Mun river basin in Northeast Thailand is a prime example of the area impacted by hydro-meteorological hazards. Its specific vulnerability lies in the fact that its upstream parts are more prone to droughts, whereby the downstream part of the basin is a flood risk zone. About 80 to 90% of rice cultivation area in the Mun river basin is rain-fed. Rainfall in the study area is highly erratic both in space and time even though the annual average amount is near to the norm of Thailand. This unevenness has serious effects on rice production, living conditions and income of farmers who are the main population in the region. ENRICH will bring together expertise and experience from UK and Thailand in the areas of climate variability and climate change, floods and drought modelling and water resources management. The ultimate aim of this project is to establish a strong collaboration and exchange of knowledge between the University of Exeter and AIT, to develop innovative integrated solutions to address the pressing problem of hydro-meteorological extremes and adaptation strategies and measures in the Mun river basin. The proposed project will address the following research questions: - What are the main environmental drivers affecting the meteorological and climate variability and change in Northeast of Thailand? - What are possible hydro-meteorological scenarios and extremes in future in the study area? What is the level of confidence that the projected changes can be attributed to environmental and climate changes? - What are the expected changes in hydro-meteorological hazards and risks due to future climatic extremes? - What are the possible and plausible adaptation strategies and measures to improve climate resilience in the study basin? In line with the recent policy and planning of the Royal Irrigation Department and Department of Water Resources of Thailand, this study will investigate drought hazard due to future climate change, and its impacts on vulnerability and risk in the study area. Furthermore, analysis on current adaptive measures and recommendation for further improvement to cope with future climate change will be produced. The proposed two and a half year research programme will be realized through four integrated Work Packages (WPs): WP1 Land use changes WP2 Climate variability and climate change WP3 Hydrometeorological extremes WP4 Adaptation strategies based on the synthesis of results The ENRICH team will work closely with the Thai Department of Water Resources and the Royal Irrigation Department, from the project inception workshop, through data acquisition and analysis and finally during the dissemination phase, so that the outputs can be taken up. Two public participation meetings will be organised in the study area with local stakeholders - farmers, industries, local line agencies at provincial/district levels etc. - to understand the hydro-meteorological hazards related issues (at the start of the project), and discuss adaptation measures (towards the end of the project while developing the adaptation strategies and measures) with them. Whilst ENRICH is a stand-alone initiative that can be completed independently, from an early stage it will seek cooperation with other projects funded within this programme to identify the potential for synergies through sharing data and expertise.

Argumentation provides a powerful mechanism for dealing with incomplete, possibly inconsistent information and for the resolution of conflicts and differences of opinion amongst different parties. Further, it is useful for justifying outcomes. Thus, argumentation can support several aspects of decision-making, either by individual entities performing critical thinking (needing to evaluate pros and cons of conflicting decisions) or by multiple entities dialectically engaged to come to mutually agreeable decisions (needing to assess the validity of information the entities become aware of and resolve conflicts), especially when decisions need to be transparently justified (e.g. in medicine). Because of its potential to support decision-making when transparently justifying decisions is essential, the use of argumentation has been considered in a number of settings, including medicine, law, e-procurement, e-business and design rationale in engineering. Potential users of existing argumentation-based decision-making methods are empowered by transparent methods, afforded by argumentation, but lack either means of formal evaluation sanctioning decisions as (individually or collectively) rational or a computational framework for supporting automation. The combination of these three features (transparency, rationality and computational tools for automation) is essential for argumentation-based decision-making to have a fruitful impact on applications. Indeed, for example, a medical practitioner would not find a "black-box" recommended decision useful, but he/she would also not trust a fully transparent, dialectically justified decision unless he/she were sure that this is the best one (rational). In addition, the plethora of information doctors need to take into account nowadays to make decisions requires automated support. TRaDAr aims at providing methods and prototype systems for various kinds of argumentation-based (individual and collaborative) decision-making that generate automatically transparent, rational decisions, while developing case studies in smart electricity and e-health to inform and validate methods and systems. In this context, TRaDAr's technical objectives are: (O1) to provide novel argumentation-based formulations of decision problems for individual and collaborative decision-making; (O2) to study formal properties of the formulations at (O1), sanctioning the rationality of decisions; (O3) to provide real-world case studies in smart electricity and e-health for (individual and collaborative) decision-making, using the formulations at (O1) and demonstrating the importance of the properties at (O2) as well as the transparent nature of argumentation-based decision-making; (O4) to define provably correct algorithms for the formulations at (O1), supporting rational and transparent (individual and collaborative) decision-making; (O5) to implement prototype systems incorporating the computational methods at (O4), and use these systems to demonstrate the methodology at (O1-O2) for the case studies at (O3). The project intends to develop novel techniques within an existing framework of computational argumentation, termed assumption-based argumentation, towards the achievements of these objectives, and adapting notions and techniques from classical (quantitative) decision theory and mechanism design in economics. The envisaged TRaDAr's methodology and systems will contribute to a sustainable society supported by the digital economy, and in particular they will support people in making informed choices. The project will focus on demonstrating the proposed techniques in specific case studies (smart electricity and e-health for breast cancer) in two chosen application areas (digital economy and e-health), but its outcomes could be far-reaching into other case studies (e.g. in other areas of medicine) as well as other sectors (e.g. in engineering, for supporting decisions on design choices).

This Programme Grant will accelerate the delivery of decentralised water technologies by bringing the most up-to-date bioscience and energy engineering to bear. It will re-write emerging design rules for engineering biology to ensure that off-grid environmental biotechnologies can be configured with confidence. Bespoke microbial treatment communities will be evolved using a new suite of high-throughput synthetic-biology inspired, experimental platforms. For rural populations and UK Islands and in the developing world, from sub-urban Bangkok to the Amazon and Arctic Canada, we will develop site-specific off-grid integrated heat/water technologies. We will develop low-cost sensors, real-time monitoring and adaptive control for remote distributed water infrastructure. With water technology companies, we will analyse how suites of technologies can be configured and controlled to shape new models for decentralised provision. Scottish Water will invest significantly in co-creating rural demonstrators and a mobile technology-demonstration platform for sustainable communities and with Northumbrian, Welsh Water and other utilities and stakeholders we will build momentum for a radically new low-carbon decentralised future for the water industry. Working with stakeholders, from communities to legislators, we seek to incentivise community-led infrastructure solutions and to modify regulation in ways that balance local stakeholder needs and global goals for decarbonising infrastructure. Working with professional bodies and innovation centres we will create a global centre of excellence in off-grid water provision, with the drive and passion to deliver transformational change; helping to deliver 2050 net-zero carbon and Sustainable Development Goal 6.