Research

As urban transformation accelerates, there is a need to strengthen social wellbeing and social sustainability in design and delivery. Through the Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods Programme (GTNP), C40 promotes 15-minute city pilot strategies to drive sustainable and liveable urban transformation. Therefore, a partnership between C40 and Ramboll has been formed to develop knowledge and tools for social sustainability in the 15-minute city pilots of the GTNP. It will provide social wellbeing advisory services and capacity building to the GTNP cities and focused advisory to 1-2 pilot cities.

London is leading the way through its first-of-its-kind Circular Economy Statement policy, requiring the largest development projects to submit a circular economy strategy. This is part of a wider global movement of cities gradually starting to enforce circular planning and procurement policies. However, these policies, whilst creating some change to the industry’s mindset, could have a more measurable impact in tackling the industry’s carbon and environmental footprint if they were enforced through more stringent circular targets. This project aims to use London as a testbed, through The London Waste and Recycling Board, operating as ReLondon. Achievable but ambitious targets will be defined, analysing the circular capabilities of the construction industry, and data-backed case studies and metrics are provided to support their implementation by industry.

The overall objective of the study is to provide knowledge about a future technology which potentially could provide a substantial contribution towards ensuring CO2 neutrality and improving the energy self-sufficiency in Greenland. Specifically, the study will investigate under which framework conditions producing an e-fuel in the form of methanol may be attractive. As a starting point it is envisaged that the carbon captured from the waste-to-energy facility in Buksefjorden could be used to produce 11 million litres of e-fuel, constituting enough energy to supply two major towns with heat and power. This project alone could reduce CO2 emissions from Nuuk by more than 10%. Greenland has a strategy to reduce its CO2 emissions and is aiming at carbon neutrality in its public energy supply by 2020.

With tens of thousands of old European steel/composite bridges there is a large need for rational methods for strengthening these, and the economic potential is very large. The project contributes with new knowledge for keeping old bridges, saving both taxpayers’ money and the environment. The Ramboll Foundation will partly finance this PhD project at Luleå University of Technology. The illustration shows the launching of a Finnish bridge with a ‘K-truss’ between the bottom flanges.

The purpose of the project is to enable circular use of buildings made of precast concrete elements. The PhD establishes a theoretical and computer-based calculation basis for designing modifiable wall structures, that not only fulfills the functional requirement of today, but can be modified for other use of the building in the future. The material design is optimized to minimize the CO2 footprint of the structure.

Transport and mobility are not gender-neutral, but even so there’s a lack of focus and data about women’s trips, needs, and concerns in transport. The transport sector is male dominated which, combined with the lack of awareness and data, creates an unconscious bias in transport planning. Ramboll Smart Mobility collects data, insights and knowledge about differences between the travel patterns and mobility needs of women and men in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, India and Singapore. The purpose is to help bridge the data gap to both educate ourselves and our clients in order to create better and more sustainable mobility for everybody.

Despite many years of research in shear capacity of concrete beams, the models that are available today do not always reflect the shear failure mechanism or the load carrying capacity observed in experiments. In this project, an increased experimental evidence on the shear capacity and failure mechanism of concrete beams with and without shear reinforcement is established. The different parts of the shear failure mechanism will be studied, using new measuring techniques. The experimental programmes will be conducted as part of a PhD project at the University of Southern Denmark, in Odense. The aim of the PhD is to establish a more reliable mechanical model for calculating the shear capacity of concrete beams in practice.

The Foundation supports unconscious bias training for student counselors, student ambassadors and university staff at the Faculty of Engineering at University of Southern Denmark, thus contributing to a more inclusive environment that will increase and qualify the talent pool in engineering. Specifically, it will help attract more female applicants and strengthen the diversity in recruitment to the engineering degree programmes. The purpose is to meet the labor demand and put all talents into play to ensure (e)quality, innovation power and welfare in education, industry and society.

City of Aarhus together with Aarhus University and Ramboll will host a conference around the next generation of Liveable Smart Cities where technology is used with a human centric approach to create more livable and sustainable cities. The conference is also open to the public and will gain new insights and exchanges on smart city development and create new connections between Danish, Nordic and European Smart City professionals.

Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl will with this PhD explore novel approaches to digital terrain modelling, which will lead to more sustainable design solutions and increased planning accuracy in the fields of civil engineering and landscape architecture. The research will take advantage of emerging innovative technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Parametric Design. Overall this approach will result in increased design accuracy, better site performance, lower construction costs and higher customer satisfaction.