FAST-Lab launches URB-Grade project
The FAST-Lab at the Department of Production Engineering of Tampere University of Technology will start work on another FP7 Strategic Research project, URB-Grade. The purpose of the project is to develop ICT for energy-positive neighbourhoods (objective EEB-ICT-2011.6.5).URB-Grade will be officially kicked off by NOV12 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
URB-Grade (Decision Support Tool for Retrofitting a District, Towards the District as a Service) aims to design, develop and validate a Platform for Decision Support that will allow city authorities and utilities to promote and choose the correct actions to upgrade a district to become more energy efficient, cost effective and to increase comfort for its citizens in a District as a Service Platform (DaaS Platform) approach. The DaaS Platform will identify the largest improvement potential for a district based on energy costs, development potential and comfort improvements for citizens.
Three Pilot District Profiles will be set up for the validation of the approach for different types of consumers in three different locations: Eibar (Spain), Kalundborg (Denmark) and Barcelona (Spain). It is envisioned that the platform will become a major tool for city planning and decision-making. The users of the platform are city authorities, utility companies and energy consumers.
One of FAST-Lab’s ambitions is to extend the vision of “the house is a machine for living in” by Le Corbusier and to realize “the city as a factory". Concretely, this translates to identifying, analysing and optimizing the services created, offered and consumed by all actors involved in the dynamics of the city (including factories and processing stations) and their interactions.
With a budget of 650k€ for URB-Grade, the FAST-Lab will capitalize results of previous projects such as ITEA-SODA and FP6-SOCRADES, which became major landmarks in the utilization of Web Services at Device Level. The new project also provides great synergy with the unit’s other ongoing projects, such as ARTEMIS- eSONIA, ASTUTE, FP7- AESOP and PlantCockpit.
Prof Lastra says: “In URB-Grade there is tremendous potential to explore possibilities to manipulate information so as to support the re-design of brownfield cities (originally designed around their signature industries) in such a way that they become sustainable from the energy consumption viewpoint having in mind the current industrial and service needs.”
Partners include: Alexandra Institute (Denmark), Fundación Tekniker (Spain), Telvent (Spain), THT Control Oy (Finland), Seas-NVE (Denmark), Fenie Energía (Spain), Town of Eibar (Spain) and Kalundborg Kommune Denmark).
Placed within the Department of Production Engineering, the FAST-Lab is a multi-disciplinary and multicultural group of 35 researchers, 7 of which are doctoral students led by Prof. Jose L. Martinez Lastra. The URB-Grade project falls under the theme “ICT Tools for Energy Efficient Smart Factories and Cities” that is part of the FAST-Lab’s operational profile.
More Information:
Prof. Jose L. Martinez Lastra (">jose.lastra@tut.fi), FAST-Lab