REGENYSYS will create the enabling ecosystem for a circular bioeconomy of wellbeing (CBW) in the Thames Estuary. In a CBW organic resource loops are closed (material reuse/ recycling and energy recovery) to produce biomass or bioproducts, whilst also restoring local ecosystems and ecosystem services (provisioning, support, regulatory and cultural). The well-being of the local community improves due to increased access to locally produced, sustainable food and clean energy (provisioning services), healthier ecosystems (healthy soils, clean water, diverse local wildlife - supporting services), improved environmental regulation (carbon sequestration, hydrological management) and access to a beautiful environment with diverse recreational opportunities. The CBW provides new training, economic opportunities, and jobs for local people, creating new life paths for future generations living in the Estuary. This transformation increases the community's resilience to climate change and resource scarcity. The region of study stretches from Grays (Essex)/ Dartford (Kent) to the North Sea, encompassing the riverside areas of Kent and Essex, identified as being home to some of the most deprived wards in the country. Organic materials (sewage, food and agricultural waste) are currently under exploited in the region, yet could be used more effectively to produce biomass and bioproducts. Parts of the infrastructural system, activities and logistics chains required for a CBW are emerging. However, they are nascent and not linked-up. Local food producers are amongst the poorest groups in the Estuary. Food scarcity and energy poverty, due to dependence on fossil fuels and imported food, is problematic for the wider community. Yet there is local access to agricultural and marine food systems and renewable energy resources. There are innovative projects (aquaculture, fish local etc), spare capacity (e.g. under utilized greenhouses and agricultural land) and wasted potential (organic waste streams) in both food and energy systems, which could enable the CBW. Marine and land-based ecosystems are threatened by climate change (sea-level rise, flooding, and drought), development, agricultural and industrial pollutants. The adoption of a circular bioeconomy could improve this situation. However, the interactions between closing resource loops (biomass/bioproducts), ecosystem health (supporting, regulating, provisioning services particularly) and community wellbeing must be better understood, to determine the overall impact. The next generation will be responsible for implementing the CBW. However, currently there are limited job opportunities for the younger generation, perpetuated by skills shortages within the group. There is also a lack of awareness or interest in the stewardship of the local ecosystem amongst the young, which might be addressed by creating clear CBW development pathways. The project will create a regional Living Laboratory, with local stakeholders, in which to explore the potential for implementing the CBW. We will map current systems, their dynamics and identify leverage points supporting the emergence of the CBW in the Estuary. We will determine the synergies and conflicts between closing resource loops, restoring healthy ecosystems and generating community wellbeing. Together with local stakeholders we will co-design living experiments, building on existing local potential, to facilitate the emergence of a CBW. These experiments will help us to understand the factors affecting implementation and scale-up, whilst establishing a development pathway for young people wanting to engage in the CBW. The project will ultimately produce a development strategy, policy and design toolboxes, design process, training and outreach programmes, enabling the Estuary to transform, and helping other communities to do the same.

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.

It is widely recognised that ecosystems provide numerous services that are of benefit to humans but, in decisions regarding land and resource use, these tend to be overlooked. Within towns and cities this is particularly the case as nature is often considered to be absent in urban areas. However, as nearly 80% of the UK population live in urban areas there is considerable potential for improvements in ecosystem services to have a large impact on quality of life. As a result the Defra funded Ecosystem Services in the Urban Water Environment (ESUWE) project has begun to apply an ecosystem services approach to demonstrate the benefits that improvements in the urban water environment can have. It has also been recognised that a collaborative approach to decision making assists with the integrated planning that is required for sustainable catchment management. Therefore, the work of ESUWE also aims to provide tools to communicate and engage stakeholders in order to facilitate a participatory approach to catchment management. The ESUWE project has identified numerous ecosystem services provided in urban environments and developed metrics to quantify the costs and benefits associated with these. It is now working in four demonstration areas of varying sizes to map and evaluate ecosystem services and to pilot use in local catchment planning. It is hoped that by communicating information about benefits of environmental improvements, decisions can be better informed and that by mapping ecosystem services, areas where interventions will result in multiple-benefits can be identified and prioritised. Throughout the ESUWE project, Green Infrastructure (GI) has been highlighted as being important for delivering benefits to urban societies along with providing environmental and hydrological improvements. Therefore, the potential to expand the scope of the work beyond those directly involved with catchment planning has been identified. The Innovation Project will enable the application of the research conducted under the ESUWE project to meet the needs of a wider range of end users such as local nature partnership, local planning authorities and construction companies to be investigated so that the impact of the work can be increased. The Innovation Project will facilitate co-development of an ecosystem services mapping approach to the planning of GI with those responsible for land use decisions at local and national levels. This will ensure that the needs of end users are incorporated into the development of decision support tools that facilitate GI planning and help create standardised metrics that can express the benefits of GI for use in differing sectors. Work in four demonstration areas will explore the practical application of the ecosystem services approach, demonstrating the benefits provided by GI and identifying opportunities for these to be increased. This will improve strategic understanding so that the effects of potential land use decisions on levels of services provided in urban area can be explored. This will help to provide an evidence base that can inform decisions regarding trade-offs and promote interventions that provide increased and multiple benefits. The Innovation Project will also result in case studies quantifying the value of GI which can be used to promote the need for increased considerations of its provision in land use decision at both local and national levels. A partnership approach will also identify how mapping can aid integrated local decision making to support other place based initiatives. Finally, by considering how GI can be implemented in a way that delivers multiple benefits, best practice will be identified and promoted.