MPhil Degree

My MPhil built on the research I’d carried out during my MRes and explored specifically how metadata schema play a role in delivering energy flexibility to buildings. The title of the thesis is ‘Metadata Schema as a Facilitator for Decarbonisation within the Built Environment’, and the abstract is as follows:

In the United Kingdom, the built environment is a significant contributor to carbon emissions,
contributing around 26% of global energy-related emissions, which equates to 9.8 Gt CO2
per year, when accounting for indirect emissions. This is particularly poignant when
compared to the transport sector, which accounts for only 8Gt CO2 per year. With the UK
committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and considering that an
estimated 80% of current buildings will still be in use by that year, there is an urgent need
for strategies to decarbonize the built environment. Central to this is the effective utilization
of renewable energy sources. This research first sets out to understand the challenge of
decarbonising the built environment and seeks to identify key enables to achieve this. From
this investigation, the need for greater energy flexibility within buildings was highlighted as
a key requirement for decarbonisation. Further, the role of modelling, and more specifically
metadata schemas, were identified as a potentially facilitating technology to deliver greater
energy flexibility. Backed by a comprehensive literature review and interviews with industry
experts, this study evaluates the applicability of three prevalent building metadata schema
against the criteria established by PAS1878, a UK energy flexibility publically accessible
specification (PAS). The findings suggest that existing schemas fall short of meeting
these energy flexibility requirements. However, this shortfall is not simply a gap in the
concepts of existing metadata schemas, but relates to deeper complexities in building systems
and operations, including legal barriers and system interoperability issues. The research
makes two significant contributions: first, it crystallizes and assesses previously tacit and
undocumented industry knowledge on real-world building operations. Second, it scrutinizes
the readiness of metadata schema in supporting energy flexibility applications in the built
environment and identifies paths forward for more effective use of metadata schema for use
in this context.

MRes Degree

The total program is four full years, with the first spent undertaking an MRes. The MRes (Masters in Research) is designed to equip students with the necessary skills to carry out a PhD, while also acting as a pseudo-first year of the PhD. My areas of interest during the MRes year are focused around developing a foundational understanding of energy flexibility and digital twins, while also exploring technical topics such as embedded systems for the Internet of Things and probabilistic machine learning.