BHP Billiton Sustainable Communities
UCL Grand Challenge Symposium Series
'Sustainable Resources for Sustainable Cities'
CALL FOR PAPERS

London, UK
DEADLINE | 16.08.2013 | 5.00 pm
UCL | University College London
Institute for Sustainable Resources

London | UCL | 5-6.11.2013

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BHP BILLITON SUSTANABLE COMMUNITIES | UCL GRAND CHALLENGE SYMPOSIUM SERIES
The BHP Billiton Sustainable Communities/UCL Grand Challenge Symposium Series was established in 2012 as a forum to bring together a variety of stakeholders integral to the debate around issues of global concern.
The series has a particular focus on the sustainability of natural resources and the links between resources and the four UCL Grand Challenges: Sustainable Cities, Global Health, Intercultural Interaction and Human Wellbeing.
The series will run over five years, beginning with a strategy and question setting forum, before taking a more in-depth look at each of the Grand Challenges in turn.

'SUSTAINABLE RESOURCES FOR SUSTAINABLE CITIES'
Cities or, more broadly, urban areas - densely packed, complex, built systems - are home to over half of the world’s population. With this trend of increasing urbanisation worldwide, urban sustainability has been identified as a key area of societal relevance, an area in which a solid research base can inform policy and practice.
The Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities (GCSC) exists to initiate and support cross-disciplinary research into urban sustainability. Sustainability in the urban context is inextricably linked to resource flows. Among the minimum requirements for a city’s population are housing, food, safe water, waste disposal, and energy for heating and cooling.
Cities must draw on global resource networks to provide the raw materials to build new infrastructure, maintain current systems and retrofit existing buildings. Cities also generally rely on a ‘hinterland’ to supply the energy, food, water and other resources they require.
The symposium will specifically look to address the challenges around provision of resources for growing urban populations, with regard to the physical built environment, infrastructure, transport and water. It would aim to address the question of how cities can continue to meet their present needs without compromising the future of the city, the region or the planet.

Call for papers
The Sustainable Resources for Sustainable Cities (SRSC) conference provides an excellent opportunity for you to present your work to a mixed audience of academics, industry representative, NGOs and policy-makers.
We now invite those interested in presenting their research at the symposium to submit an abstract outlining their work. Papers will be presented on the first day of the conference themed around the concept of 'urban metabolism' and should be submitted for one of the following sessions:
• Urban challenges
• Resources supply
• Resource consumption

Results will be announced in September.
Completed application forms should be sent to sustainable-resources [at] ucl.ac.uk