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ABOUT DESIGNING SAFER URBAN SPACES

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DESURBS is a research-based project which is tasked with producing relevant and useable products for built environment and design professionals to realise more resilient and secure design for  urban spaces.

What is DESURBS?

DESURBS stands for Designing Safer Urban Spaces. It is a research-based project which is developing tools for built environment and design professionals to use to understand, identify and address security risks affecting the spaces they are involved in planning, designing and managing.

What is resilient design?

Resilient design is a holistic activity to reduce its vulnerability to a range of hazards and threats. It involves a range of activities and a range of built environment and design professionals over a long period of time to shape and manage the built fabric. Importantly it is concerned with both the spatial form and (re)design of the built environment and the processes that help shape it.

 

What research is DESURBS undertaking?

Limitations in the knowledge and previous experience that local built environment and design professionals have in dealing with these different types of hazard and security threat constrain the design and redesign of urban spaces to make them more secure. DESURBS addresses this through a range of research tasks to collate, analyse and understand previous incidents. This includes:

A database of past incidents identifying the planning and design context, the management approach and mitigation measured employed against the risks identified in that space is being compiled and analysed. This will feed directly into the development of a set of urban design tools and underpin the decision support portal.

What will DESURBS produce?

 

Using the research as its foundation, the output of the project will be an online decision support portal for the design of safer urban space. This will contain a range of tools to help built environment and design professionals to:

  • Identify hazards and risks

  • Understand the potential impact of these risks from similar incidents in similar spaces

  • Employ and deploy appropriate mitigation measures to reduce risk and prevent incidents reoccurring.

 

The portal will:

 

  • Provide an entry point to view information for safer design of urban spaces

  • Analyse of underlying data according to the parameters and context set by the user

  • Support searching, visualisation, processing, and reporting

  • Combine various data and tools in one interactive space

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The portal will provide urban built environment professionals with interactive assistance to help them in making better and safer design and planning decisions affecting urban spaces.

 

Who is involved in DESURBS?

DESURBS is a multi-disciplinary project involving partners with a range of complimentary expertise based at a number of institutions. 

Who funds the DESURBS project?

DESURBS is part funded by the European Commission. It is funded through the FP7 programme as a capability project under the 10.2 Security of infrastructures and utilities area of research as part of the SEC-2010.2.3-1 Planning, (re)design, and (re)engineering of urban areas to make them less vulnerable and more resilient to security threats call.

 

 

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