Eutrophication of freshwaters is a serious problem in many places worldwide, causing marked changes in the biota. N&P enrichment of the Norfolk Broads saw a shift from a clear water system dominated by charophytes, macrophytes and a diverse invertebrate fauna in the 1940s, to one dominated by phytoplankton and an impoverished invertebrate fauna by the 1980s. Eutrophication-driven biodiversity loss is a concern in many UK reservoirs which are important sites for conservation (SSSIs and SACs). Furthermore, the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) demands good ecological status of all European surface waters by 2015. Eutrophic reservoirs also present a considerable problem for water purification, supply and consumption. Algae can block microstrainers and sand filters, reducing throughput of water and sometimes requiring the plant to be taken out of service. The smallest algal cells can pass through the filters, and decompose in the distribution pipes. Some breakdown products, notably mucopolysaccharides, chelate with iron and aluminium that is added to the treatment, leading to increased metal levels passing to the supply. Fungi and invertebrates can feed on the resultant biofilms, leading to taste and odour problems. Cyanobacterial blooms can produce toxins (e.g. microcystin) that pose a risk to human health. The primary routes to nutrient removal include a) dredging of sediment and dumping on land to remove sediment-locked phosphorus; b) planting of enlarged reedbeds; c) direct stripping of algae through microfiltration; d) chemical dosing (e.g. iron or copper sulphate) to strip phosphorus through coagulation. All of these techniques are expensive, many are environmentally harmful, and most are unreliable in their performance. Recent innovations have shown that harvesting filter-feeding organisms such as the blue mussel (Mytilus edulis) that feed on phytoplankton may be a sustainable method for producing food of high nutritional value while simultaneously recycling nutrients from sea to land. Simple nutrient budgets for N and P suggests that mussel farming could offset the need for some sewage treatment plants with marine outfalls (Lindahl et al., 2005). The aim of this project is to test whether the broadscale cultivation of filter-feeding biota in UK reservoirs may offer a similarly efficient, cost-effective tool for improving reservoir water quality for potable supply and to enhance biodiversity. Qualitative observations in a number of UK reservoirs suggest increasing abundance of filter-feeders in recent years has driven improved water quality. The project will focus on the contributions that sponges, bryozoans and invasive bivalves (zebra mussels) can make to reservoir management. By working in collaboration with Anglian Water's (AW) Innovation team, the student will investigate the identity, growth rates, biomass and nutrient content (N&P) of filter-feeders that naturally attach to different settlement rigs. To account for thermal stratification and the effects of UV radiation, depth patterns will also be investigated. To investigate the effects of faecal and pseudofaecal deposition, sediment and macroinvertebrate communities will be compared between paired replicates beneath rigs and control sites. Close collaboration with AW at three reservoirs known to contain many zebra mussels will ensure that rig design is optimal. The student will visit a marine mussel cultivation programme and liaise with feedstuff and fertiliser manufacturers to identify possible end-use of harvested material. AW will also train the student in invertebrate and algal collection and identification. The project will finish with a cost-benefit analysis, considering harvest frequency, possible revenue or disposal costs, N&P budgets compared with alternatives (e.g. chemical phosphate stripping), ecological benefit and design options. A risk assessment will be made relating to the spreading of non-native species.

This fellowship will provide important tools and knowledge to deliver the Government's ambitious Industrial Strategy. Specifically, it will develop, test, apply, and promote innovative appraisal and evaluation approaches for understanding public-private-partnerships (PPP) in food-energy-water-environment Nexus domains, with a particular focus on infrastructure. PPP in these areas might be for energy plants, waste management infrastructure, reservoirs, or water treatment plants. Partnerships of these types, for infrastructure and other purposes, are a key delivery mechanism for many of the Industrial Strategy's goals. The Strategy repeatedly makes clear the importance of PPP in delivering innovation, growth, and infrastructure. The fellow will develop frameworks for both appraising (i.e. assessment before a PPP has started) and evaluating (i.e. understanding if and why a PPP has been a success or not) PPP in food-energy-water-environment Nexus domains. These frameworks will set out the important questions to address when studying PPP, the appropriate methods to use to answer them, and the data which will be needed. These frameworks will be published freely and actively shared with appraisal and evaluation communities in the UK and beyond, and experts in PPP, infrastructure, and other relevant areas. The fellow will also deliver a critical review of the types of PPP used currently and in the past. The development of the frameworks will also be supported by regular interaction with those who will use them, to ensure their needs are accounted for. A key part of this will be a project within the fellowship with Anglian Water and the South Lincolnshire Water Partnership (the SLWP is a group of public, private and third sector organisations collaborating to plan the management and use of water resources in the South Lincolnshire Fens and adjacent areas). This project will explore old and new models of PPP that the partnership could adopt. It will help the group explore options to better share risk and reward across the partnership, improve project delivery, and maximise benefits. The project will also explore options for updating water abstraction licensing strategies as part of Defra's 'Water Abstraction Plan' initiative (the partnership is a pilot catchment in this initiative). The project will serve to underpin the development of the frameworks through the understanding it will generate of user needs, and the space it will allow for testing the approach to be used. The fellowship also has ambitious plans for delivering unique career development and training to the fellow via: (i) a distinctive and comprehensive mentoring programme (including mentors from industry, government, and academia); (ii) a shadowing and short-term placement plan at industry partners such as Anglian Water; and (iii) an intensive professional development and training programme including training provided by the University of Surrey, but also industry and government partners. All of this work will be underpinned by the novel methodological approach of the fellow's host, the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus, which combines the tools and thinking provided by Complexity Science and the food-energy-water-environment Nexus approach, with social research methods and effective policy evaluation approaches. The fellowship will deliver a range of outputs, the most important of which will be both an academic journal paper and a freely available report on each of the following topics: (i) reviewing types of PPP; (ii) appraising PPP; and (iii) evaluating PPP. The appraisal and evaluation reports will each go through two iterations of development, to allow the time for meaningful input from users between iterations.

Treatment of wastewater is an essential process that is performed in all parts of the world. Each one of us typically produces more than 200 litres of wastewater per day. What happens to this wastewater? In an industrialised country like Britain the wastewater is collected for treatment and is then discharged into either a river or a coastal region. The treatment ensures that our rivers are not transformed into toxic soups and that most of the coastal waters remain safe for swimming. Presently our water treatment systems operate well to remove dangerous microorganisms and remove most of the organic and solid materials. Some components are more difficult to remove, such as nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. These nutrients cause damage to natural water systems such as rivers and coastal waters, as they encourage unwanted microbial growth, such as algae. This can damage the ecology of these waters and transform clear waters into green microbial soups. If a wastewater treatment facility is designed and operated in a particular manner, microorganisms (bacteria) in these systems can be encouraged to take up the phosphorus (P) and remove it from the wastewater. This is called biological P removal. It is the future aspiration of modern governments (e.g. the EU) that wastewater treatment facilities are improved and operated for this sustainable biological P removal. There are in fact many treatment facilities that already operate for biological P removal around the world. However, the performance of the biological systems is sometimes variable, and improvements in the performance and reliability would result in savings in the operation and construction of these systems. To achieve improvements in the biological systems we need to be able to understand how the bacteria carry out the P removal. There have been many investigations to gain understanding of these systems over the past 35 years. However, many of these investigations are flawed as they are studying the wrong bacteria, the ones that grow easily in the laboratory, and not the ones that grow well in the wastewater treatment systems and perform the P removal. Thankfully, modern methods to analyse DNA and protein directly in these systems are now being used to gain understanding of what the bacteria are doing. By analysing the DNA directly in the system we can now identify the bacteria important for the P removal. This has been a recent important achievement. Recently, the US government has invested heavily into understanding the bacteria of these systems, as they have obtained large amounts of DNA sequence from P removing systems (this is somewhat similar to whole genome sequencing programmes, such as the sequencing of the human DNA). This information will inform us of the genes that are present in these systems. It is important now to study the proteins of these systems. Proteins are produced by the bacteria, and are the molecules involved in carrying out the work, such as the reactions that result in the P removal. In our laboratory we operate small-scale wastewater treatment reactors that are performing biological P removal. A main part of this study is to analyse the proteins that are produced by the bacteria as they carry out the P removal. In these laboratory reactors we can alter the P removal performance and observe how the levels of the different proteins may vary. With this approach we will associate particular proteins with the biological P removal process. This information will enable us to put together an improved picture that explains how the bacteria are carrying out the P removal. This is a very important process for the water companies that treat the wastewater. Engineers and microbiologists are very interested to improve the understanding and details of the bacterial process, as they strive to develop strategies to improve the biological P removal performance in the wastewater treatment systems.

This research will address a rarely considered environmental infrastructure risk, by establishing the impact on proximal infrastructure from cavitation, caused by burst water mains and leaking sewers in sandy soils. Sandy soil is particularly susceptible to erosional processes or washout, with excess water resulting in running-sand conditions. When a water pipe leaks in sandy soil, the high pressure of the water can wash away significant amounts of the surrounding soil, leading to the formation of cavities. Sewers with poor structural integrity (for example old and displaced joints with leaks) then the daily fluctuations in flow rate can cause alternating exfiltration and infiltration. In sandy soils this will cause fines to be washed into the sewer and cause cavities over a longer term. When such leaks go unnoticed for prolonged periods of time, or where the burst is severe, very large cavities can form, and damage proximal infrastructure. The failure of water pipes represents a spatial interdependency with other forms of both buried and above-ground infrastructure potentially triggering cascading or escalating failures. 25% of the water distribution network in East Anglia is laid in sandy soils. Sandy soils contain more than 70% by weight sand-sized particles (0.06 to 2.0mm). The consequences of pipe failures in sandy soils can be severe due to the increasingly interconnected nature of infrastructure, resulting in interdependencies between infrastructure systems and the services that rely upon them. Such interdependencies are of increasing concern because of the potential for complex forms of system failures. Local roads can fail under the weight of traffic; buses became trapped in roads in Holbrook, Suffolk (June 2014) and Weston-super-Mare (March 2014) as a result of burst water mains. Sewers can lose vital support, leading to collapse. Houses and even large buildings can subside; Cwmbran County Hall was condemned with cavities underneath it due to leaking pipes (Oct. 2012). Proximal plastic gas pipes and cables can fail under the abrasive action of the sand and pressurised water. Escape of gas poses serious health and safety issues, while the ingress of water into a gas pipe leads to expensive repairs for the gas utility and prolonged loss of service for customers. The National Soil Map identifies the locations of sandy soils. However, current understanding of the actual risk these pose to infrastructure is lacking amongst infrastructure operators. This project will establish and communicate this impact. Research by the applicants, including detailed analysis of the climate change adaptation reports submitted to Defra under the first round of the Adaptation Reporting Power have highlighted significant gaps in infrastructure operators' awareness of the spatial distribution of risks, and a lack of awareness of sand wash-out processes. Furthermore, traditional risk assessment approaches are commonly 'siloed', focusing on specific organisations and individual asset types and operations in isolation, thus lacking the systems perspective required to identify and assess complexity (secondary effects, impacts and risks) and interdependencies. This project will address these knowledge gaps and challenges by developing methods to determine the vulnerability of proximal infrastructure to sand wash out from water mains and sewers. It will also investigate 3D visualisation approaches for communicating interdependencies and complexity, together with the study's implications/challenges for infrastructure operators and regulatory processes. Advantages for stakeholders will include new evidence to inform decision making on this emerging risk to infrastructure resilience from sand washout. The use of this evidence in asset management plans (AMP) will be a practical outcome of this work.

The quality of potable water is of vital importance to public health. However, contamination events are observed to occur even in the tiny volume (relative to total supply volume) of the samples collected for regulatory purposes. These events are often unexplained. A possible source of such contamination is pollutant ingress into the distribution system from the surrounding soil and water. Such ingress can occur through the many apertures normally associated with leakage, at times when low or negative pressure conditions occur such as due to hydraulic transients (water hammer).This project will investigate the currently unknown potential for such contaminant ingress into potable water distribution systems by direct measurement utilising a specially developed laboratory facility. Laboratory studies are necessary to address difficulties associated with the short response duration of transient events and the costs, complexity and regulatory unacceptability of field studies. The experimental set up will be full scale and include surrounding ground conditions and a contaminant flow field (for example, an adjacent leaky sewer). Initial studies will investigate the influence of the characteristics of the transients (magnitude, duration etc.) while further studies will investigate the influence of aperture shape, geometry and location.The experiments will provide quantitative evidence of the conditions causing ingress which will be used to develop a new ingress model which, together with existing modelling tools, will enable quantification of the potential for contaminant ingress. The outputs from the new modelling approach will inform improvements to distribution system design, operation and maintenance, management of pollution incidents and ultimately result in improved drinking water quality.The project will be undertaken at the University of Sheffield, with advice and support from Professor Bryan Karney of Toronto University, an international expert in transient analysis and in collaboration with Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal for access to the best currently available relevant field data.