Researchers from Brown and the University of Rhode Island are gearing up for an initiative to study the sustainability of the Jewelry District with the hope that the city of Providence can use the collected data to further the area's economic development.
The study, called "Green the Knowledge District," was launched by the Ocean State Consortium of Advanced Resources in tandem with the city to gauge energy use in the district. The city has begun calling the Jewelry District the "Knowledge District" as part of its effort to brand the area as the center of a new knowledge economy.
Researchers will focus on auditing the buildings in the area that are expected to have the largest environmental and economic impact, said Bradley Moran, professor of oceanography at URI and co-chair of the consortium's "Energy and Environment Collaboratory" that spawned the pilot project.
The project's directors have already selected 70 Ship St., a University laboratory for molecular medicine, as the first building to study, said Christopher Bull '79 MS'86 PhD'06, a senior research engineer and one of the leaders of the initiative.
The researchers will collect data on the buildings' natural gas usage, electricity and other resources, and will also consider sustainability factors like employees' commuting distances and amount of waste, Bull said.
Some of the data collection has already begun, and many institutions in the Jewelry District have made their buildings' energy use statistics public, Moran said. Other organizations might also be willing to share the data they have collected, said Clyde Briant, the University's vice president for research and a co-chair of the consortium. National Grid has agreed to work with the project, and the directors have met with a number of institutions and organizations — including the Environmental Protection Agency and the city's hospitals — to collaborate on data collection, Briant said.
Some of the project's researchers will be drawn from the student body, Bull said. Brown and URI will each contribute a small pool of students to help aid the process, with somewhere between six and 10 students coming from Brown, he said.
Two graduate students who are enrolled in a qualitative field methods course and one undergraduate have expressed interest in the initiative, Bull said. Jamie McPike GS, a sociology student, said the initiative "seems like a really innovative project" and that it is "worth keeping an eye on."
Bull said he is looking to recruit the remaining students from his class on sustainable energy.
The project is long-term, and an end date has not yet been set, Moran said. Data analysis will not likely start until the summer of 2014 or 2015, Bull said.
