Project // CRUNCH: Climate Resilient Urban Nexus CHoices: Operationalising the Food-Water-Energy Nexus
CRUNCH will demonstrate how the urban Food-Water-Energy Nexus can strengthen urban resilience through creating an interconnected knowledge platform with cross-sectorial indicators for a support tool and assessment framework (the Integrated Decision Support System - IDSS), to guide and improve robust decision making on future urban development.
In order to implement integrated Nexus solutions for FWE, CRUNCH will co-define specific challenges for each of the Urban Living Labs (ULLs) in the participating cities (Southend-on-Sea, Gdansk, Uppsala, Eindhoven, Miami and Taipei). It will deliver a comprehensive overview of potential solutions, deep knowledge and evidence for the co-design of the selected urban areas.
The potential solutions include urban food production with renewable energy systems through biomass (anaerobic digestion using organic waste); holding, cleaning and draining water naturally through an integrative and systemic ecological approach combined with sustainable storage solutions and urban drainage (reducing flood risk).
Using ULL scenarios developed through CRUNCH for the participating cities, a context specific FWE-Nexus framework will be developed and visualised (supporting Follower/Multiplier Cities). To facilitate co-production and foster innovation and cost-effectiveness across the ULLs, the project proposes to underpin the processes by strategic trajectories through an evidence based framework for creating resource-efficient and resilient cities
Research Aims
CRUNCH is a multi-disciplinary project with an international consortium of 19 project partners lead by University of Portsmouth with the aim to work in 6 cities, addressing all three sectors of food, water and energy through the integrative FWE-Nexus approach. It aims to support local decision and policy makers, practitioners and civil society organisations by translating the key findings of a deep review of literature, knowledge and research evidence on the FWE-Nexus into the design of Urban Living Labs (ULL). The proposal aims to creates a tool for integrated decision making using the Urban Living Lab (ULL) approach; identifying the cities' needs, developing the tool and framework, testing and analysing the models using different scenarios.
Working across scales, policy questions, and by employing urban planning and design methods, the research focuses on working with communities and municipalities across four cities to enable the conceptualisation and visualisation of Urban Living Lab (ULL) focused on FEW-Nexus projects. The research aims to bring together design development, implementation and assessment of ULL's within the creation of the support tool and assessment framework.
Project Partners
CRUNCH involves 40 researchers from the 19 project partners, including: the University of Portsmouth (Project Lead), National Taiwan University, KnowNow Information Ltd, Eindhoven University of Technology, Experior Micro Technologies Ltd, Florida International University FIU, Uppsala University, Glasgow City Council, Gdansk University of Technology, AECOM Ltd, Soil Association, Southend on Sea Borough Council and the Ecological Sequestration Trust.