Since the turn of the century there has been a reduction in UK energy independence. While this trend has recently started to reverse, there is still a pressing need to further increase energy independence, as well as continue reduction in total consumption, and work towards becoming a carbon free energy nation. The Climate Change Act 2008 mandates the UK government to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80% (based on 1990 levels) by 2050. In total, domestic, commercial and industrial heat provision in the UK accounts for around one third of all greenhouse gas emissions and 40% of energy consumption. Hence tackling heating (and cooling) for all buildings is essential for addressing the energy problem. One energy efficiency solution which must play a future role in both demand reduction and decarbonisation is ground thermal energy storage. Such systems typically comprise some form of ground heat exchanger connected to a heat pump and a low temperature building heating delivery system (and/or higher temperature cooling delivery system). Traditional schemes use special purpose drilled boreholes as the ground heat exchanger, but since the 1980's building foundations developed as ground heat exchanger have also been used. Foundation ground heat exchangers are now becoming more common place, but there remains significant opportunities to use other underground structures for heat transfer and storage, thus contributing to the delivery of sustainable heating and cooling for overlying buildings. Retaining walls, tunnels and water/waste water pipes can all potentially be used as so called energy geostructures, where they exchange and store heat as well as performing their original structural function. However, despite a number of trials, most of these energy geostructures are a long way from routine adoption. Rigorous assessment of both their energy potential and how they are constructed is lacking. There are no routine design guides or standards and where schemes have been, or are being developed, they usually involve expensive and complicated analyses typically conducted in collaboration with a university partner. There are challenges in terms of energy assessment and further barriers to adoption in the requirement for adjacent consumers of the supplied energy. There is also a need for a heat/cool distribution network to reach the consumers which may not be currently in place. This proposal will tackle the challenges relating to routine implementation of energy geostructures, including design, construction and heat/cool delivery. This will encourage future adoption and help the development of the UK ground energy market.

Structural application of fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials is one of the key factors leading to technological innovations in aviation, chemical, offshore oil and gas, rail and marine sectors. Motivated by such successes, FRP shapes and systems are increasingly used in the construction sector, such as for bridges and small residential buildings. An obstacle to a wider use of FRP materials in structural engineering is the current lack of comprehensive design rules and design standards. While the preparation of design guidance for static actions is at an advanced stage in the USA and EU, the design against dynamic loading is underdeveloped, resulting in cautious and conservative structural design solutions. Knowledge on the dynamic properties (natural frequencies, modal damping ratios, modal masses and mode shapes of relevant vibration modes) of FRP structures and their performance under dynamic actions (such as pedestrian excitation, vehicle loading, wind and train buffeting) needs to be advanced if to achieve the full economic, architectural and engineering merits in having FRP components/structures in civil engineering works. This project will provide a step change to design practice by developing new procedures and recommendations for design against dynamic actions. This will be achieved by: 1) Developing an instrumented bridge structure at the University of Warwick campus that will provide unique insight into both static and dynamic performance over the course of the project, and beyond; 2) Providing novel experimental data on dynamic properties and in-service vibration response of ten full-scale FRP structures; and 3) Critical evaluation of the numerical modelling and current vibration serviceability design approaches. The data collected will be delivered in a systematic form and made available, via an open-access on-line database for rapid and easy dissemination, to academic and industrial beneficiaries, as well as to agencies supporting the preparation of institutional, national and international consensus design guidance. Outcomes from this project will provide the crucial missing information required for the reliable design of light-weight FRP structures, and pave the way towards this structural material becoming a 'material of choice' for future large-scale bridges and other dynamically loaded structures. This medium to longer-term impact is aligned with national plans for the UK having a sustainable and resilient built environment.

The vision of RM4L is that, by 2022 we will have achieved a transformation in construction materials, using the biomimetic approach first adopted in M4L, to create materials that will adapt to their environment, develop immunity to harmful actions, self-diagnose the on-set of deterioration and self-heal when damaged. This innovative research into smart materials will engender a step-change in the value placed on infrastructure materials and provide a much higher level of confidence and reliability in the performance of our infrastructure systems. The ambitious programme of inter-related work is divided into four Research Themes (RTs); RT1: Self-healing of cracks at multiple scales, RT2: Self-healing of time-dependent and cyclic loading damage, RT3: Self-diagnosis and immunisation against physical damage, and RT4: Self-diagnosis and healing of chemical damage. These bring together the four complementary technology areas of self-diagnosis (SD); self-immunisation and self-healing (SH); modelling and tailoring; and scaling up to address a diverse range of applications such as cast in-situ, precast, repair systems, overlays and geotechnical systems. Each application will have a nominated 'champion' to ensure viable solutions are developed. There are multiple inter-relationships between the Themes. The nature of the proposed research will be highly varied and encompass, amongst other things, fundamental physico-chemical actions of healing systems, flaws in potentially viable SH systems; embryonic and high-risk ideas for SH and SD; and underpinning mathematical models and optimisation studies for combined self-diagnosing/self-healing/self-immunisation systems. Industry, including our industrial partners throughout the construction supply chain and those responsible for the provision, management and maintenance of the world's built environment infrastructure will be the main beneficiaries of this project. We will realise our vision by addressing applications that are directly informed by these industrial partners. By working with them across the supply chain and engaging with complementary initiatives such as UKCRIC, we will develop a suite of real life demonstration projects. We will create a network for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) in this field which will further enhance the diversity and reach of our existing UK Virtual Centre of Excellence for intelligent, self-healing construction materials. We will further exploit established relationships with the international community to maximise impact and thereby generate new initiatives in a wide range of related research areas, e.g. bioscience (bacteria); chemistry (SH agents); electrochemical science (prophylactics); computational mechanics (tailoring and modelling); material science and engineering (nano-structures, polymer composites); sensors and instrumentation and advanced manufacturing. Our intention is to exploit the momentum in outreach achieved during the M4L project and advocate our work and the wider benefits of EPRSC-funded research through events targeted at the general public and private industry. The academic impact of this research will be facilitated through open-access publications in high-impact journals and by engagement with the wider research community through interdisciplinary networks, conferences, seminars and workshops.

Globally, national infrastructure is facing significant challenges: - Ageing assets: Much of the UK's existing infrastructure is old and no longer fit for purpose. In its State of the Nation Infrastructure 2014 report the Institution of Civil Engineers stated that none of the sectors analysed were "fit for the future" and only one sector was "adequate for now". The need to future-proof existing and new infrastructure is of paramount importance and has become a constant theme in industry documents, seminars, workshops and discussions. - Increased loading: Existing infrastructure is challenged by the need to increase load and usage - be that number of passengers carried, numbers of vehicles or volume of water used - and the requirement to maintain the existing infrastructure while operating at current capacity. - Changing climate: projections for increasing numbers and severity of extreme weather events mean that our infrastructure will need to be more resilient in the future. These challenges require innovation to address them. However, in the infrastructure and construction industries tight operating margins, industry segmentation and strong emphasis on safety and reliability create barriers to introducing innovation into industry practice. CSIC is an Innovation and Knowledge Centre funded by EPSRC and Innovate UK to help address this market failure, by translating world leading research into industry implementation, working with more than 40 industry partners to develop, trial, provide and deliver high-quality, low cost, accurate sensor technologies and predictive tools which enable new ways of monitoring how infrastructure behaves during construction and asset operation, providing a whole-life approach to achieving sustainability in an integrated way. It provides training and access for industry to source, develop and deliver these new approaches to stimulate business and encourage economic growth, improving the management of the nation's infrastructure and construction industry. Our collaborative approach, bringing together leaders from industry and academia, accelerates the commercial development of emerging technologies, and promotes knowledge transfer and industry implementation to shape the future of infrastructure. Phase 2 funding will enable CSIC to address specific challenges remaining to implementation of smart infrastructure solutions. Over the next five years, to overcome these barriers and create a self-sustaining market in smart infrastructure, CSIC along with an expanded group of industry and academic partners will: - Create the complete, innovative solutions that the sector needs by integrating the components of smart infrastructure into systems approaches, bringing together sensor data and asset management decisions to improve whole life management of assets and city scale infrastructure planning; spin-in technology where necessary, to allow demonstration of smart technology in an integrated manner. - Continue to build industry confidence by working closely with partners to demonstrate and deploy new smart infrastructure solutions on live infrastructure projects. Develop projects on behalf of industry using seed-funds to fund hardware and consumables, and demonstrate capability. - Generate a compelling business case for smart infrastructure solutions together with asset owners and government organisations based on combining smarter information with whole life value models for infrastructure assets. Focus on value-driven messaging around the whole system business case for why smart infrastructure is the future, and will strive to turn today's intangibles into business drivers for the future. - Facilitate the development and expansion of the supply chain through extending our network of partners in new areas, knowledge transfer, smart infrastructure standards and influencing policy.

Infrastructure systems such as water, transport and energy are vital to British society and the economy. It is very important that these systems are able to continue to function effectively in the future, but it is difficult to predict the conditions that they will need to operate under because of climate change, social change and economic changes. For this reason infrastructure needs to be adaptable and resilient, able to bounce back from whatever extreme events and general trends occur in the future. In order to achieve this infrastructure may look quite different to how it does today. We may have more renewable energy, more recycled water, and more public transport, walking and cycling, and our cities could look and operate quite differently as a result. Designing infrastructure for the future is a very complex task that needs to take into account the values, experiences and requirements of local communities and everyday people. Engineers and experts are good at developing technical solutions to well defined problems, but they have not been as successful at understanding the needs and expectations of local communities. Engineers have good methods for taking into account physical, enviromental and economic factors, but they need new tools to be able to better understand and account for social factors in their designs. Local communities will also have important roles to play in adapting to climate change and other uncertain events in the future, so it is important that local communities and engineers come together to decide what is important in designing future infrastructure. This fellowship will help Dr Sarah Bell to learn from good examples of how local communities can be involved in infrastructure decisions. Her research team will work with communities and engineers to define methods and tools to allow for better integration of community needs and ideas into infrastructure design. These tools and methods might include checklists or surveys to quickly understand what communities need and what they want for the future, calculators to help engineers working with communities to quickly calculate the environmental impacts and costs of different ideas for infrastructure, and risk assessments to understand the problems that might occur if communities are not involved in engineering design and the benefits that might be possible if they are.