Design Principles and Responsible Innovation for a Sustainable Digital Economy (Paris-DE)
While ICT is seen as a way to green the economy, ICT itself also has an environmental impact which needs to align with the Paris Agreement. In this project, the multidisciplinary research team assembled aim to uncover a transparent evidence base of ICT’s environmental impact, as well as develop design principles for ICT organisations to ensure their innovations are sustainable and responsible.
Kelly Widdicks is a Co-Investigator of Paris-DE. The project also involves Gordon Blair (Principle Investigator) and Bran Knowles at Lancaster University, Federica Lucivero and Marina Jirotka at the University of Oxford, Gabrielle Samuel at Kings College London, Steve Sorrell of the University of Sussex and Mike Berners-Lee (Small World Consulting).
A press release on the project can be found here. Paris-DE is funded from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant agreement no. EP/V042378/1.
Transforming commercial energy demand towards Net Zero Carbon through data science (net0insights)
We’re aiming to unlock actionable intelligence from fine-grained energy and contextual data to inform ‘digital replication’ of energy savings. Our ambitious goal is to pave the way for the ‘digital replication’ of energy efficiency savings, and a viral spread of the knowledge and techniques across sectors. This draws on an arsenal of artificial intelligence and data science tools will unlock massive energy savings and help UK business in their goal of achieving net zero. These cutting-edge algorithms will automatically and continuously sift through a deluge of data and find new insights and recommend ways to slash energy consumption. Crucially, these new tools will be designed and developed to be transferred across a wide range of business sectors and organisations, and across different buildings and infrastructure.
This multi-disciplinary programme includes major industry partners and draws on Lancaster University’s strength in Data Science, bringing together researchers from School of Computing and Communications, Mathematics and Statistics, and Lancaster Environment Centre.
Net0Insights is funded from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant agreement no. EP/T025964/1.
Issues of precarity and interdisciplinarity for Early Career Researchers in Justice-oriented technology spaces
There is a growing number of early career researchers (ECRs) and particularly precariously employed postdoctoral researchers in academia, including multi- and inter-disciplinary researchers who do not fit traditional molds and academic trajectories. Barriers for researchers working at various intersections of justice and digital technology, such as limited funding are further exacerbated by precarity of employment in the sector, making it difficult for individual researchers who are looking for a community and role models for success
This project aims to build support networks, and co-create resources for survival, aiming to help researchers not only to survive, but to thrive in their academic and/or academic-adjacent futures. They aim to work towards filling gaps, and work alongside other researchers to first explore and then co-create and co-develop socio-technical resources to build solidarity and learn more about ‘how to survive’ in academia.
Funded by: Not-equal, EPSRC Network+
Oliver Bates was the Co-Investigator.
Switch-Gig: Exploring digital opportunities to switch the gig-economy to fair and just work
In 2019, Britain’s gig economy doubled over three years accounting for 4.7 million workers. However, these digital platforms have created a precarious nature of employment, where working people run the risk of battling to make ends meet, according to the TUC and academics at the University of Hertfordshire.
Switch-Gig explored the question: “How can we co-design technological innovations to support workers themselves, shifting the focus of gig work towards just work, and empowerment for workers?”
The project ran workshops with groups of food delivery couriers from York and Manchester to explore how we can co-design technological innovations to support and empower gig workers.
A full project report and list of academic outputs can be found on the project site.
The creative outputs from the project include:
- Meal Deal – Meal Deal is a card game that invites players to share experiences faced by gig economy cycle couriers.
- Critical tea towels – The desired outcome from these tea towels is that we rethink the value of this kind of gig work and that we engage with the needs of gig workers across the sites and cities in which they work.
- Outside the Bag – ‘Outside the Bag’ is a booklet of provocative speculative designs, exposing interesting textural aspects of courier work, their interaction with technology, customers, the city, the courier community and local infrastructure.
Funded by: Not-equal, EPSRC Network+
Oliver Bates was a Co-Investigator and Carolynne Lord was the lead researcher on the project.
Transforming last mile logistics in the gig economy to be fairer and more sustainable (FlipGig)
The digital economy (e.g. online shopping) is growing rapidly – already £50bn in 2016 – which is radically transforming the high street. It is estimated that approximately 220,000 vans are operating in London on a typical weekday with approximately 5% (11,000) engaged in parcel collection and delivery. With new `try before you by’ clothing services such as ASOS and Amazon Prime Wardrobe, where any number of clothing items can be ordered for home delivery, and returned ‘for free’, the true environmental costs are spiralling out of control. Freight transport already accounts for 16% of all motorised road vehicle activity in British towns and cities, typically burning fossil fuels and accounting for 23%, 36% and 39% of total road-based CO2, NOx and PM10 emissions respectively,
FlipGig looks at how digital technology can be designed to empower couriers to fight unfairness, challenge unfair models and algorithms in platform courier work, and develop new models that put fairness and sustainability at the core.
FlipGig (2021-2024) received funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant agreement no. EP/S027726/1.
Freight Traffic Control 2050 (FTC 2050)
Transforming the energy demands of last-mile urban freight through collaborative logistics.
Adrian Friday is Co-Investigator on FTC 2050, with Oliver Bates as Researcher. Freight transport accounts for 16% of all road vehicle activity in our cities. Last-mile urban freight contributes to traffic congestion and poor air quality. The cost of congestion in London was estimated to be £5.4bn in 2013, rising to £9bn by 2030. Working directly with Transport for London and innovative carriers (TNT and Gnewt Cargo and through them, DX and Hermes), we will developing new understandings of the overlap of delivery schedules, algorithms and business models to enable carrier co-ordination that reduces energy demand
Partners: University of Southampton, University of Westminster, University College London (UCL), Lancaster University
Grant information on EPSRC website: EP/K011723/1.
Energy Information System (EIS): Supporting Lancaster University’s Living Laboratory
Adrian Friday and Oliver Bates have lead an initiative to make all of Lancaster University’s energy and building data available from over 2000 data sources in order to enable better decision support, research, and teaching around energy. Working closely with the campus’ energy manager (Jan Bastiaans), the primary aim has been upholding Lancaster University’s commitment to an 83% reduction in its carbon emissions by 2050 (compared to 2005).
Faculty funded by Energy Lancaster.
DEMAND: Dynamics of energy, mobility, and demand
Mike Hazas is a Co-Investigator in this center, funded by Research Councils UK. He will oversee the research on Theme 2.1, which studies IT in practice, at home and on the move.
Grant information on EPSRC website: EP/K011723/1.
Encouraging Low Carbon Food Shopping with Ubicomp Interventions
This EPSRC project was led by Adrian Friday (PI), with Mike Hazas and Adrian Clear as Co-Investigator and Researcher Co-Investigator, respectively. Focusing on domestic food consumption, this project will, in collaboration with Booths supermarkets, iteratively design and evaluate interventions for domestic food consumers in order to reduce the environmental impact of food in their lives.
For more information, see the grant information on the EPSRC website: EP/K012738/1.
Sustainable Carbon Counters
Adrian Clear was a named researcher on this 6-month ESRC project that focused on reducing the GhG impact of shopping through smartphone interventions. It involved the development and evaluation of an app that tallied the impact of shopping list items and provided advice on alternative choices to users.
For more information, see the grant information on the ESRC website: ES/J009989/1.
Informing Energy Choices using Ubiquitous Sensing
Adrian Friday is Principal Investigator of this ongoing EPSRC-funded project on which Adrian Clear is a Senior Research Associate. The project brings Computer Science, Economics, Carbon Profiling and Sociology together to explore the feasibility of identifying and informing people of ‘critical moments in their daily activities that have carbon impact‘, so they can individually and collectively make savings. We are working with actual communities using a novel set of technological and cultural probes, involving embedded sensors, smartphone applications, aggregated ‘crowdsourced’ data and ethnographic field work, to deliver a richer understanding of behaviour that leads to lower carbon lifestyles. Our increased understandings of these areas are fed into the design of behaviour interventions, the impact of which are evaluated through quantitative and qualitative studies.
For more information, see the grant information on the EPSRC website (EP/I00033X/1) and the project website.