Sharing Futures: Sustainable urban transformations in water and energy

Completed

Renewable Energy Sources(Hydropower, Large hydropower (capacity of 10 MW and above))
Not Energy Related
Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research(Environmental, social and economic impacts)

Applied Research and Development

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES (Geography and Environmental Studies)
SOCIAL SCIENCES (Sociology)
AREA STUDIES (American Studies and Anglophone Area Studies)

Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Policy and regulation)
Other (Energy technology information dissemination)

Dr S Hadfield-Hill
Sch of Geography, Earth & Env Sciences
University of Birmingham

Standard

ESRC

01 January 2015

31 December 2015

12 months

£90,886

West Midlands

Newton

Dr S Hadfield-Hill, Sch of Geography, Earth & Env Sciences, University of Birmingham

Dr J Horton, School of Social Science, University of Northampton
Professor P Kraftl, Sch of Geography, Earth & Env Sciences, University of Birmingham

Project Contact, Applied Graphene Materials plc

This proposed partnership addresses key challenges in planning for sustainable urban environments. The themes of water and energy are of strategic relevance to development goals in Brazil. The proposed partnership activities will build on an established collaborative knowledge base, bringing together social scientists and engineers with substantial track records in relation to sustainable urban development. In Brazil, the water/energy nexus is a research theme of major importance, due to water scarcity, and since >70% of Brazilian electricity comes from hydroelectricity. Evidence suggests that interventions at different spatio-temporal scales are required to reduce significant impacts-for-development resulting from mismanagement of water/energy resources. The inter-disciplinary project team and proposed activities shall afford innovative forms of dissemination and knowledge exchange between diverse academics, professionals and publics. Planned activities will include publicly-available research summaries, an online research network, the development of an existing app for the Brazilian context, a summer school and theory/practice workshops, and collaborative skills development/sharing. These activities will ensure that the project has extensive impact in Brazil, with potential to deliver long-term benefits in areas of strategic relevance to this call (water/energy), for the welfare of society in diverse developing contexts. Specifically, building upon the project team's existing links, the project will produce impacts in collaboration with NGOs focused upon sustainable development in Latin America and national/regional partners directly involved in the Brazilian water/energy nexus. Finally, the project will support the research team as it develops larger, related collaborative research projects on the crucial theme of water/energy in sustainable urban development

17/07/15