The Connected Everything II (CEII) Network Plus will deliver a network of networks which will accelerate multi-disciplinary collaboration, foster new collaborations between industry and academia and tackle emerging challenges which will underpin the UK academic community's research in support of people, technologies, products and systems for digital manufacturing. Through a range of activities, including feasibility studies, networking, and thematic research, CEII will bring together new teams within a multidisciplinary community to explore new ideas, demonstrate novel technologies in the context of digital manufacturing, and accelerate impact of research into industry. The Network is inspired by the context of the four tenets of Industry 4.0: Interoperability; Information Transparency; Cognitive and Physical Assistance; and Decentralised Decisions and Actions. It will enable the multidisciplinary community to consider cross-cutting themes, some of which will emerge during the lifetime of the Network, but others - Creativity; Data-rich sociotechnical systems; and Regulation - which have been co-created by the industrial and academic members of the Network management team. The CEII Network Plus aligns with a National and International priority of Digital Manufacturing, as highlighted in the Made Smarter report. It will contribute to the delivery of a Connected Nation, through consideration of how advances in digital technologies which connect objects and data in future, distributed manufacturing systems. It will contribute to a Productive Nation, through development of demonstrator projects that take concepts from other domains and apply them to Digital Manufacturing, as well as a range of activities which will support the development of future leaders.

Rapidly developing digital technologies, together with social and business trends, are providing huge opportunities for innovation in product and service markets, and also in government processes. Technology developments drive socioeconomic and behavioural changes and vice versa, and the rate of change in these makes tracking and responding to high-speed developments a significant challenge in public and private sectors alike. Agile governance and policy-making for emerging technologies is likely to become a key theme in strategic thinking for the public and private sectors. Particular trends that are challenging now, and will increasingly challenge society include developments in technologies on the outskirts of the internet. These include Artificial Intelligence, not just in the cloud but in Edge computing, and in Internet of Things devices and networks. Alongside and in conjunction with this ecosystem, is Distributed Ledger Technology. Together this ensemble of technologies will enable innovations that promote productivity, like peer-to-peer dynamic contracts and other decision processes, with or without human sight or intervention. However, the ensemble's autonomy, proliferation and use in critical applications, makes the potential for hacking and similar attacks very significant, with the likelihood of them growing to become an issue of strategic national importance. To address this challenge, and to preserve the immense economic and productivity benefits that will come from the successful deployment and application of digital technologies 'at the edge', a focused initiative is needed. Ideally, this will use the UK's current platform of experience in the safe and secure application of the Internet of Things. The contributors to this platform include PETRAS partners, and several other centres of excellence around the UK. It is therefore proposed to build an inclusive PETRAS 2 Research Centre with national strategic value, on the established and successful platform of the PETRAS Hub. This will inherit its governance and management models, which have demonstrated the ability to coordinate and convene collaboration across 11 universities and 110 industrial and government User Partners, but will importantly step up its mission and inclusivity through open research calls for new and existing academic partners. PETRAS 2 will maintain an agile and shared research agenda that views social and physical science challenges with equal measure, and covers a broad range of Technology Readiness Levels, particularly those close to market. It will operate as a virtual centre, providing a magnet for collaboration for user partners and a single expert voice for government. User partner engagement is likely to be strong following the successes of the current PETRAS programme, which has raised over £1m in cash contributions from partners during 2018. The new PETRAS 2 'Secure Digital Technologies at the Edge' methodology will inherit the best of PETRAS, including open calls to the UK research community and a partnership-building fund that allows a responsive approach to opportunities that emerge from existing and new user and academic partnerships. PETRAS 2 will be driven by sectoral cybersecurity priorities while retaining a discovery research agenda to horizon-scan and develop understanding of new threats and opportunities. The scope of projects and the associated Innovate UK SDTaP demonstrators, spans early to late TRLs and aims to put knowledge into real user partner practice. Furthermore, the development of many early career researchers through PETRAS 2 research activities should lead to a step change in our national capability and capacity to address this highly dynamic area of socio-technical opportunity and risk.