Research and Development Focus

Sustainability Research Institute

ARENA can help your business in many ways from in-lab and living-lab research support to technological validation for product and service innovations

Urban Green Infrastructure & Nature-Based Solutions

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  • Monitoring and surveying UGI for ecosystem service value e.g. water attenuation, water quality, thermal performance, noise reduction, social cohesion, biodiversity net-gain.
  • Biodiversity mapping, monitoring and enhancement strategies.
  • Green roof surveys: advice to optimise the design, installation and maintenance of existing green roofs including substrates testing: physical and chemical testing of growing media

SRI Experts:
Stuart Connop | Caroline Nash | Jack Clough | Richard Lindsay

Beneficiary learning outcomes:

  • Businesses supported with evidence demonstrating their product viability
  • Consistency in manufacture

Product performance with benchmarks against existing products on the market.

Wildlife Conservation

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  • Spatial and assemblage analysis, mapping and monitoring of wildlife populations to assess diversity, rarity, typicalness and supporting habitat features.
  • Surveying and monitoring habitats to track responses to management, climate change, habitat change and possible impairment of ecosystem services.
  • Design input on how to enhance product design and site management to support biodiversity.

SRI Experts:
Stuart Connop | Caroline Nash | Jack Clough | Richard Lindsay

Beneficiary learning outcomes:

  • Develop sophisticated data sets
  • Analyse your products and/or habitats/species groups
  • Determine where your innovations will be best-suited.

Material Engineering, Waste and Circular Economy

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  • Development and testing of sustainable construction materials (aggregates, concrete, clay etc.) derived from industrial by products and waste materials
  • Designing out waste and maximising reuse value of embodied materials in industrial processes 
  • Validate the feasibility of reconstituting low value 'waste' back into valuable resource
  • Green roof aggregate testing.

SRI Experts:
Darryl Newport | Bamdad Ayati | Mike Medas

Beneficiary learning outcomes:

  • Product testing and scale up feasibility
  • Businesses support to understand and validate innovations for recycling of waste materials into a secondary product of value

Community Engagement and Assets

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  • Participatory planning and community engagement approaches for sustainable infrastructure
  • Adaptive governance and implementation including the development of formal and informal institutions for the management and use of shared local green and blue assets

SRI Experts:
Paula Vandergert | Shaherah Jordan

Beneficiary learning outcomes:

  • Gain insights on community engagement, governance and local authority networks for their urban green infrastructure and nature-based solutions