Biochar is a circular and ecological solution to manage waste that is not recyclable. It is a charcoal-like substance, produced by heating organic biomass from biodegradable municipal, agriculture and forestry waste in the absence of oxygen (pyrolysis) to make it carbon-rich and chemically-stable offering enormous potential to combat climate change. Many forms of biochar use and application are emerging including its use as a building material. The use of biochar as low as 1% replacement of the fine aggregate in cementitious composites has been found to improve the compressive strength by approximately 10%. As well as having excellent insulating properties, improving air quality, being able to soak up moisture and protect from radiation, biochar also allows buildings to be turned into carbon sinks. The project vision is to provide a decision support framework to enhance the use of biochar within the UK building industry to make a significant contribution to fight climate change. The aim is to increase the level of awareness of biochar and its commercial, healthy revenue generation potential, carbon credits and environmental benefits for the building industry. We will carry out detailed analysis of the inclusion of different types of biochar in varying quantities in cementitious composites such as concrete, bricks, plaster, and grout. The physical, mechanical, and chemical properties of these composites such as concrete will be studied to understand their performance, overall durability and thermal conductivity for applications within buildings. In parallel to this these biochar composites would also run through building modelling to investigate contribution to energy savings and enhanced thermal efficiency in buildings. We will compare carbon savings with standard building construction for chosen building archetypes. The savings achieved will help us to assess the value of biochar in construction. Our interdisciplinary approach includes the participation and collaboration of stakeholders to generate qualitative and quantitative indicators to express, holistically, the value of biochar in modern low-carbon construction. Through an integrative stakeholder approach, this project aims to explore (a) the awareness of the commercial and revenue generation potential of biochar (b) its potential to realise carbon credits and environmental benefits for the built environment as well as (c) subjective perceptions of the overall value attached to biochar and the interest and motivation to increase its usage within the built environment sector. To share the outcomes of our research and to identify next steps for promoting the use of biochar in the UK we will use qualitative approaches to carefully design a series of events and workshops. True innovation in the built environment is highly dependent on national policy, building standards, urban regulations, construction codes, market conditions and financial mechanisms which facilitate or obstruct the emergence of innovative solutions. We will be therefore speaking to multi-stakeholders including policy makers, energy ministers, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and to understand the effectiveness, readiness, cost, social acceptability and limitations of biochar as the building material. We will illicit concerns, attitudes, challenges and opportunities for the biochar application within buildings and identify ways of how best to adapt legal regulations regarding production and usage of biochar and associated carbon credits. The final outcome being a decision support framework for practitioners in adopting biochar as a sustainable construction material with indicators proposed would be transferrable to other new (or less used) materials.

As we age, many of us will experience cognitive changes, and for some of us, these will develop into dementia. We know that people's homes can make the experience of cognitive changes more difficult, or can enable continuing inclusion and sense of self-worth and self-esteem. DesHCA will work with people experiencing ageing and cognitive change and those who design and develop housing. We will identify housing innovations that can support living better for longer with cognitive change. Our emphasis on healthy cognitive ageing goes beyond narrow conceptions of 'dementia-friendly design' into a more expansive and inclusive approach to housing innovation. The multidisciplinary DesHCA team involves stakeholders from all areas of housing provision, including people experiencing ageing and cognitive change, architects and designers, housing experts, planners, builders and housing providers. Older people are integral to DesHCA and their health is at its heart. The project will design and build virtual and real designs that will act as demonstrators and test-beds for innovations to support healthy cognitive ageing. These designs will be evaluated from stakeholder points of view, then considered at a larger scale to examine their real-world feasibility. DesHCA has a unique opportunity to feed directly into the UK and Scottish Government City Region Deal for Central Scotland (Stirling and Clackmannanshire), providing groundwork for local housing developments. The focus of this is sustainable, lifetime health, community and economic development, addressing deprivation and inequality. To achieve these aims, DesHCA takes a co-production approach, with the whole team working to identify innovations that engage with their real-world experiences and aspirations. We will use exciting and involving ways to collect data which will be used to inform the design of the demonstrator houses. These designs will evolve as stakeholders interact with them and provide feedback from their different points of view. To collect data, we will ask older people to map and evaluate their own homes and to experience and comment on new design features using virtual reality (VR). They will then collaborate with builders, architects and housing providers in VR workshops to identify practical, realistic and affordable designs that can support healthy cognitive ageing, and therefore longer healthy, independent life. Partners will then come together in interactive workshops to convert designs into plans within a fictional town, building and retrofitting homes, creating services and managing budgets. We will demonstrate how designs can work out in the real world, and how to bring together the various interests involved. Throughout, we will consider issues of costs, to inform business planning and help make decisions on implementation of the new designs. The impact of DesHCA will be achieved through showing what works in housing design for healthy cognitive ageing. Immediately, DesHCA will feed into the City Region Deal and longer term we will provide tools for future developers to inform their decisions about housing for healthy cognitive ageing. Throughout the project, we will disseminate findings to the housing, architecture and building sectors through stakeholder networks. We will publish rigorous research findings to provide a peer reviewed, high quality research base for innovation. Thus we will go beyond recommendations and guidance to provide evidence to support delivery at scale, grounded in the co-production approach that draws on the real experience, interests and imperatives that drive different stakeholders. DesHCA's multidisciplinary team will build capacity among early career researchers in research leadership, working across disciplines such as architecture and planning, economics, sociology and across sectors with a range of different industrial and professional stakeholders, such as housing workers, planners and construction companies.

Digital twins are a fusion of digital technologies considered by many leading advocates to be revolutionary in nature. Digital twins offer exciting new possibilities across a wide range of sectors from health, environment, transport, manufacturing, defence, and infrastructure. By connecting the virtual and physical worlds (e.g. cyber-physcial), digital twins are able to better support decisions, extend operational lives, and introduce multiple other efficiencies and benefits. As a result, digital twins have been identified by government, professional bodies and industry, as a key technology to help address many of the societal challenges we face. To date, digital twin (DT) innovation has been strongly driven by industry practitioners and commercial innovators. As would be expected with any early-adoption approach, projects have been bespoke & often isolated, and so there is a need for research to increase access, lower entry costs and develop interconnectivity. Furthermore, there are several major gaps in underpinning academic research relating to DT. The academic push has been significantly lagging behind the industry pull. As a result, there is an urgent need for a network that will fill gaps in the underpinning research for topics such as; uncertainty, interoperability, scaling, governance & societal effects. In terms of existing networking activities, there are several industry-led user groups and domain-specific consortia. However, there has never been a dedicated academic-led DT network that brings together academic research teams across the entire remit of UKRI with user-led groups. DTNet+ will address this gap with a consortium which has both sufficient breadth and depth to deliver transformative change.

The UK has fallen significantly behind other countries when it comes to adopting robotics/automation within factories. Collaborative automation, that works directly with people, offers fantastic opportunities for strengthening UK manufacturing and rebuilding the UK economy. It will enable companies to increase productivity, to be more responsive and resilient when facing external pressures (like the Covid-19 pandemic) to protect jobs and to grow. To enable confident investment in automation, we need to overcome current fundamental barriers. Automation needs to be easier to set up and use, more capable to deal with complex tasks, more flexible in what it can do, and developed to safely and intuitively collaborate in a way that is welcomed by existing workers and wider society. To overcome these barriers, the ISCF Research Centre in Smart, Collaborative Robotics (CESCIR) has worked with industry to identify four priority areas for research: Collaboration, Autonomy, Simplicity, Acceptance. The initial programme will tackle current fundamental challenges in each of these areas and develop testbeds for demonstration of results. Over the course of the programme, CESCIR will also conduct responsive research, rapidly testing new ideas to solve real world manufacturing automation challenges. CESCIR will create a network of academia and industry, connecting stakeholders, identifying challenges/opportunities, reviewing progress and sharing results. Open access models and data will enable wider academia to further explore the latest scientific advances. Within the manufacturing industry, large enterprises will benefit as automation can be brought into traditionally manual production processes. Similarly, better accessibility and agility will allow more Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) to benefit from automation, improving their competitiveness within the global market.