In many developing countries, rising energy demand, and consequently carbon emissions, is seen as an unequivocal indicator of increasing prosperity. This trajectory has important consequences not just for global carbon emissions but for the ability of countries such as India to achieve its developmental goals. This is because, in most developing countries, growth in energy demand far outstrips growth in supply due to the large capital investment required to build energy infrastructure. Thus, even people *with* access to energy networks often find that they are unable to meet their comfort needs due to supply shortages. However, the most critical problem is often not mean demand - e.g. mean per capita energy demand in India is only 13% that of the UK - but rather **peak demand** as it lays immense stress on already fragile networks. Hence, people's ability to attain comfortable internal conditions is compromised at the precise time that they need it the most - during extreme heat or cold. This project directly addresses the problem of peak demand reduction by aiming to eliminate peak demand in buildings, where it is created. In most developing countries, the vast majority of the building stock of the future is still to be built, so there is a real opportunity to decouple economic growth from building energy use whilst ensuring comfortable conditions. We aim to achieve this through laying the foundations for a **new science of zero peak energy building design** for warm climates. This will be achieved through a careful consideration of the weather signal (now and in the future) which is critical for any realistic assessment of mean dan peak energy demand. A second focus is on delivering a method of construction that is compatible not only with the Indian climate but also its building practices and social customs, thus avoiding the trap of an "imported" standard. This will be delivered through the creation of 60 pathways for a range of building types in 6 cities comprising different climates. Finally, we will also consider how loads can be moved between buildings to achieve a smooth demand profile at network level.

SUPERSLUG will push the frontiers of scientific knowledge and technical innovation to reveal new fundamental insights into the legacies of catastrophic sediment-rich flows (SRF) in mountain landscapes, such as landslides, rock-ice avalanches and glacial lake outburst floods. Catastrophic SRFs are hypothesised to become more frequent this century due to climate warming, and often affect vulnerable communities and assets in least developed countries the most. SRFs can entrain, mobilise, and deposit vast quantities of sediment, which can blanket valley floors to depths of tens of metres. The subsequent re-working and transport of these sediments by rivers can generate large-scale and fast-moving 'superslugs', which is a so-called 'legacy' impact of an SRF. Such legacy impacts are poorly understood, mostly due to observational challenges which have persisted for over a hundred years. However, improving our understanding of these impacts is of vital importance: enhanced fluvial transport of sediment following an SRF can affect flood hazard (by altering river channel bed elevation), infrastructure (e.g. by scouring bridge footings and damaging hydropower turbines), and can disrupt water quality, reducing water and energy security in regions that experience increasingly unstable and hazardous hydrological regimes. With SUPERSLUG we seek to encourage a paradigm shift framed around our argument that the landscape legacies of catastrophic SRFs should be quantified in as much detail as an initial event. To do this we will springboard from recent UKRI-funded pilot work by our international team to develop and apply a new multi-method and widely applicable suite of tools for quantifying the geomorphological evolution of SRF-affected catchments over multi-decade timeframes that are relevant for decision makers, in turn generating new insights into the fundamental behaviour, and impacts, of sediment superslugs. We will focus on a ~150 km-long exemplar system in the Indian Himalaya that has recently experienced a catastrophic SRF; the so-called 'Chamoli disaster'. This catchment arguably represents the most data-rich landscape of its type globally and sits within an otherwise extremely data-poor region. To deconstruct the evolution and impacts of sediment superslugs we will implement five work packages which will: (WP1) benchmark the geomorphological and sedimentological evolution of an SRF-affected system in space and time by using drone-derived observations to upscale from local- to catchment-wide observations using satellite remote sensing; (WP2) directly measure bedload motion in SRF-affected river channels using innovative wireless 'smart' cobbles, complemented with passive seismics; (WP3) develop an open-source toolkit for detecting and tracking fine-grained superslugs by leveraging cloud-based (Google Earth Engine) processing of free satellite imagery; and (WP4) integrate our novel observations from WP1-3 to upscale a powerful numerical landscape evolution-hydrodynamic model to simulate superslug mobility and the wider geomorphological evolution of our exemplar catchment. Our calibrated model, which will be a form of 'digital twin', will represent the largest of its kind and we will use it to explore catchment management decisions (e.g. HEP flushing schedules) for mitigating the worst superslug impacts. Underpinning these four WPs is a fifth WP, wherein we will adopt a Theory of Change-based approach for engaging closely with beneficiaries of this new knowledge and associated tools to translate our findings into practical outcomes and impact, including governance and disaster management professionals, hydropower operators and the wider international academic community.

Mountain landscapes experience sudden and violent geohazards, such as landslides, lake outburst floods, and debris flows. The size and frequency of such events is anticipated to increase due to climate change, enhancing landscape instability. These landscapes are also experiencing rapid population growth, directly exposing people and assets to geohazards, but also exposing them to legacy impacts which manifest after an event and are commonly overlooked and unquantified. A legacy impact of many mountain geohazards is enhanced coarse sediment transport in rivers. This is a problem because sediment travelling as 'bedload' is the primary driver of river channel adjustment. These adjustments affect: 1) flood hazard, by modifying channel bed elevation; 2) the integrity of riparian infrastructure, e.g. hydropower, by blocking intakes and rapidly filling reservoirs, and 3) fluvial ecology, by reorganising channel substrate. It is therefore vital to generate well-constrained knowledge of the pace and manner in which the bedload transport regime evolves in mountain rivers after extreme disturbances. However, due to technical limitations and challenges associated with working in unstable, post-flood landscapes, we have little first-hand information on the behaviour of such systems, which this project aims to address. This new project will consolidate a new international partnership of leading researchers from the UK and India. The team is led by the University of Plymouth, working in close collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR) and the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG), the University of Exeter, and Newcastle University. The diverse team bring complementary expertise in geomorphology, hydrology, and environmental sensor networks, and the work would not be possible without the regional knowledge, technical competencies, and field experience of the international partners. The project also features prominent early- and early-to-mid-career researchers in leading roles. Working together we will apply a suite of innovative environmental monitoring and modelling tools to characterise the hydrological and bedload transport regime of the Alaknanda river, Uttarakhand, India, which experienced an extreme debris flow in February 2021 which killed >200 people and triggered enhanced sediment transport as a legacy impact, evidenced through pilot work. To achieve our aim, we will: 1) Develop a new hydrological model of the Alaknanda catchment, enabling us to identify and disentangle the key components of flow (e.g. snowmelt, rainfall). This information will be used to better understand the hydrological drivers of sediment transport; 2) Quantify the grain size characteristics of channel bars using drone- and satellite-based observations and modelling. This information will allow us to explore downstream transitions in grain size through time and examine the influence of the Chamoli event; 3) Deploy innovative, low-cost 'smart' tags to track the motion of cobbles and boulders travelling as bedload. We will supplement these data with measurements of the timing and relative magnitude of bedload transport using low-cost passive seismics. We will effect skills and knowledge transfer in-person via joint fieldwork and discussions at IITR and WIHG), and a regular series of virtual project meetings and seminars. We will publish results in peer-reviewed open-access journals and will produce a technical summary report which we will disseminate to local stakeholders. Project success will lead to future joint funding bids which will appraise the role of hydropower as a disruptor to coarse sediment transport in mountain rivers and explore operational practices that can mitigate the immediate and legacy impacts of extreme floods. In doing so we will further consolidate a wider research network involving regional academics and practitioners, whilst supporting the development of early career researchers in both countries.

The ecosystem services of deltas often support high population densities - estimated at over 500 million people globally, with important examples in south, south-east and East Asia. As noted in the IPCC AR4 Assessment, deltas are one of the most vulnerable coastal environments and their ecosystem services face multiple stresses in the coming years and decades including (1) local drivers due to development (e.g., urbanisation) within the delta, (2) regional drivers due to changes in catchment management (e.g. dam construction), and (3) global climate change, especially sea-level rise, Understanding how to sustain ecosystem services and reduce poverty and vulnerability in deltaic areas requires consideration of all these stresses and their interaction. This Partnership and Project Development Grant (PPDG) aims to develop a larger proposal that will develop methods to understand and characterise these multiple drivers of change for the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, explore their implications for poverty and vulnerability of the delta residents, and develop management systems that are resilient in the face of the large uncertainties that exist for the 21st Century. The Ganges-Brahmaputra delta is selected as it is one of the most vulnerable deltas (embracing most of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India), but the methods that are being proposed will be transferable to the management of other delta systems in Asia, Africa and South America. This PPDG integrates across multiple scales of investigation that are often explored independently in different disciplines. Hence, integration of natural science, engineering and social science views is critical and this will be a key step which the PPDG will explore, building on existing experience in the project team such as within the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The PPDG aims to develop a proposal that integrates all the above issues for both the baseline and future conditions, using poverty or poverty-related outcomes as the key indicators. The proposal will also consider critical intervening factors such as governance and political will in tackling both corruption and the social and economic effects of climate change and other hazards. Poverty outcomes will be considered as a much wider spectrum of wellbeing than just money metrics, which may not be relevant in this setting. We will explore the effect of the scenarios on health, education, social capital and security as well as asset poverty and nutritional levels. Previous research will be developed in order to understand the effects of differing underlying resilience and vulnerability levels among the coastal populations. Particular interest will be focussed on possible thresholds of social capital and material wellbeing, after which the multiple stresses above would have catastrophic effects, including knock on effects such as mass migration. Analysis will occur at various levels - including effects on the individual, the household, the community, the wider area and ultimately the whole nation and delta. The PPDG will develop the research consortium across three countries (UK, Bangladesh and India) and refine the research questions identified to develop a proposal for the December 2010 submission. In particular, it will allow us to embed the research in the Ganges-Brahmaputra to facilitate take-up of the policy recommendations that would emerge if the full proposal was funded.

Owing to on-going demographic shifts, urbanisation and changing life styles supported by rapid industrialisation, pollution by so-called emerging contaminants (ECs) is an emerging environmental and public health concern in India, the UK and globally. Pharmaceuticals, personal-care products, pesticides & industrial compounds, are collectively known as ECs. They lead to, among other effects, increasing antibiotic resistance and endocrine disruption in aquatic animals and possibly humans. Conventional wastewater treatment plants (WTPs) have a mixed performance in dealing with such contaminants and might even be adversely affected by the ECs in treating more conventional pollutants. There is also evidence that WTPs can act as reservoirs of antibiotic resistant pathogenic bacteria. Due to limited availability of data, the fate of ECs in the environment and wastewater treatment remains under-investigated, limiting our ability to provide targeted cost effective treatment. The research aims to study the sources and fate of ECs and their interactions in receiving waters and WTPs and develop novel and sustainable management strategies to improve water quality. In the project, two rivers will be monitored: the Yamuna in the north (in the most polluted stretch, contributing to 70% of Delhi's water supply needs) & the Cauvery in the south (the most abstracted river in India). Investigations will also be made on the fate of ECs during wastewater and sludge treatment line at 10 WTPs in India and compared with selected plants in the UK. Investigations will also include, the fate of ECs during the treatment and use of bio-solids. The work will help to develop evidence based wastewater discharge standards and guidance for safe use of contaminated sludge. We will also look to develop novel, cost effective and fit for purpose solutions for the treatment of ECs in urban and rural communities. Several approaches will be investigated including zero/limited energy consuming natural treatment systems configurations; and space saving systems based on the development and novel application of a new generation of adsorbents; energy efficient membranes and chemicals free treatment. The work will help the development of design and operation guidance for optimal treatment systems requiring limited input from O&M staff. Finally, we intend to develop a novel decision support system to automatically generate and identify sustainable treatment strategies as a function of user defined constraints and contexts. This will serve as a negotiation tool to visualise the impact of different stakeholders objectives and preferences. The tool will be trialled with a range of end users in India and UK.