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UCL Grand Challenges cultivates cross-disciplinary collaborations exploring interconnected solutions in six areas of pressing societal concern.
The philosophy of working across traditional subject boundaries is embedded at UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering. Working with colleagues across the globe, we are ideally placed to address four UCL Grand Challenges:
Sustainable cities
Our contribution to Sustainable Cities has been broad, from developing city-level energy models for building stocks to lighting masterplans to local urban climate models that support the intelligent development of cities.
Global health
In the area of Global Health, we have carried out important studies on the effect of lighting on the performance of schoolchildren and modelled the spread of indoor airborne pollutants when homes receive energy efficiency refurbishments.
Cultural understanding
Our contribution to this challenge has included studies to quantify the impacts on health and wellbeing of greenhouse gas reduction measures in Europe, India and China.
Human Wellbeing
On Human Wellbeing, we have contributed a unique investigation into the layout of office buildings and its impact on the activity of workers. We’ve looked into complex air quality studies to improve understanding of sick building syndrome, and developed decision-making protocols to improve the balance between housing conditions, energy use and human wellbeing.