Part 2 of Summary:- The development of the UK's first Circular Economy Observatory to provide a digital systems view of national resource flows as a foundation for modelling and quantifying potential benefits, opportunities and interventions to inform and influence national leadership and industrial decision-making, - An inclusive and diverse multidisciplinary community of academics, industrialists, government, policymakers and end-users. The CE-HUB will foster a safe environment to inspire and support new collaborations, mentorship, early-career research and feasibility testing across disciplines and resource flows. - The co-creation of a National Repository of Knowledge and shared understanding. We will draw together our extensive community to develop novel methods, tools, approaches and metrics that can overcome barriers to progress. We will use our informed position to influence and accelerate future research directions and create a long-term vision and road map for an inclusive, competitive and circular industrial strategy. The CE-HUB will house a unique national online repository of knowledge, tools, expertise, and initiatives. - The formation of the first National Circular Skills and Training Platform through which students, early career researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and employers will be able to match requirements in skills to existing and emerging educational offerings. - The co-creation of the first National Circular Economy brand to forge the way in the global advocacy of the Circular Economy. We will develop a recognised, distinctive standard or charter for those who lead the way in its delivery; changing the future of organisational values and behaviours. The CE-HUB will provide stakeholders nationally and internationally with a central point of reference for Circular Economy research and practise. It will be the first national research hub of its kind to lead support for Circular Economy practices, track materials and waste, develop novel and innovative approaches to feed legacy materials, by-products and waste into value-creating activities and engage stakeholder communities though compelling narratives for improved understanding of the principles of circular economy.

The EPSRC-ESRC Network in Consumer Goods, Big Data and Re-Distributed Manufacturing (RECODE) aims to develop an active and engaged community through which to identify, test and evaluate a multi-disciplinary vision and research agenda associated with the application of big data in the transition towards a re-distributed manufacturing model for consumer goods. Transforming the consumer goods industry through the use of big data and re-distributed models of manufacture poses entirely new challenges inherent to the capture, storage, analysis, visualisation and interpretation of big data. Combined with this is the cross-disciplinary requirement for radically new methods of engaging end-users, empowering customer interaction, facilitating ad-hoc supply chains, re-capturing and re-deploying valuable materials, optimising manufacturing processes, informing new user-driven design of customised goods and services, developing novel business models and implementing data-driven open innovation. The world generates 1.7 million billion bytes of data every day and global big data technology and services is growing by 40% per year, predicted to reach USD 16.9 billion in 2015. The exponential growth of available and potentially valuable data, often referred to as big data, is already facilitating transformational change across sectors and holds enormous potential to address many of the key challenges being faced by the manufacturing industry including increasing scarcity of resources, diverse global markets and a trend towards mass customisation. The consumer goods industry, one of the world's largest sectors worth approximately USD3.2 trillion, has remained largely unchanged and is characterised by mass manufacture through multi-national corporations and globally dispersed supply chains with 80% of materials ending up in landfill. The role of re-distributed manufacturing in this sector is often overlooked, yet there is great potential, when combined with timely advancements in big data, to re-define the consumer goods industry by changing the economics and organisation of manufacturing, particularly with regard to location and scale. RECODE will develop novel methods to engage communities of academics, international experts, user groups, government and industrial organisations to define and scope the shared multi-disciplinary vision and research agenda. New perspectives and contributions from user groups and stakeholders will be used to ensure that the vision of the network is fully inclusive and sensitive to regional trends, variances and scales. Short-term studies will be undertaken across the breadth of the theme to test and evaluate the feasibility of specific research challenges, the findings of which will contribute to an interactive roadmap representing local and global communities and research agendas of the network. Closing the gap between manufacturers, suppliers and consumers will provide opportunities for personalisation of products and services, up scaling of local enterprise and the development of user-driven products tuned to the requirements of local markets providing economic competitiveness for the UK. Improved understanding of skills and training required for interpreting big data and transforming industries will ensure that the UK can take full advantage of opportunities for job creation. Moving towards a localised and regenerative model of consumer goods manufacture will create more efficient and effective supply chains capable of on-demand responses; increasing productivity and competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. This challenging two year network will bring together an internationally renowned team of experts from Cranfield, Brunel, Cambridge, Manchester and Teesside universities drawing on leading-edge strengths of the host institutions and international connections with research communities, companies, business intermediaries and governance at local, national and international scales.