transport. This modelling framework will be developed using data from European cities and countries, and designed for integration with a global dynamic material flow analysis model. Emissions from producing new buildings, infrastructure, and transport equipment will also be included, enabling a comprehensive assessment of climate change impacts and mitigation potential. The incorporation of urban dynamics into energy and climate models, and the linking of transport and buildings sectors through joint dependencies on urban form will represent major advancements in modelling. These advancements will facilitate assessment of urban and national emission trajectories under various scenarios of urban form, with unprecedented integration of buildings and transport sectors. The aims of SUFFICCS resonate with targets of the EU Green Deal relating to cities, buildings and transport, and the outputs will aid planners and policymakers in the identification of integrated strategies for climate change mitigation.

Papers/sub-modules:

  1. Comparing urban form influences on travel distance, car ownership, and mode choice. Published paper in Transportation Research Part D link to file in permanent repository here. See also: (preprint, poster, presentation)

  2. The combined effect of urban form on embodied and energy emissions from urban housing and mobility (in preparation)

Code and most recent results can be here

Contact:

Please direct any queries regarding SUFFICCS to peter.berrill@tu-berlin.de

Acknowledgement:

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101027476.