Research and Development

Small World and its people have a strong track record in management, environmental and policy research. As an associate company of Lancaster University, our close links with the Environment Centre Management School and Engineering Department and give us access to a wealth of expertise. Projects include:

  • An Environmental Input Output model and two hybrid tools for organisational greenhouse gas footprint assessments. These were developed in collaboration with Lancaster University and funded by the Joule Centre. Their innovation and novelty lies in their ability to provide comprehensive assessments of emissions from organisations and supply chains in ways that are practical, robust and realistic.
  • Research into embodied and operational impacts of building scenarios. This includes three papers for Historic Scotland, investigating the embodied and operational emissions resulting from different treatment of older buildings. One of these explores truncation error in traditional life cycle analyses of buildings by comparing with Input Output approaches. This work was carried out in collaboration with the Crichton Carbon Centre
  • Transparent footprinting tools for organisations, based on extensive datasets of process based life cycle analyses drawn from the public domain.
  • A unique model for understanding emissions in UK food supply chains, based on real sales and supply chain information. This stems from our detailed work analysing the greenhouse gas footprint of Booths Supermarkets (plough to check-out).
  • Scenario and decision-making tools for integrated greenhouse gas management systems. This work has been carried out with input from the Crichton Carbon Centre, Enviros and Decision Evaluation Ltd.
  • A Learning and Skills Strategy for Environmental Technologies and Services sector in the Northwest (for Envirolink Northwest, delivered through NTS).
  • Productivity and Skills Action Plan for environmental technologies and services sector (for NWDA delivered through NTS)
  • Environmental leadership research for Northern Leadership Academy
  • Assessing the brand value impact of and carbon strategy options in higher education institutions
  • Evaluation of Ashridge's organisational development interventions in further education colleges (for the Centre for Excellence in Leadership)