UCL Energy Institute launches RCUK Centre for Energy Epidemiology

The RCUK Centre for Energy Epidemiology is part of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) Energy Programme.

The five-year funding, together with in-kind contributions from many project partners in government and industry, will enable the Centre to take best practice from the fields of health epidemiology and end-user energy demand, to gain new insights by linking existing datasets, and by developing new measurement techniques.

Energy epidemiology is a whole-system approach that focuses on empirical research and provides a methodological framework for physicists, engineers, sociologists and economists to engage in interdisciplinary work. The adaptation of the epidemiological approach to end-use energy demand studies will provide the means to observe and describe population-level, empirically based trends and patterns of energy demand, to undertake and contextualize interventional studies, and to establish strong associations between factors that lead to an energy demand-related outcome or event.

The first six months of the Centre, May-November 2013, will see it recruit to full staffing levels, as it works through its consultation and planning stage. This will entail developing its research strategy; building a global network of energy epidemiologists; identifying available data sources; surveying the detailed needs of academia, industry and government; and learning from the experience of other institutions that operate research data services. More on energy epidemiology

The Centre’s launch on 1 May 2013 is marked by the following appointments:
Tadj Oreszczyn: Centre Director
Andreas Schafer: Deputy Director
Gael Anderson: Centre Manager
Andrew ZP Smith: Academic Head
Lai Fong Chui: Research Co-Investigator, People
Phill Biddulph: Senior Research Associate, Analysis

A number of academic papers (open source) have been published that set out the Energy Epidemiology approach and provide an example of the application to energy demand in buildings.

'Energy efficiency in the British housing stock: Energy demand and the Homes Energy Efficiency Database' (2013), Energy Policy

Free paper: ‘Energy Epidemiology: a new approach to end-use energy demand research’ (2013), Building Research & Information via http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09613218.2013.798142#.UZ4tcRlrqIw