In the developed world most people are able to take the supply of safe clean drinking water for granted, most of the time. However water quality failures do occur and there are associated health risks. The analysis of water samples, taken at the customers tap by the UK Water Industry to meet regulatory requirements, has shown that for three consecutive years approximately 1 in every 200 samples failed to meet the standards for coliforms, an indicator of faecal contamination. The few epidemiologic studies in the area confirm that there is a problem and that it is related to the pipe infrastructure. This pipe infrastructure, used to deliver this basic human resource, is an extremely complicated mix of materials, pipe sizes and structures and appurtenances that are connected in a network, usually in loops, developed in a piecemeal manner over considerable time. This infrastructure is integral to our towns and cities and widespread replacement is unfeasible due to the associated costs and disruption. Whi1e there is existing knowledge and tools for understanding and making some predictions of the structural performance of these assets, the knowledge and applicable understanding of their water quality related performance is extremely poor.This system of buried infrastructure acts as a dynamic physical, microbiological and chemical reactor, with high surface area and with highly variable residence times. As a consequence there are a number of major and interacting physical and bio-chemical processes that degrade the quality of drinking water as it is transported. The situation is further complicated by the unknown, but deteriorating, internal condition of the infrastructure. This Challenging Engineering vision will enable the applicant to establish a world leading multidisciplinary team to derive new knowledge of the physical bio-chemical reactions and interactions occurring within water distribution systems, dominated by the aging infrastructure. The team will integrate across engineering and microbiological, chemical and computer science. Extensive use will be made of the latest instrumentation and measurement techniques from the different disciplines, applied to experimental studies on the internationally unique, 600m long temperature controlled pipe test loop facility at the University of Sheffield and ambitious live field trials with UK water companies (both areas of particular expertise of the applicant). The new understanding and knowledge gained will be applied to develop a suite of analysis and predictive tools to drive a paradigm shift in the way in which water distribution systems are operated, managed, rehabilitated and maintained for water quality with a move towards proactive management operating in near real time.The project is extremely ambitious, but presents the opportunity for the UK to establish an area of international expertise and to lead the world in an expanding research area of public interest and significance. The most apparent output will be superior water quality at least cost, consistent with the demands of an increasingly well informed society, leading to enhanced public health and well being. In the longer term, the multidisciplinary team will evolve by seeking to further develop the multidisciplinary approach for the even more complex environments of the complete urban water cycle and seek to stimulate further change for integrated, holistic and sustainable management across the cycle.

The first phase of the SUE Programme has focused necessarily on the present, assessing current solutions and their application in the near future, thus providing a strong empirical base on which to build. There now exist both the need and a sufficient body of work to extrapolate the findings to establish and test alternative urban futures: to create a variety of scenarios, building on prior and new work, and predicated on different fundamental assumptions and priorities; to assess those scenarios in terms of design, engineering implementation and measurement of performance; to refine them, in terms of mitigation and adaptation measures, incorporating novel solutions; and ultimately to provide alternative solutions with an associated evidence base and strategies for their implementation. This bid seeks to integrate the outputs of three current SUE consortia (Birmingham Eastside, VivaCity 2020 and WaND) and complementary research on the use of trees to mitigate the effects of atmospheric pollution. The team will work across disciplines to envision and establish alternative futures (using extensive literature on this subject and prior WaND consortium work) and construct scenarios that might flow from each alternative future. The various work packages will then focus on testing specific dimensions of each alternative future vis a vis their design, implementation and performance in the context of case history sites. Each project will engage an expert panel of influential stakeholders who will meet six-monthly to test and help shape new ideas, the chairs of each of the expert panels forming the higher level project steering committee. Panel consultation will be followed by interviews of stakeholders on motivations and the decision-making process, and specific empirical research and modelling. The following high level questions will be addressed via this process: - How does the ab initio conceptualization of sustainability influence design outcomes (e.g. form, density)? How would outcomes change if urban renewal were predicated on either environmental or social or economic overriding drivers? - How does development impact on its environs, and vice versa (e.g. is a 'sustainable' site good for the city / region / country and, if so, in what ways?) and is there an optimum development size to yield optimally sustainable outcomes? - Push versus pull to achieve sustainable outcomes. Much of what is done is thought good (for individuals, society, the environment), what might be wanted (push). Thus decisions are made and people must decide whether or not to take ownership. Might more sustainable outcomes follow if those who must take ownership dictate what is created (pull)? Birmingham Eastside will be used both to develop sustainability ideas and to test them on sites at various stages of planning and development (the research team has unparalleled access via its partnerships with key stakeholders involved in Eastside). Lancaster (with Morecambe, population 96k) and Worcester (94k) will be used to test the outcomes at the scale of smaller urban areas (e.g. market towns) but no attempt will be made to build comprehensive databases as at Eastside. Several other UK and international urban areas (including Sao Paulo, Singapore and an urban area in India) will be used to test a sub-set of the project's findings to assess the transferability of the scenarios to a variety of contexts and thus their general applicability.

In a circular economy, clean growth is achieved by increasing the value derived from existing and planned economic infrastructure, products and materials which in turn significantly reduces or eliminates negative externalities. Increased value can be achieved by maintaining the integrity of a product or material at a higher level, using products longer, cascading their use in adjacent value chains and designing pure, high quality feedstocks (avoiding contamination and toxicity). A circular economy approach to plastics addresses simultaneously the accumulation, impact and costs in the environment whilst maintaining applications for multiple high value purposes. To translate potential to reality requires new circular plastics systems that a) co-ordinate and integrate key system players and activities across the value chain b) are underpinned by rigorous scientific research evidence; c) promote novel and creative approaches to the circulation and cascading of plastics in society and; d) demonstrate and proof points in support of decision-making and action at varying s Ths proposal will connect excellent institutional research activities within a single highly visible Multidisciplinary Plastics Research Hub - "ExeMPlaR" led by the University of Exeter to provide the first stage in a comprehensive, systematic and coordinated approach to the formation of a novel and creative circular economies, using regional demonstrators in the SW of England to test a number of key building blocks. This will be based on system-oriented innovation and high quality inter-disciplinary and collaborative scientific research within a proven, cohesive circular economy framework to address both the cause(s) of the problems and efforts to solve them rather than just treating the symptoms. This research effort involves the demonstration of the technical feasibility and superior economic, material, health, environmental and social value of a circular economy system re-design against a current linear base case. Expert-led, technical solutions by themselves however are unlikely to be effective and require in addition a theory of change that connects human behaviours, social systems and structures with circular economy principles. ExeMPLaR will bring together business, policy, community, environmental, and media representatives with a shared 'narrative' (in this case , a new Circular Plastics Economy) values and ideas, to jointly identify and work on a complex set of activities and pilot projects, that together form an effective innovation ecosystem (WP1). EXeMPLaR will undertake a novel and creative approach to impact by applying the principles of networks of transformative change into a circular economy project. ExeMPLaR therefore focusses on the current plastic system and address the potential to create higher value from existing plastic flows, create new opportunities for regional design and closed loop manufacturing and community initiatives, reduce negative externalities and create networks for transformational change to co-design and support systems innovations required at regional scale. To achieve this vision many challenges have to be overcome. To start the process of creating effective regional plastics economies, ExeMPLaR will synthesise an authoritative evidence base to inform regional actions, interventions and evaluation. This will build on a wide range of world leading plastics research at Exeter. We will translate these findings into the first stage of an evaluation tool and apply these to three front runner regional interventions, and additional smaller projects co-designed and prioritized by our network, to test opportunities for re-using, replacing or eliminating certain categories of fossil fuel derived plastic. After testing the impacts, outcomes and value creation potential we will address the potential challenges and enablers to replication and scaling these interventions at regional and national scale.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The aim of the Sustainable Eastside Project is to explore how sustainability is addressed in the regeneration decision-making process, and to assess the sustainability performance of completed development schemes in Birmingham Eastside against stated sustainability credentials and aspirations. The incorporation of sustainability into an urban regeneration program, such as Birmingham Eastside, appears best conceptualised as a complex decision-making process carried out by stakeholders who are embedded within the development process. The barriers to and enablers of sustainability (as identified in Phase I of this project) appear at various moments or locations within this complex. The timing and context of decisions are critical (examined in Phase II), and can cause path-dependency which then limits how sustainability features in final development plans. In Phases I & II, the research set in place a framework of cross-disciplinary knowledge and key partnerships; highlighted the importance of coherent integration of the three pillars of sustainability to enable the complexity of achieving urban sustainability to be sufficiently grappled with; gained access to key decision-making forums in Eastside; built strong links with key stakeholders in the area; and firmly integrated into the policy agenda for Eastside. In addition, researchers are working to establish a cross-cutting baseline dataset of developments in Eastside rigorously to measure change over time and the impact of particular decisions on the sustainability of the overall urban regeneration programme. In so doing the foundations for a zonal urban regeneration case study site are being established, augmented by the creation of a study facility, with library and hot desking, now available for researchers from SUE / IEP consortia, to study the application of research to practice. The emerging findings of Phase II have allowed researchers to develop a series of hypotheses about the timing of decisions for sustainability in a range of decision-making forums, and the extent to which path-dependency becomes problematic. In Phase III, a suite of innovative analytical tools will be employed to elucidate further the complexities and interactions of the key elements of the sustainability vision for Eastside. First, a Development Timeline Framework (DTF), a multi-disciplinary tool that makes explicit the path dependency of decisions toward achieving sustainability goals, and the conflicts and synergies between different sustainability objectives, will be used as the basis for further research. Second, a cross-cutting Sustainability Checklist (SC) applied to the DTF will allow each researcher to analyse the impact of timing and context of decisions for each sustainability element (e.g. biodiversity, public participation, space utilisation, local sourcing, and recycling). Third, an Industrial Ecology (IE) analysis will follow particular resources (e.g. water, aggregates) thus highlighting their interdependence, while a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) approach will enable assessment of the socio-cultural aspects of sustainability (not covered by the IE approach). This suite of tools underpins the delivery of the work package aims. This analysis will be undertaken on a case history site basis, using development sites within Eastside that are all currently 'live,' each site representing a different conceptualisation of sustainability. This provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the specific impact of early thinking about sustainability in the planning and design stages, and the impact of this timing and path-dependency on sustainability performance in the final built form.