Private water supplies (PWS) are used by a significant proportion of households in some British regions. Chemical and physical factors both have the potential to impact upon the well-being of PWS users. The chemical quality of PWS can vary greatly, dependent on the composition of the surface or groundwater from which they are drawn, and the infrastructure and treatment of the water supply. Recent Public Health England/NERC-BGS research has shown that PWS users often do not treat to improve chemical quality, or do not maintain their treatment systems. PWS tap water quality cannot be assumed to be improved from its natural state, and may be significantly worse than drinking water standards. It is important stakeholders across all scales (household, local and national) better understand the distribution of factors which influence water quality. We have established that current efforts to assess national and regional water quality priorities in Wales are hindered by a two-way knowledge barrier. Stakeholders are unaware of the large NERC data resource which could be used in their assessments, whilst NERC data holders do not have sufficient understanding of stakeholders' needs, and how the data can be most usefully presented and disseminated. Barriers to direct uptake of this NERC data include: the current format (hard-copy or digital documents); chemical element mapping formats (which may divide the concentration range into arbitrary intervals and not show thresholds of relevance to users); bespoke indices using more than one variable are needed (e.g. plumbosolvency); and, resource pressures on public body officers (e.g. time, expertise, computing, GIS). A further problem exists which NERC data can contribute to resolving. Assembling the evidence base to determine what, if any, action should be undertaken at national or regional scales is compromised by the lack of systematic registration, in any database, of the most prevalent type of PWS, i.e. "Single Domestic Dwellings" (SDDW). SDDW users are not compelled to register their supply with the Local Authority, and in Wales, 85% of registered PWS are SDDWs. There is widespread awareness, at all levels of governance, that there are considerably more than the officially recorded 12,242 SDDWs. Improved estimates of the locations of these properties, can help national and local government assess, and prioritise, risks arising from geospatially controlled factors (e.g. high metal concentration and vulnerability to drought). Recent NERC-funded research has built a spatially resolved, predictive model of the likely occurrence of PWS in Wales. In order to fulfil its potential impact, this work now needs to be shared with the key stakeholders at regional and national level. Specific examples will be developed that indicate regions where large numbers of PWS users coincide with expected high risks of events (e.g. flooding, drought) under future weather scenarios, and allow an improved understanding of pressures on marginal aquifers. Sustained inter-organisational and inter-personal communication will ensure the successful progress of this project. At an overarching level this will be achieved through active participation in an existing national forum, the Water Health Partnership, and by undertaking short-term secondments into key Local Authority and public body offices (Public Health Wales, Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, Natural Resources Wales, Powys County Council). Outward facing communication, of agreed key messages, is embedded into later activities. Web, mobile and selected more traditional mechanisms will be used to ensure that outreach is as equitable and widespread across private water supply users as possible. Project reports will be available in both English and Welsh. KEYWORDS: private water supply; lead; drought; flooding; manganese; public health.

We are more connected than ever before but are we communicating effectively? Amid COVID-19 and the so-called 'digital pivot', online virtual communication has been placed at the heart of our daily lives, both professionally and privately. As we move into a post-COVID context, the affordances of this digital turn have shown that we can operate professionally online but there is a need for a better understanding of what has become, and is likely to remain, a new way of communicating in the workplace. The current pandemic has acted as a catalyst for change and has impacted on the behaviours of producers and consumers of digital interactional content. Businesses, for example, have changed their interaction with customers. Cultural organisations have embraced different forms of digital delivery of content, often co-produced by their audiences. Education has seen large-scale adoption of online modes of interaction. In this time of substantial change to how we interact online, there is a need to take stock of whether the virtual communication is equitable and whether our existing paradigms for analysing discourse are fit-for-purpose. This project draws on the expertise of leading researchers in the UK and Ireland to propose the next generation of analytical frameworks for analysing this new type of discourse and will make these frameworks available to all arts and humanities research and end user communities, leading to a step change in our ability to develop equality of access in online communication. Firstly, this project aims to examine virtual workplace communication so as to gain depth of insight into the potential barriers to effective communication. These may relate to external (e.g. gender, age, status, ethnicity, etc) or internal variables (e.g. linguistic variables such as talking over one another or not understanding when it is appropriate to take a 'turn' in conversation) of the interaction. We aim to explore not only what makes for success or failure in virtual workplace discourse, but what also allows for the identification of specific variables associated with such successes and failures. This study will be multi-modal, focusing both on what is said and also on how it is said (e.g. pitch, intonation, facial expression, accompanying gesture or gaze). Findings from this study will lead to the creation of awareness-raising artefacts which will be based on the needs of our project partners and will include, inter alia, reusable digital objects such as podcasts, vodcasts; digitally badged training presentations (e.g. chairing online meetings; fostering equity and diversity on online fora; simulating a sense of co-presence when demonstrating a process). These awareness-raising artefacts (e.g. podcasts and e-resources) can serve as training materials to enhance virtual workplace communication, to highlight any salient equity issues. These materials will aid our project partners in understanding the challenges, nuances and new norms, as well as best practices, in the cultural shift to digital communication platforms. Our second aim is to enable future research into spoken language by developing appropriate technical protocols for capturing and analysing interaction multi-modally (e.g. how to transcribe a gesture and align it with an utterance). Our goal is to evolve standardised ways of approaching questions about language use which are accessible and (re)producible by other researchers and non-technical experts in the Humanities, with the production of an online archive asset. This asset will identify common and standardised ways to approaching pertinent questions about language use which are accessible and reproducible by others. This will help to inform research practice in relation to gathering, storing, processing and analysing multi-modal data by building a community of practice for future multi-modal corpus linguistic research.

MathSys addresses two of EPSRC's CDT priority areas in Mathematical Sciences: "Mathematics of Highly Connected Real-World Systems" and "New Mathematics in Biology and Medicine". We will train the next generation of skilled applied mathematical researchers to use and develop cutting-edge techniques enabling them to address a range of challenges faced by science, industry and modern society. Our Centre for Doctoral Training will build on the experience and successes of the Complexity Science DTC at Warwick, while refining the scope of problems addressed. It will provide a supportive and stimulating environment for the students in which the common mathematical challenges underpinning problems from a variety of disciplines can be tackled. The need for mathematically skilled researchers, trained in an interdisciplinary environment, has never been greater and is viewed as a major barrier in both industry and government. This is supported by quotes from reports and business leaders: "Systems research needs more potential future leaders, both in academia and industry" (EPSRC workshop on Systems science towards Engineering, Feb 2011); Andrew Haldane (Bank of England, 2012) said "The financial crisis has taught us the importance of modelling and regulating finance as a complex, adaptive system. That will require skills currently rare or missing in the regulatory community - including, importantly, in the area of complexity science"; Paul Matthews (GlaxoSmithKline) stated "Scientists trained in statistical and computational approaches who have a sophisticated understanding of biologically relevant models are in short supply. They will be major contributors in the task of translating insights on human biology and disease into treatments and cures." Our CDT will address this need by training PhD students in the development and innovation of mathematics in the context of real-world systems and will operate in close collaboration with stakeholders from outside academia who will provide motivating problems and real-world experience. Common mathematical themes will include statistical behaviour of complex systems, tipping points, novel methods in control and resilience, hierarchical aggregation methods, model selection and sufficiency, implications of network structure, response to aperiodic forcing and shocks, and methods for handling complex data. Applications will be driven by local and external partner expertise in Epidemiology, Systems Biology, Crop Science, Healthcare, Operational Research, Systems Engineering, Network Science, Financial Regulation, Data Analysis and Social Behaviour. We believe that the merging of real-world applications with development of novel mathematics will have great synergy; applications will motivate and drive mathematical advances while novel mathematics will allow students to solve challenging real-world problems. The doctoral training programme will follow a 1+3 year MSc+PhD model that has proved successful in the Complexity Science DTC. The first year will consist of six months of taught training, followed by 3-month group research projects on problems set by external partners and a 3-month individual research project, leading to an MSc qualification. This preparation will enable the students to make rapid progress tackling their 3-year PhD research project, under the guidance of one mathematical and one application-oriented supervisor, alongside general skills training and group research projects. We have over 50 suitable supervisors with relevant mathematical expertise, all enthusiastic to contribute; they will be supported by a similar number of application-oriented supervisors from across campus and from external partners. The CDT seeks the equivalent of 7 full studentships per year from EPSRC and has commitment from non-RCUK sources for the equivalent of 3 full studentships per year.

In the past few decades, there has been a surge of international interest in the role of the arts and culture in healthcare, public health and health promotion, on an individual and community level. However, the vast majority of research studies have focused on the effects of targeted, time-limited arts interventions on particular patient groups. Yet, much of the arts and cultural engagement across the UK is not confined to specific interventions but involves a more general, ubiquitous participation that can be harder to measure through experimental studies. A select number of public health studies have found associations between cultural participation (including attending concerts, museums and galleries) and self-reported health, as well as inverse associations between cultural participation and mortality risk. However, important questions remain, and to date, there have been no large-scale public health studies examining the impact of the arts in the UK. This project is led by the Centre for Performance Science, an internationally distinctive partnership of the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London, with an extensive track record in arts, health and social research. It explores the effect of (i) activities that involve actively 'doing' (e.g. music, dance, art, photography and drama) and (ii) activities that require physical attendance (e.g. attending concerts, monuments, museums, galleries, cinemas, heritage archives and theatre); (iii) 'home-based' activities (e.g. listening to the radio, watching TV, reading, storytelling, using arts-based apps, digital arts experiences, online music co-production). Our research questions identify the impact of the arts and culture on individual, social and economic measures of health and wellbeing, as well as explore how associations vary between different socioeconomic, geographical and ethnic populations within the UK. To explore these questions, the project is organised into four work packages. Work package 1 will involve assessing existing data including undertaking a meta-analysis of previous studies and exploring a UK cohort study that includes some questions on the arts. However, recognising the limited data currently available, work packages 2 and 3 are based on a large-scale national survey to be carried out during our study. Open to all adults in the UK, the survey will target the general population as well as participants diagnosed with one of four major health conditions facing the UK: mental health, cancer, cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory diseases. These conditions have all previously been researched in smaller arts-in-health intervention studies but not at a public health level, and their inclusion will facilitate understanding of the relationships between culture and the individual, social and economic facets of health and wellbeing. A total of 25,000 participants will be recruited to complete an anonymous online questionnaire consisting of demographic questions, validated psychological scales and economic metrics, assessments of arts and cultural participation and self-reporting of health. Work package 2 will explore the questions with a cross-sectional analysis of these data with nested case-control studies; work package 3 will monitor a sub-section of the sample as a cohort for the following year with 6-monthly updates to track longitudinal change in arts engagement. Recognising the complexity of cultural engagement and health, work package 4 will add context to the survey data, with a sub-sample of survey participants taking part in qualitative telephone interviews to explore motivations for, and experiences of, arts engagement across the UK and how this is reported to intersect with health behaviours, perceptions and outcomes. Through the extensive epidemiology methods proposed, an ambitious sample size and nested qualitative data, the findings promise to redefine the value of the arts and culture for public health in the UK.

The 'MARCH' Network proposes that Assets for Resilient Communities lie at the heart of Mental Health (M-ARC-H) and is dedicated to advancing research into the impact of these assets in enhancing public mental health and wellbeing, preventing mental illness and supporting those living with mental health conditions. Specifically, it will advance our understanding of the impact of social, cultural and community assets including the arts, culture, heritage, libraries, parks, community gardens, allotments, leisure centres, volunteer associations, social clubs and community groups, of which there are an anticipated 1 million in the UK. The network will bring together a Disciplinary Expert Group of researchers with a Policy Group of major national policy bodies, a Patient Public Involvement Group of national mental health charities, and a Community Engagement Group of national organisations. Across three years, our network will unite research with policy and practice to tackle critical questions of research priorities, methods, and implementation in this field; understand and resolve barriers to mobilising community assets; and provide training and support to the next generation of researchers. Specifically, our network will address questions organised in two core work streams (WS): WS1. Cross-disciplinary research and challenges: (a) What evidence is there, from a cross-disciplinary perspective, for how and why community assets impact on public health and wellbeing and the lives of those living with mental health problems, and where are the gaps for future research? (b) How can we use a cross-disciplinary approach to provide meaningful data to different stakeholders and users? WS2. Equity of engagement and access innovation: (a) Who amongst the UK population, demographically and geographically, currently engages with these programmes and how does participation vary dependent on mental health? (b) What are the current barriers and enablers to engagement at an individual, organisational and policy level and how can we develop innovative approaches to enhance engagement, especially amongst the vulnerable? This research work will be complemented by a rich portfolio of impact, engagement and training activities (see 'Impact Summary'). This network aligns with strategic priorities of the AHRC and ESRC as well as having a secondary relevance to the priorities of the MRC (through its consideration of the role of community assets and social prescribing to support medical approaches to mental health), NERC (through its exploration of the impact of green spaces) and EPSRC (through its focus on the opportunities provided by technology for driving research forwards). It has also been designed in response to the Network Plus Research Agenda. In addition to the objectives already discussed in the prior Je-S section, it is responsive to many of the mental health challenges cited in the agenda. For example, the call specification noted that only 25% of people with mental health problems receive ongoing treatment. Whilst there are recognised economic and resource constraints with delivering sufficient mental health services, this Network proposes to focus on the role that existing community assets could play in providing support to a much wider range of people in the UK including those on waiting lists. As another example, the call specification raised that 70% of children and adolescents with mental health problems have not had appropriate interventions at an earlier age. This Network will involve working with policy makers and community organisations to see how research could help overcome barriers to access with the aim of engaging more young people and those who are hard to reach. Overall, the network will seek to understand and support future research into how community assets could be mobilised to encourage more resilient individuals and communities with a greater understanding of and capacity for self-management of mental health.