The online world is a curious but uncertain world. It enriches many facets of life but at the same time exposes citizens to a variety of threats that may cause harm to them, their loved ones and to wider society. Many of these harms result from a complex interaction of societal processes driven by diverse stakeholders-we call these Complex Harms. Consider for example smart homes, with devices that manage energy usage, CCTV cameras for the garage and increasingly integrated IT components throughout the house. With such technology, the dynamics in families may change, for instance offering monitoring capabilities. This may results in harms that may include domestic violence, loss of privacy and gathering of disproprotionately large sets of population data by large industries. This raises a number of questions: What is the role of the individual, friends and family to mitigate potential harms? How can one work with the device provider to minimize harm? Should the law interfere? The AGENCY project will use a number of case studies to answer these questions: HealthTech, Identity Management, Smart Homes and Online Disinformation. Complex harms such as above tend to happen to citizens, and, in most cases, they are not purposely caused or easily controlled by citizens. The AGENCY project believes firmly that establishing citizen agency is an absolutely necessary ingredient for any transformative approaches that resolve these complex harms. Citizens need to be empowered through agency-enhanching technologies, behaviours and processes to gain a sense of control, ownership, security, and consequently trust in their online activities. Protecting against complex harms is a wicked problem because so many stakeholder are involved, and because many harms are unintended consequences of the practical use and evolution of technology. Therefore, mitigating complex harms requires interdisciplinary co-design principles, technology foundations and collaborative governance procedures to assure online citizen agency in the presence of multiple stakeholder interests. The project brings together computer science, user-centered design, business, psychology, sociology, legal and ethical experts. If AGENCY succeeds, it will provide a profound understanding of the role of online agency in protecting citizens and will deliver collaborative methods, technological building blocks and scientifically grounded best practices for our society to provide more proactive and structured approaches to protecting citizens online.

The online world is a curious but uncertain world. It enriches many facets of life but at the same time exposes citizens to a variety of threats that may cause harm to them, their loved ones and to wider society. Many of these harms result from a complex interaction of societal processes driven by diverse stakeholders-we call these Complex Harms. Consider for example smart homes, with devices that manage energy usage, CCTV cameras for the garage and increasingly integrated IT components throughout the house. With such technology, the dynamics in families may change, for instance offering monitoring capabilities. This may results in harms that may include domestic violence, loss of privacy and gathering of disproprotionately large sets of population data by large industries. This raises a number of questions: What is the role of the individual, friends and family to mitigate potential harms? How can one work with the device provider to minimize harm? Should the law interfere? The AGENCY project will use a number of case studies to answer these questions: HealthTech, Identity Management, Smart Homes and Online Disinformation. Complex harms such as above tend to happen to citizens, and, in most cases, they are not purposely caused or easily controlled by citizens. The AGENCY project believes firmly that establishing citizen agency is an absolutely necessary ingredient for any transformative approaches that resolve these complex harms. Citizens need to be empowered through agency-enhanching technologies, behaviours and processes to gain a sense of control, ownership, security, and consequently trust in their online activities. Protecting against complex harms is a wicked problem because so many stakeholder are involved, and because many harms are unintended consequences of the practical use and evolution of technology. Therefore, mitigating complex harms requires interdisciplinary co-design principles, technology foundations and collaborative governance procedures to assure online citizen agency in the presence of multiple stakeholder interests. The project brings together computer science, user-centered design, business, psychology, sociology, legal and ethical experts. If AGENCY succeeds, it will provide a profound understanding of the role of online agency in protecting citizens and will deliver collaborative methods, technological building blocks and scientifically grounded best practices for our society to provide more proactive and structured approaches to protecting citizens online.

We are increasingly dependent on complex "smart" systems: cities, houses, vehicles, electricity grids and a myriad of connected 'things' gathering information and performing automated decision-making with or without a human in the loop. This is in part possible because of technological advances in sensing, actuation, computer hardware, networking and communication, which enable the harnessing, processing and analysis of vast volumes of data. Major advances in Automatic Control Engineering have provided the underpinning theory, methodology and practice needed to design and implement highly complex control and decision-making systems. Automatic control engineering continues to play a vital role in realising the government's long-term industrial strategy of raising productivity and earning power within the UK. Specifically, automatic control is a key enabling technology for all four major societal challenge themes identified in the 2017 UK Industrial Strategy: AI and Data, Clean Growth, Future Mobility and Aging Society and the specific challenge areas within each theme. Automatic control not only dramatically improves the productivity, efficiency, reliability and safety of a wide range of processes across all sectors, but also provides fundamental theory, methodologies and tools to further the understanding and enable discovery in other disciplines such as biology, medicine and social sciences. Whilst the UK led the First Industrial Revolution through the adoption of new technologies, including automation and control, today it lags behind its international competitors. This is evidenced in part by the slow productivity growth over the past decade, which is in sharp contrast to other economic indicators. It is argued that if the UK does not make a concerted effort to transition towards automation, it will miss a pivotal opportunity for growth, estimated to be worth more than £200 billion to the UK economy by 2030. For the UK to become a global leader in intelligent automation and leapfrog international competitors, it is vital that it consolidates its research leadership in automatic control engineering. The UK has a strong control engineering community of well over 1000 active researchers, and engineering practitioners spanning all career stages, which are represented at an international level by the UK Automatic Control Council (UKACC), the United Kingdom's National Member Organisation (NMO) of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), acting as an effective link between the UK and the international control communities. At the time of dramatic advances in automation, AI, sensing and computation technologies, in order to engage effectively with the UK Grand Challenge research agenda, avoid fragmentation of effort and to ensure control engineers are engaged from the outset with end-users or initiatives, there is a need for the UK control community to connect effectively with other academic and industry stakeholders, to develop a common research vision and strategy and to start addressing these challenges through ambitious pilot studies, paving the way for full-scale, high-impact grant proposals, novel groundbreaking research and knowledge transfer projects. The Automatic Control Engineering Network aims to drive forward the UK's research and international leadership in next-generation automation and control, by bringing together and connecting the country's expertise in automation, the internet-of-things, cybersecurity, machine learning and robotics, with industry stakeholders and the wider research communities working towards addressing the same pressing societal challenges. Through the creation of a Virtual Centre of Excellence in Automation and Control, the Network will ensure that the coordination of research efforts, industry engagement, training activities and resource sharing needed to address Grand Challenges, will continue beyond the end of the funding period.

We are currently facing an unprecedented climate emergency threatening life on our planet. Limiting global surface temperature rise is key to ensure irreversible effects for nature and people are not triggered. For the UK, decarbonisation of the energy sector to mitigate climate change is a crucial ambition, becoming the first major economy to pass legislation to end its contribution to global warming by 2050 by reducing its carbon emissions to net-zero. Even though a significant emission reduction has been already achieved in the electric power sector, progress has been limited in other areas, such as heating (including space cooling), which accounts for over a third of UK emissions. Heating and cooling are central to our lives not only for comfort and daily activities, but also to facilitate productive workplaces and to run a variety of industrial processes. Decarbonising heating and cooling and reducing emissions from buildings are thus paramount to meet net-zero targets. Cooling decarbonisation has not previously received significant attention, but this is changing due to population increase and climate change. Summertime cooling of buildings is becoming increasingly important and consumer demand for greater comfort levels will also increase the energy used for cooling services. An increased requirement for cooling is anticipated, with the share of UK electricity used for cooling also expected to rise further, which could strain the electricity system. At the same time, summer electricity demand is changing with a surge in solar PV generation, causing concern for balancing the power system. Since cooling facilities are in general limited to building level, significant investments in cooling infrastructure and buildings are needed. Flex-Cool-Store brings together academics with complementary expertise on techno-economic, societal and policy aspects of electrical power supply and thermal energy systems. The main objective of this interdisciplinary project is to investigate the potential impacts of a growth in UK cooling demand and how this growth can be managed through proactive design and flexible operation of the cooling supply system and energy storage, and how the new demand can be served by an increasingly decarbonised electricity system. Underpinning this, public perception towards the adoption of cooling technologies within buildings and communities and consumer participation in flexibility provision from energy storage at household level will be explored via interviews and public workshops. Outcomes will be considered alongside pathways and policies associated with heat decarbonisation, and novel analysis using 'elite' interviews with policy makers will be conducted to consider the potential relationship between heat decarbonisation strategies, cooling and storage. This interdisciplinary approach will enable Flex-Cool-Store to address the issue of increasing demand for cooling and decarbonisation from multiple angles and to develop an even stronger evidence for best practice around buildings decarbonisation. Specific objectives of the project are: 1. Understanding cooling demand considering technical and socio-economic factors. Detailed studies will be conducted to understand how cooling demand might change over the next decades. 2. Quantifying the impacts of increased cooling demand on electricity networks. The extent to which supplying cooling will affect peak electricity demand will be quantified and its implications on network reinforcement will be investigated for selected case studies using data from real practical projects. 3. Investigating the flexibility provision to the electrical power system from integrating cooling technologies and storage. The interactions and synergies between cooling and electricity systems will be studied. How to adopt a coordinated approach for designing and operating energy systems of buildings so that the provision of flexibility can be maximised will be explored.