Jim Plume says a key to achieving a low carbon future for Australia is to find effective ways of managing and distributing information within the planning, design, construction and infrastructure management professions.
There is little point in devising smart technologies if the urban setting is not appropriately planned to take advantage of those innovations. That is why I got involved in the planning and preparation of the bid for a seven-year, $100 million Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living
(CRC-LCL). In late 2011, the federal government announced its support for the establishment of the CRC, involving five Australian Universities, the CSIRO, around 15 key industry partners and a further 25 government organisations and professional bodies across Australia. The CRC-LCL is poised to play a leading role in market transformation towards a low carbon future for the built environment sector in Australia. Australia faces an extremely complex challenge in its aspiration to become a low carbon society (60 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050).
Therefore, a key driver for the design of the CRC-LCL was a commitment to the belief that the only way to achieve that goal is by bringing together a fully integrated team that spans across a diverse range of research disciplines and industry partners. On the research side, we include engineers, material scientists, designers, planners, geographers and social scientists. On the industry side, we have brought together major commercial enterprises that represent most sectors concerned with the development of the built environment, key representatives from the planning and design professions, core instrumentalities at all levels of government and a comprehensive set of peak bodies that represent the major industry sectors. This fundamental strategy is reflected in the three research program areas that form the structure of the CRC-LCL: integrated building systems (bringing together engineers, material scientists and designers to devise the next generation of low carbon products used in making the built environment); low carbon precincts (with a focus on the planning, design and management of the built environment at the precinct scale); and engaged communities (developing strategies to engage the end-user community, recognising that behavioural change is central to achieving a low carbon society).
The key to success, however, is to recognise that these program areas must be tightly integrated and the community enabled to use them effectively. The intention is that any individual research project established under the umbrella of one of the program areas will inevitably draw on expertise and research outcomes across all three areas. That leads to my personal interest in all of this. We have all heard the current hype around BIM (building information modelling) and the potential of that technology to support integrated practice and lead to productivity gains across all aspects of the delivery of buildings. The industry is facing significant challenges in the adoption of BIM technology, but there is a growing commitment from both government and industry to face down those challenges and find better ways to design and deliver the built environment. We believe there is an opportunity, indeed an imperative, to extend the concept of BIM to a precinct scale in order to achieve the same operational efficiencies in the management of information to achieve low carbon outcomes at a broader urban scale.
We have coined the expression precinct information modelling (PIM) to describe this innovation and are committed to finding ways, and developing software environments, that facilitate the effective sharing of information across all the diverse needs of the built environment professions. As an example, virtually all operational or design activities involve the application of software tools that manipulate information, but almost universally, that information is collected, organised and stored in a form that supports only the needs of that specific application, even though much of it is relevant to other related activities. At the building design level, we see that disconnection operating constantly as designers and engineers attempt to collaborate and share design information.
With the emergence of smart grids and sophisticated monitoring systems designed to manage supply and demand across complex, urban-scale service delivery networks, there is the untapped opportunity to collect vast amounts of usage data. That data could be aggregated and deployed to inform future planning and policy decisions.
The work of the CRC-LCL will impact at all levels of the built environment professions, providing innovative solutions in the form of new construction materials and methods for both commercial and residential projects, fresh approaches to precinct planning and infrastructure development, and above all, a concerted program to engage the entire community in understanding how we can all prosper in a low carbon future.
Jim Plume is a senior lecturer, information modelling & design in the Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales.
