Bottom-Up Infrastructure

Bottom-Up Infrastructure is an EPSRC funded research programme which aims to improve engagement of communities in engineering design and decision-making to deliver resilient, sustainable systems that meet the needs of people and the environment under conditions of uncertainty. The central research question is:

The central research question is:

How can infrastructure design and delivery engage directly with communities and users to transform cities to be sustainable, resilient, prosperous and healthy places to live?

Objectives

1. Develop and test bottom-up engineering methods and tools to support resilient infrastructure design.
2. Create a typology of community engagement for different stages and scales of infrastructure design and provision.
3. Identify and quantify the risks and benefits of community engagement in infrastructure design and delivery.
4. Develop a quantitative appraisal tool to establish of the value and risks associated with community engagement in infrastructure projects.

Programme and Methodology

1. Participant observation
2. Communities of practice 
3. Open database
4. Typology of engagement
5. Bottom-Up Design
6. Risk and benefit quantification 

People

PI: Prof Sarah Bell

Dr Aiduan Borrion (CEGE)

Dr Daniel Fitzpatrick (Planning).

Output

The project produced a toolkit for infrastructure co-design, including:

Method statements for co-design; Tools to deliver co-design; Evaluation methods; Videos of the process in action; and Academic and professional publications.

Impact

Bottom-Up Infrastructure is working with community and industry partners to develop methods to improve community engagement and infrastructure resilience. The toolkit will provide standardised methods that can be adapted to different projects scales and contexts. 

Links

Engineering Comes Home - Infrastructure Co-Design Kit

UCL Engineering Exchange