NEWS
Heat networks get funding boost
Local authorities are set to receive support from a £7m fund to set up district heating schemes. In all, 26 councils will receive
between £15,000 and £250,000 from an initial £1.9m funding round administered by the government’s Heat Networks Delivery Unit (HNDU) to help get projects off the ground. The money can be used to finance feasibility studies and business plans for the development of low carbon heat networks. The UK District Energy
Association (ukDEA) welcomed the funding. It said that around 14% of the UK’s heat demand could be met by heat networks by 2030. The rest of the £7m will be handed out to councils, that make successful applications for support, in stages up to March 2015.
Professor Colin Blakemore gives SLL lecture
A professor of neuroscience and philosophy has given lighters an insightful talk on the way our brains perceive the visual world. Professor Colin Blakemore
spoke at this year’s Trotter- Patterson Lecture, hosted by the Society of Light and Lighting. Blakemore said our visual
experiences were limited. ‘You can make assumptions of what you’re looking at, but the image is not providing secure information about the nature of the world,’ he said. The professor spoke at the Bishopsgate Institute in London. After asking the audience
to track moving objects that changed colour on the screen, Blakemore deduced that we have no visual past because when our vision jumps – even by half a degree – we find it difficult to detect change. ‘That’s why witness testimonies
are incredibly unreliable,’ he said.
‘Colour is an optional extra in our visual experience. We may think it’s essential to recognise what things are – but colour is added to the basic processes of analysing shapes and forms,’ he said.
12 CIBSE Journal March 2014 WILMOTT DIXON WINS ZERO CARBON BICESTER CONTRACT
Willmott Dixon will be the main contractor on the first phase of North West Bicester. The construction company has been appointed by housing provider A2Dominion to build the first 94 of 393 zero-carbon homes planned for Oxfordshire. Project director Steve
Hornblow said: ‘Not only does Willmott Dixon share our commitment to quality results, but the company has experience in building sustainable projects, meeting set environmental targets and delivering local labour opportunities.’
Institution calls for rethink on UK flood management
Experts call for government summit to discuss flooding
CIBSE president George Adams joined Landscape Institute president Sue Illman in calling for a government summit to discuss long-term planning to avoid further flooding devastation in the UK.
In an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron, Illman urged a complete rethink to the way the country manages, stores and distributes its water, and its plans to make both the natural and the built environments more resilient.
The letter said that water management techniques could have helped prevent the effect of flooding on villages and towns. ‘In the long term, the management of water requires a clear strategy.’ Illman also warned against dredging as a universal panacea for the problems, as it may
CIBSE technical director Hywel Davies said: ‘It is essential that we look at how better to protect homes and business properties, not only from more extreme rainfall and winds, but also during heatwaves and droughts.’ Terry Nash, director of the UK
Water Harvesting Association, said it was imperative the government dealt with flooding in combination with drought.
Water water everywhere.
increase flooding to towns downstream. She called for proper exploration of how forestry, land management and soft-engineered flood alleviation schemes can hold back water in the upper reaches of rivers, and work alongside a dredging programme in the lower section.
He said dredging rivers and raising river banks could be counter-productive if the country faced drought and, therefore, crop failure later down the line. An average family of four could save about 50 litres of water per person per day using a surface water management solution, said Nash.
He added: ‘The government and the building industry have got to get their heads around this simple proposition, rather than do what they’ve always done – panic about the floods.’
www.cibsejournal.com
RONFROMYORK / SHUTTERSTOCK
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