A feasibility study for a novel remediation and sustainable growth digital tool for the Environment Agency, England, UK

The remediation of brownfield is vital to sustainable place-making and levelling up across the country. It provides an improved local environment that can unlock regeneration and the social, economic and ecological revitalisation of communities. However the total benefits of remediation are not fully understood or utilised in decision making. As a result, sites can remain derelict for years and opportunities to optimise value from public and private investment are missed.

Jacobs and BGS undertook research for the Environment Agency in England to evaluate the feasibility of developing a tool, which included:

• A virtual workshop using MURAL to enable digital interaction and collaboration to refine scope, define data requirements and map project stakeholders;
• Primary benefit and user requirements research, including looking at the potential impact of a tool through the development of a Theory of Change model and focussed interviews with key stakeholders to understand user requirements.
• Review of academic and grey literature;
• Accelerated design sprint to frame the problem/opportunity, explore technology agonistic solutions for the tool and develop into a storyboard.
• Develop a low fidelity prototype as a blueprint of how a tool might look.

The outcome of the work indicated there is both a need and demand for such a tool. It was also demonstrated to be technically feasible through the literature review and design sprint. Such a tool would have an extremely positive impact on the perceptions of brownfield, shifting it from a constraint to an opportunity. The presentation will provide a summary of the methods, an overview of the results and a demonstration of a prototype digital tool. Our disucssion will focus on the opportunities presented by using systems thinking combined with design thinking to influence the approach taken to planning and redeveloping brownfield sites.