There’s no doubt 2014 is going to be a big year for Glasgow; the Commonwealth Games, the MTV Europe Awards, the Ryder Cup and the Independence Referendum.
But 2014 is also the year that Glasgow gets ‘smart’…
At the start of 2013,
Glasgow City Council won the Future Cities Demonstrator competition, securing a £24 million fund from the Technology Strategy Board to spend on projects and technologies to help “make life in Glasgow smarter, safer and more sustainable”. With the IES headquarters based in Glasgow, we were keen to be involved in this Future City project.
IES is now working with Glasgow City Council to develop an online system which will enable citizens to evaluate the energy efficiency of their dwellings and get recommendations of possible improvements, including retrofit solutions, renewables and other energy conservation measures.
We will develop a 3D web portal that will allow users to view the city’s energy performance at both district and building level. A mobile app will also be created for building and home owners to understand their energy use, examine simple energy conservation measures to help them reduce their consumption and provide them with potential retrofit solutions that will be applicable to their buildings.
The app will act as a gateway between users and technology suppliers and will ultimately facilitate city-scale assessments of energy use. The importance of providing a means to conduct the latter cannot be overstated, in terms of the associated potential economic and environmental benefits for Glasgow.
This is an exciting project for IES and Glasgow, and one that continues to move the focus from the building to the city. You can visit the R & D section of our website to find out about our other research projects that are exploring how cities can operate intelligently; in order to benefit its inhabitants and our environment.
2014 – let’s make it a smart one.
