The UK, along with most other nations in Europe, is encountering a paradigm shift as the funding, management, and protection of infrastructure is increasingly expected to be managed through partnership-led governance ensuring better informed and more viable, long-term decision making. This shift in emphasis from 'top-down' direct government, to 'bottom-up' stakeholder engagement is particularly pronounced in managing risks to critical infrastructure and the environment. Current methodologies and tools, such as surveys and stakeholder focus groups, aimed at consultation with stakeholder organisations and citizens are however generally limited in scope and insufficiently open or adaptive. Thus, they do not effectively inform the complex planning processes underlying comprehensive, multi-faceted infrastructure development planning as undertaken for example in the Thames Estuary. In order to inform and reconcile planning approaches to heterogeneous challenges such as environmental risk protection, economic viability (e.g., fisheries) and ecosystem management, new consultation methods and novel ways of combining multi-stakeholder views with quantitative data are urgently needed. The Thames Estuary Partnership (TEP) and its partners are facing the challenge of stakeholder integration in the planning of imminent, major infrastructural development in the context of large scale projects in the areas of pollution (sewers), flood protection and ecosystem management. This project is designed to leverage, apply and evaluate - in the Thames Estuary Infrastructure context, cutting edge methodologies and software tools for value-based, data-driven planning methods developed and tested as part of the recent, interdisciplinary EPSRC funded project "Towards Data-Driven Environmental Policy Design" (TDDEPD). Building on novel developments in human data capture and computer science, these techniques enable the rapid and comprehensive capture of qualitative data; e.g., stakeholder opinion and their integration with quantitative data sources such as sensor measurements (e.g., rainfall levels) and process outputs. While these planning methodologies were developed in a very different topical (i.e. environmental protection planning) and geographic (Western Australian wetlands) context, this project will explore their adaptation and application to the context of infrastructural planning in the Thames Estuary. In order to establish their viability, the project brings together an exceptional team, led by the TEP and including the Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute and School of Computer Science from the University of Nottingham (Horizon) and integrating key expertise in planning contributed (as an in-kind contribution) by the Department for Parks and Wildlife by the Western Australian Government. The ambitious project will deliver a novel value-driven methodology for infrastructure planning, including an adapted framework for stakeholder engagement. A digital platform enabling the capture and processing of both stakeholder input and (often uncertain) quantitative data (e.g., water levels) will be developed and will provide essential management support tools such as sensitivity analyses for potential infrastructure changes. The latter will also directly support the evaluation of the proposed approach and will enable addressing a concrete use case within the project time frame (Clean Seas Please). TEP believe that a values-based approach to managing infrastructure, risk, and habitat creation will be the only effective way forward. They believe that using the methods to be developed in this work by a team with a strong track record and significant expertise will transform the way they interact with those to whom they are responsible at the levels of policy setting, and policy implementation and will enable the comprehensive planning and development of infrastructure in the future.

Digital technologies have a transformative impact in the economy and wider society. New innovations in Information Communication Technology (ICT) such as the next generation '5G' internet, automation and robotics, and big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have the potential to make a profound societal impact and the pace of development is staggering. The same technologies can though have a negative impact on society, including significantly increasing the carbon emissions related to ICT and thus creating damaging impacts on our environment. Managing this duality between ICT's benefits and risks must be at the heart of future ICT design and innovation - ensuring ICT can continue to bring value to our society and the economy, while keeping ICT innovations from exceeding planetary boundaries. However, there is currently scarce consideration of systemic impacts within ICT innovation, and design processes today lack the information and tools required to embed environmental sustainability into ICT. This project, PARIS-DE, will ensure that the carbon emissions associated with the ICT sector are aligned with the Paris agreement: limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To do this, the PARIS-DE project will develop a digital sustainability framework that systemically considers ICT's impacts and ensures Paris-compliant design through two key concepts: i) an evidence base around carbon emissions in the digital economy, and ii) a responsible innovation approach that targets environmental sustainability, yet maintains key aspects of ICT design that enable societal thriving. Using a range of disciplinary perspectives including computer science, human-centred design, philosophy and ethics and environmental economics, PARIS-DE will develop digital tools that support ICT development within planetary boundaries, and will create, demonstrate and evaluate the digital sustainability framework through three case studies: 1) big data and AI, 2) autonomous systems, and 3) video streaming. These case studies, taken as representative of the digital economy, will allow for an evaluation of different underlying technologies that threaten rising emissions. The case studies will also involve working closely with key stakeholders in ICT innovation (e.g. designers and developers in the ICT sector), ensuring the framework is comprehensive and effective. PARIS-DE will ultimately allow the ICT sector to innovate technology more sustainably and in-line with climate change mitigation targets.

Building privacy, trust and security into the evolving digital ecosystem is broadly recognized as a key societal challenge. Regulatory activities in the US, Europe and Japan are complemented by industry initiatives that seek to rebalance "the crisis in trust" occasioned by widespread personal data harvesting. All parties agree that key to this challenge are increased accountability and control. Accountability not only seeks to strengthen compliance but also make the emerging ecosystem more transparent to consumers, while control seeks to empower consumers and provide them with the means of actively exercising choice. This proposal will develop the underlying technology infrastructure required to deliver both accountability and control. Although personal data management is generally considered an intensely personal matter, it is also inherently social: it is impractical to withdraw from all online activity simply to protect one's privacy. The success of the modern Internet and the "free" services it supports largely rests on the ability for advertisers and analytics providers to make money with the result that approaches that remove or diminish advertising revenues have been doomed to failure. The many motivations and uses for systems enabling personal management of personal data point to a need for tools enabling individuals to take more explicit control over the collection and usage of their data and the information inferred from their online activities, while addressing the challenges of HDI. Working with partner organisations we have refined our vision of just such a tool, a Databox, an on-demand personal data aggregation and query point, control over which rests directly with the user. The Databox vision is of an open-source personal networked device augmented by cloud-hosted services that collates, curates, and mediates access to our personal data. The Databox will enable and, in some cases, may even host third party applications and services that process personal data. The Databox will form the heart of an individual's personal data processing ecosystem, providing a platform for managing secure access to these data and enabling authorised third parties to provide the owner with authenticated services while roaming outside the home environment.

Building privacy, trust and security into the evolving digital ecosystem is broadly recognized as a key societal challenge. Regulatory activities in the US, Europe and Japan are complemented by industry initiatives that seek to rebalance "the crisis in trust" occasioned by widespread personal data harvesting. All parties agree that key to this challenge are increased accountability and control. Accountability not only seeks to strengthen compliance but also make the emerging ecosystem more transparent to consumers, while control seeks to empower consumers and provide them with the means of actively exercising choice. This proposal will develop the underlying technology infrastructure required to deliver both accountability and control. Although personal data management is generally considered an intensely personal matter, it is also inherently social: it is impractical to withdraw from all online activity simply to protect one's privacy. The success of the modern Internet and the "free" services it supports largely rests on the ability for advertisers and analytics providers to make money with the result that approaches that remove or diminish advertising revenues have been doomed to failure. The many motivations and uses for systems enabling personal management of personal data point to a need for tools enabling individuals to take more explicit control over the collection and usage of their data and the information inferred from their online activities, while addressing the challenges of HDI. Working with partner organisations we have refined our vision of just such a tool, a Databox, an on-demand personal data aggregation and query point, control over which rests directly with the user. The Databox vision is of an open-source personal networked device augmented by cloud-hosted services that collates, curates, and mediates access to our personal data. The Databox will enable and, in some cases, may even host third party applications and services that process personal data. The Databox will form the heart of an individual's personal data processing ecosystem, providing a platform for managing secure access to these data and enabling authorised third parties to provide the owner with authenticated services while roaming outside the home environment.