Climate Safety and Security Center (CASS)
The Climate Safety & Security Center is an interdisciplinary research center of TU Delft | Campus The Hague that combines two important societal themes - Climate Change and Safety & Security – from an engineering perspective.
Mission: Ensuring human security in times of (exacerbating) climate change
Goals: Understanding, analysing and acting on the interplay of climate change, pre-existing vulnerabilities and instability in the liveable environment, with a focus on safe and secure supply(chains) of water, food, energy and materials.
Approach: Approaching climate change and stability from the unique TU Delft engineering perspective, in close collaboration with local, regional, national and global public administration and policy
Flagships: The CASS Flagships focus on the essential commodities and their supply chains, with human security & liveable environment as the overarching flagship.
Each flagship consists of a dedicated research team with researchers from different faculties within the TU Delft (A&BE, AP, CEG, EEMCS, ME, TPM).
CASS Executive Board
Behnam Taebi (scientific director CASS, TPM)
Tina Comes (academic lead HS&LE, TPM)
Marjolein van Esch (academic lead HS&LE, ABE)
Femke Vossepoel (academic lead data, CEB)
Lotte Asveld (academic lead Food, AP/TPM)
Joris Dick (academic lead Materials, ME)
Alex Stefanov (academic lead Energy, EEMCS)
Jennifer Kockx (program manager CASS)
Contact person: Jennifer Kockx (j.p.kockx@tudelft.nl)
Human Security & Liveable Environment
The Human Security and Liveable Environment Flagship brings the four critical resource Flagships (water, food, energy and materials) together. We take an integrated approach that considers the climate safety and security implications of the provision of critical resource flows, and the engineering solutions required to achieve tolerable levels of human safety and security for all.
We work on innovative engineering approaches that enable decisionmakers to analyse, model and monitor the links between climate change and the safety and security implications of critical resource provision on three interconnected scales: global, national and local.
Water
The Water Flagship focuses on the ensuring the sufficient availability of water of sufficient quality within the framework of a liveable environment. The flagship aims to incentivize system thinking about (multilevel/transnational) governance of water security for domestic use, industry and agriculture, including options for re-use of wastewater, while addressing the nexus of water, energy,food and health (human + planetary). We need to ensure just and safe access to water and sanitation as well as spatio-temporal availability and protection from extremes and trade-offs between different water-related risks (e.g., impact of flood protection strategies on water availability in times of drought and water quality).
Food
The Food Flagship focuses on how we can sustainably feed people across the globe. As the world’s population continues to grow, so does the demand for food. Yet food systems are vulnerable, particularly due to climate change, urbanisation, and their pressure on natural ecosystems, including freshwater consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The protein transition takes centre stage in designing new sustainable and equitable food systems. As innovations, ranging from cultured meat to precision fermentation, emerge, we need to develop, design and apply novel approaches to assess their impact. This includes not only the emissions of new technologies, but also their social and techno-economic impact, as well as their uptake by society.
Energy
Decarbonizing our society leads to massive changes in the energy sector. The future electricity system must be flexible, inclusive, digital, distributed, agile, and renewable, while the levels of reliability, safety, and affordability must be maintained if not improved, since also transport, heating, and industry will soon depend on this societal backbone.
The scientific foundation of designing and operating the electricity system also changes. New and unsolved phenomena such as swarm behaviour of smart power prosumers (consumers and producers) render existing, centralized, white-box methods for planning and operations inefficient. The Flagship Energy provides a scientific leap towards power grid self-organization.
Materials Security
The Materials Security Flagship focuses on materials engineering that is based on the concept of multiscale circularity, where every stage of the materials life is optimized, while also ensuring continuity of materials flows. We break this down into three focal points:
Green production: methods and policies to minimise energy, resource demands and environmental impact of large-scale materials production, from green steels and metals to biobased plastics.
Responsible life cycles: engineering low footprint, application-tailored, and high-performance materials with longer lifetimes and safer operation.
Productive End-of-life: bringing critical elements and materials back into circulation with maximal efficiency and minimal environmental impact.