Projects

CIRS building

Piloting the future

Campus as a Living Lab uses university infrastructure, assets and resources to support innovative and applied research projects that improve our communities, region and world. They pilot new ideas, advance faculty research agendas and interdisciplinary collaborations, have an operational benefit for the university, and create opportunities for student learning and knowledge exchanges.

CLL projects link research to action. They include large-scale innovative capital projects with strong research programs, academic-industry partnerships advancing R&D for new technologies, specialized applied research programs within a variety of disciplines, real-world scale research infrastructure supporting broad range of academic research and operational benefits, and innovative student learning opportunities and programs connected to operational priorities.

Find out more these projects, and what we have learned from them.

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CLL Fund recipients

Browse our collection of projects by the recipients of previous CLL Fund Competition awards. These projects demonstrate collaborations between UBC faculty and staff, and were awarded seed funding to pilot new ideas.
Tallwood House

Capital projects

These significant capital projects are testing innovations and supporting robust research programs, often through major partnerships with government and industry, to impact local, regional, and global sustainability.
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Featured projects
Tent
Creating an inclusive, climate and COVID-resilient outdoor learning space @ UBC
The project aims to construct a pavilion that will serve as a place for gathering, communal learning, and inclusion for all future students. The project will also provide a new model for flexible, outdoor, liminal spaces for learning on the UBC campus.
Urban Forest Technologies Team deployed drones to capture urban forestry characteristics which would improve management of natural urban systems.
5G Natural Asset Management
The 5G Natural Asset Management and Integration project uses UBC campus to pilot the deployment of smart technologies for the management and planning of natural assets in support of healthier, climate resilient and sustainable communities.
A mass timber building with locally-fabricated CLT panels houses the facility.
Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Facility
UBC’s Bioenergy Research Demonstration Facility (BRDF) reduces UBC’s GHG emissions by turning waste wood biomass into clean energy and supports research on alternative energy technology.
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Project Library

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Digital Detection Web for On-Campus Insects

The Digital Detection Web project will deploy insect monitoring devices (involving high-resolution optics, machine learning, and the Internet of Things) to understand how changes in insect population indicate changes in local biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Data & Technology
Ecological Systems
Worker safety during construction was safeguarded with special fall protection equipment and guard rails.

Brock Commons Tallwood House

UBC’s Brock Commons Tallwood House is one of a growing number of mass-timber buildings around the world. Our Tallwood House takes advantage of new engineered wood products and construction techniques to showcase more sustainable building practices.

Built Environment & Mobility
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Embodied Carbon Pilot

How can we estimate embodied carbon in buildings to achieve GHG emissions reduction targets? This project identifies challenges and solutions for enabling more effective use of life cycle assessment (LCA) and benchmarking to drive embodied emission cutbacks.

Built Environment & Mobility
Climate Change & Energy
The living roof performs important ecological services at both the building and the campus scale.

Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability

The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) serves as both a hub for sustainability work on campus, as well as a sustainable building research subject. An internationally recognized interdisciplinary centre, CIRS embodies UBC’s Campus as a Living Lab approach to testing new ideas and sharing knowledge about sustainable building technologies and performance.

Built Environment & Mobility
Human Wellbeing & Social Systems
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UBC E-Kitchen

The UBC E-Kitchen will support efforts towards building a circular economy and reducing waste by repairing electronic equipment and distributing refurbished devices to those in need both on and off campus.

Production, Consumption & Waste