A design-led approach to infrastructure

Posted on: 5 February 2013
By: mackene
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The government’s architecture watchdog, CABE Design Council, has published guidance that aims to improve the design quality of major infrastructure projects.

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Better regulation of sales and letting agents: An impact assessment of costs and benefits

Posted on: 5 February 2013
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This research seeks to understand the potential impacts of amending existing legislation to simplify and rationalise the current regulatory process by bringing letting agents under the same statute as estate agents under the Estate Agents Act 1979 (EAA79) and of enacting Section 22 of EAA79 to set minimum professional standards for all sales and lettings agents. The research seeks to establish the nature and extent of the costs and benefits associated with this proposed rationalisation of regulation of sales and lettings agents. This assessment is intended to test the business case before using it to influence and persuade key industry partners, consumers and government of the need for change in the regulatory structures in the UK residential property market. Register on the RICS website to view the document.

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Housing Assessment Tool

Posted on: 5 February 2013
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The Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) has developed the Housing Assessment Tool (HAT), a programme that runs in Excel 2007 and gives a rough assessment of a house’s energy efficiency level. Based on CSE’s Housing Assessment Model, HAT is designed to enable community groups to analyse data about their local housing stock and produce individual energy saving reports for householders.

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Green Deal opportunities for community groups

Posted on: 5 February 2013
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A video on how communities can use the Green Deal to make homes in their area more energy efficient.

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Building the world’s tallest building in 90 days

Posted on: 5 February 2013
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The world’s tallest building will be built in China using a sustainable flatpack system that will enable construction to be completed in just 90 days. Chinese construction business Broad Sustainable Building (BSB) will soon start work on the 220-storey Sky City project in Changsha. The project will use the same factory-built module technique as the T30 tower, the 30-floor hotel that BSB built in just 15 days. A video shows BSB’s technique in action while building the T30 tower.

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Taiwan Market Outlook: Hotel market poised for growth

Posted on: 5 February 2013
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According to this research, limited high-end hotel supply in Taiwan, coupled with a positive tourist arrivals outlook, provide opportunities for Taiwan’s hotel market to bloom.

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The performance of road transport infrastructure and its links to policies

Posted on: 5 February 2013
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Despite the economic importance of the road transport sector, there is no systematic cross-country evidence on the sector’s efficiency. This paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing the social efficiency of the road transport sector, including non-market inputs, such as travel time, and negative outputs, such as accidents and emissions. This framework is then used to analyse efficiency in 32 OECD countries.

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Measuring the potential of local green growth: An analysis of Greater Copenhagen

Posted on: 5 February 2013
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As the need to address the impacts of climate change becomes more urgent and the subsequent green momentum continues to gather pace, individual governments and companies are transitioning to a low-carbon economy. This transition to a low-carbon economic and industrial future is taking place in a highly uncertain and competitive marketplace. With many countries and cities seeking to give their own domestic companies a head start as closer attention is paid to this low carbon transition, indicators are becoming increasingly important as a mechanism to inform the development of programmes designed to generate green economic growth. This paper presents, for the first time a local ‘green growth’ indicator framework. This indicator framework was developed from the OECD ‘green growth’ strategy at the national level, but modified to highlight issues of transition that are most relevant for local areas. This working paper is the first trialling of this approach, along with an indicator visualisation tool – or dashboard. The dashboard allows easy assessment of the progress of a particular local area in a number of indicator variables. The paper discussed results for the analysis of Copenhagen and its cleantech cluster.

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Technology4change

Posted on: 5 February 2013
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Technology4change examines the most important environment research, emerging technologies and innovative products from around the world, selected from over 50 news sources every week.

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Retrofit Briefing

Posted on: 5 February 2013
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Retrofit Briefing is a new regular e-publication from BRE providing news, analysis and data on building retrofit and refurbishment. The e-publication is published 10 times a year, with each issue comprising at least 8 pages. It is available on annual subscription (10 issues) of £120 in PDF format only. A free copy of the first issue, January 2013, can be viewed online.

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