The British railway transport demand is forecast to increase by around 40% by 2040, as a result of population growth, socio-economic globalisation and sustainable mobility decarbonisation. The enhancement of capacity and efficiency is the major challenge to the railway network, which is already near saturation conditions. Automatic Train Operation (ATO) with advanced signalling systems, such as Moving Block and Virtual Coupling, have been investigated to reduce train separation distances and increase the infrastructure capacity. However, more trains with advanced operation systems affect the performance of traction power supply systems, For example, the synchronisation of train acceleration and braking operation increases the peak power and reduces the energy efficiency due to regenerative braking energy loss. The current technological capabilities do not permit accurate and real-time interaction assessment between the train operation and power networks. Therefore, it is important to develop a holistic approach to improving railway capacity and efficiency. This collaborative project will exchange the international partners' knowledge in train operation and traction power systems and investigate the flow mechanism between these two distinct systems. A digital twin with adaptive timescales and real-time data feeding will be developed to describe the interactions of the connected and coordinated systems. The outputs from the digital twin replicate the characteristics of real-world railway networks precisely. The multi-scenario simulation studies analyse the impact of various system design and control variables on performance, such as infrastructure capacity, efficiency and cost. The system performance will be evaluated and compared with the existing system. This project will build international partnerships through bilateral visits, and engagement workshops with global academic and industry partners. The project will also provide a roadmap for future collaboration on optimising the railway capacity and efficiency for decarbonisation.

Overview In dense urban areas, the underground is exploited for a variety of purposes, including transport, additional residential/commercial spaces, storage, and industrial processes. With the rise in urban populations and significant improvements in construction technologies, the number of subsurface structures is expected to grow in the next decade, leading to subsurface congestion. Recently emerging data indicate a significant impact of underground construction on subsurface temperature and there is extensive evidence of underground temperature rise at the local scale. Although it is well known that urbanization coupled with climate change is amplifying the urban heat island effect above ground, the extent of the underground climate change at the city scale is unknown because of (i) limited work on modeling the historical and future underground climate change at large scale and (ii) very limited long-term underground temperature monitoring. The hypothesis of this research is that (a) the high ground temperature around tunnels and underground basements, b) the observed temperature increase within the aquifer, and (c) inefficiency in ventilation of the underground railway networks, necessitate more detailed and reliable knowledge of urban underground thermal status. The project will develop a framework for monitoring and predicting temperature and groundwater distributions at high resolutions in the presence of underground heat sources and sinks. This can be achieved via a combination of numerical modelling, continuous temperature and groundwater monitoring and statistical analyses. The ultimate goal is for every city to generate reliable maps of underground climate, with the ability to understand the influence of future urbanization scenarios. Merit The objective of this joint NSF-EPSRC research is to advance understanding of the impacts of the urban underground on subsurface temperature increase at the city-scale. A low cost and reliable underground weather station using the fiber optic sensing technologies will be developed and installed at sites in London and San Francisco. A high-performance computing based thermo-hydro coupled underground climate change code will be developed to simulate the temperature and groundwater variation with time at the whole city scale. The main scientific deliverable from the district- and city-scale numerical simulations and the experimental temperature monitoring is a series of archetype emulators, which are defined based on the geological characteristics, above ground built environment, such as surface and buildings types, and the density and type of the underground structures. These archetype emulators will allow efficient city-scale modelling and enable application of the methodology to any other city or region with similar characteristics of above and underground built environment. This new knowledge will make possible to consider precise thermal conditions around underground structures in urban areas as well as facilitate efficient utilization of geothermal resources for both heating and cooling purposes.

Africa is facing the challenge of generating more power to meet existing and future demand. Currently, about one-half Africa's total population is lacking access to electricity. However, the continent is well endowed with renewable energy resources; it is estimated that about 35% of the world resources for wind energy are located in the continent. There are many challenges which hinder the development of infrastructure for wind energy in Africa. Designing suitable foundations to sustain the loads typically applied by wind turbines represents a particular challenge. Most potential locations for wind turbines in Africa are in tropical zones where fluctuation in ground water level is severe. The cycling of water levels means that many deposits of interest are unsaturated for at least part of the year. Unsaturated soils exhibit complex mechanical behaviour, coupled to changes in water content. This research aims to provide design for the foundations of wind turbines in unsaturated soils.

The impacts of recent catastrophic disasters, including the 2013-14 UK winter flooding, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Hurricane Sandy, reach well beyond the immediate, direct structural, environmental and health risks. In a complex system, a localised initial failure may quickly spread to other systems and create "hyper-risks" or "networked risks" through "networks of networks", and cause unpredictable failures in other economic or social networks. Classical quantitative and qualitative risk management frameworks are inadequate for emerging and unforeseen threats. More specifically they cannot handle the uncertainties of low-probability and high-consequence events and of their impacts on environmental, economical and social systems due to high interdependencies between complex systems. This project will develop a shared, multi-disciplinary vision of how to build resilience into networked risk management for highly complex engineered systems. It will address the challenges encompassed in understanding of complex interdependencies, cascade effects, tipping points of engineered systems. It is expected that this project will engage the community to develop a double helix framework that integrates risk and resilience analysis for complex systems management. We will organise a series of managed events, such as workshops, sandpits, study groups, which will help frame research questions, develop collaborative projects and disseminate outcomes. We will provide resources for feasibility studies and a number of mechanisms to promote research that focuses on developing novel modelling tools and adaptive frameworks to understand the interdependencies of complex systems and enhance overall system resilience.

In developed countries such as the UK, we spend 90% of our time indoors with approximately two thirds of this in our homes. Despite this fact, most air pollutant regulation focuses on the outdoor environment. There is increasing evidence that exposure to air pollution causes a range of health effects, but uncertainties on the causal effects of individual pollutants on specific health outcomes still exist partly due to crude exposure metrics. Nearly all studies of health effects to date have used measurements from fixed outdoor air pollution monitoring networks, a procedure that ignores the modification effects of indoor microenvironments where people spend most of their time. There are consequently large uncertainties surrounding human exposure to indoor air pollution, which means we are currently unable to identify the most effective solutions to design, operate and use our homes to minimise our exposure to air pollution within them. In the UK, there are virtually no data to quantify indoor air pollutant emissions, building-to-building variability of these, chemical speciation of indoor pollutants, ingress of outdoor pollution indoors or of indoor generated pollutants outdoors, or the social, economic or lifestyle factors that can lead to elevated pollutant exposures. Without a fundamental understanding of how indoor air pollution is caused, transformed and distributed in UK homes, research aiming to develop behavioural, technical or policy interventions may have little impact, or at worst be counterproductive. For example, energy efficiency measures are broadly designed to make buildings more airtight. However, given that the concentrations of many air pollutants are often higher indoors than outdoors, reducing ventilation rates may increase our exposure to air pollution indoors and to any potentially harmful effects of the resulting pollutant mixture. Further, if interventions are introduced without sufficient consideration of how occupants actually use and behave in a building, they may fail to achieve the desired effect. To understand and improve indoor air quality (IAQ), we must adopt a systems approach that considers both the home and the human. There is a particular paucity of data for the most deprived households in the UK. There is a facile assumption that poorer homes are likely to experience worse IAQ than better off households, although the reality may be considerably more nuanced. Lower quality housing may be leakier than more expensive homes allowing indoor emissions to escape more easily, whilst large, expensive town-houses converted to flats can be badly ventilated following poor retrofitting practices. Differences in cooking practices, smoking rates, internal building materials and the usage of solvent containing products indoors will also be subject to wide variations across populations and hence have differential effects on IAQ and pollutant exposure. In fact, differences in individual behaviour lead to large variations in indoor concentrations of air pollutants even for identical houses, typically driven by the frequency and diversity of personal care product use. The INGENIOUS project will provide a comprehensive understanding of indoor pollution in UK homes, including i) the key sources relevant to the UK ii) the variability between homes in an ethnically diverse urban city, with a focus on deprived areas (using the ongoing Born in Bradford cohort study) iii) the effects of pollutant transformation indoors to generate by-products that may adversely affect health iv) the drivers of behaviours that impact on indoor air pollution (v) recommendations for interventions to improve IAQ that we have co-designed and tested with community members.