Rural Wales is a diverse region that faces many challenges in pursuing inclusive, sustainable growth. Long-term disadvantages of a dispersed population, poor accessibility, limited infrastructure and a low wage economy have been intensified by the impacts of Brexit and Covid-19. Communities are confronted by the loss of services, youth out-migration, unaffordable housing and a drop in Welsh-speakers. Both new opportunities and new challenges arise from the climate crisis and commitments to a net zero transition. Investments such as the growth deals provide a framework for development, however its widely acknowledged that the evidence base for policy and practice in rural Wales is fragmented and dated, with notable gaps. The proposed Rural Wales Local Policy and Innovation Partnership will bring together academics, local government, development agencies, community groups and other stakeholders to find effective solutions. It will combine, analyse and map data from different sources to create a shared evidence hub, supplemented by new research; it will test and evaluate innovative ideas; and it will enable communities to better understand local issues through community-led research that can create the knowledge required for effective local action. The partnership's activities will focus on the four priorities of 'Building a Regenerative Economy', 'Supporting the New Zero Transition', 'Empowering Communities for Cultural Recovery' and 'Enhancing Wellbeing in Place'. Phase 1 of the project will concentrate on the further development of the full work programme through principles of co-design, working with stakeholders and communities to shape to priorities and methods. In particular, we will engage with communities in five pilot areas around Corwen, Newtown, Trawsfynydd, northern Ceredigion and north-west Pembrokeshire, to identify topics for initial community-led research studies in Phase 2, and to learn from previous community engagement, co-design and community research projects. Other aspects of Phase 1 will focus on reviewing existing data and on consolidating the partnership. The Rural Wales Local Policy and Innovation Partnership is led by Aberystwyth University with researchers at Bangor, Cardiff and Gloucestershire universities, and stakeholders including Antur Cymru, Datblygiadau Egni Gwledig (DEG), Rural Health and Care Wales and Sgema. The LPIP is supported by collaborating partners including Ambition North Wales, Growing Mid Wales, Natural Resources Wales, One Voice Wales, Severn Wye Energy, and the Welsh Local Government Association. There will opportunities for wider researchers, stakeholders and community representatives to be involved with the LPIP as members of four Thematic Groups linked to the priority areas.

Green infrastructure (GI) river engineering approaches are fundamental to improving the quality, morphology and ecology of our waterbodies; and as part of an overall strategy to help people and communities adapt to the negative effects of climate change. There is also a strong legislative framework which drives the need to protect and enhance the environment. GI solutions include green engineering measures and greening grey river engineering assets with equivalent or increased benefits compared to conventional "grey" infrastructure. They can become self-regenerating and represent a long-term solution that also promotes bio-diversity. There are however, procedural and technical barriers which prevent and obstruct the implementation of green solutions as part of river engineering protection schemes. They are perceived as having a higher risk of failure than grey (or hard) engineering solutions, are insufficiently supported by design and maintenance guidance and procedures or by evidence-based approaches. The objective of the project is to support asset managers, engineers, decision-makers, and other end-users to identify and select green engineering options for river engineering protection in the fluvial environment. The project will develop a decision support framework for selection and application of green infrastructure approaches to fluvial flood defence and erosion risk management interventions in rivers. The proposed work will draw together the existing academic knowledge on green infrastructure measures for flood risk and erosion protection schemes and be complemented with a range of case studies that support their practical application. This will underpin the decision support tool that will be developed. It will answer the questions: what techniques work in different channel typologies and what are their benefits and limitations. The project will pull out the new available and relevant research and experience and knowledge and make it more widely available to practitioners helping them to select green and green-grey solutions using similar type of criteria than when exploring grey solutions. This will help to overcome some of the barriers of prejudice and ignorance and enable the implementation of GI concepts. The uptake of GI approaches will strengthen the functionality of fluvial ecosystems by greening the new and existing river protection and management infrastructure and will assist in compliance with the environmental aspects of the Floods Directive and the Water Framework Directive.

The aim of the project is to identify institutional and organisational arrangements at the regional level that tend to lead to the 'good' management of policy trade-offs associated with increasing productivity, and to make recommendations based on this. These trade-offs are between productivity growth, inclusivity and sustainability. They arise because authorities have limited resources and have to prioritise: policies to maximise productivity may not maximise inclusivity or sustainability, policies to maximise inclusivity may not maximise sustainability and so on. Trade-off management is 'good' when it reduces the need for compromise between the three objectives, or to the extent that compromise is necessary, when it helps regional policy makers achieve their priorities. Recommendations will cover: 1. Changes to the way national and regional policy makers operate within the current system of institutions and organisations 2. Modest changes to that system that policy makers responsible for the design of the system are likely to accept, and 3. More radical changes to that system that could be adopted in the future. If policy makers act on these recommendations this will lead to strengthened institutions and thus to improved regional and local productivities. Ultimately this should lead to an improvement in the UK's productivity record. To achieve this the project will answer the following research questions: 1. What kinds of relevant institutional and organisational arrangements exist across the UK regions? How do the regional economies compare? 2. What kinds of trade-offs do these organisations consider important and how do they manage them? 3. What trade-offs between productivity growth, inclusivity and sustainability are actually achieved? 4. Which regional institutional and organisational arrangements, now or in the past, have tended to produce 'good' management of these trade-offs? Are there better practices in mainland Europe? To answer these involves a five stage process: Stage 1 (scoping): we will capture the state of the art on what explains differentials in productivity, interview and hold two workshops for key stakeholders to refine the research agenda, engage with a wider stakeholder group, and develop a typology of UK regions based on their economies, their institutional and organisational arrangements, and the outcomes over time. We will use this to identify eight regions for in depth comparison. Stage 2 (secondary data analysis): we will profile all UK regions using measures of productivity, jobs and other economic, social, and environmental targets and examine influences on productivity growth. We will also analyse local industrial and economic strategies, including performance targets. Stages 3 and 4 involve the collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative analysis - of all UK regions - will focus on the impact of governance structures, mechanisms and practices on variables associated with the three outcomes, using approaches that allow for so called "treatment" effects, and to distinguish correlation from causation. The qualitative analysis - of the 8 regions - will include formal analysis of strategic statements, networks, and the functions carried out within these networks, as well as interviews. We will identify what trade-offs are actually achieved and use formal analysis to tease out how institutional arrangements have affected these and the strategic choices - and what might make a difference in the future. We will supplement this with insights from an analysis of overseas regions and historical cases. Stage 5 involves drawing together the findings of the previous stages, discussing this with key stakeholders, developing a set of recommendations with them, and communicating with a wider stakeholder group.

UK ENABLE Consortium vision, aims and objectives: Local government is uniquely placed to shape the environmental and social factors which fundamentally influence non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and thus our health and wellbeing. Our vision is for local government to consider the health of local populations in all policy and practice decisions and to have the best possible scientific evidence to support those decisions. We will test our vision by working with five different local authority (LA) based public health systems across the UK, learning what works best, and what can be useful for all LAs across the UK. Our consortium brings together academics, practitioners, policy makers and other stakeholders from across the UK in five centres in NE and SW England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales; each with different models of public health delivery. We will develop and test a process that embeds research capacity and expertise in LAs. Working closely with our partners in each LA, we will identify a current priority for improving the health and wellbeing and reducing inequalities of people living in that area. By building relationships between academics, practitioners and policy makers we will enable the LA to access and create new evidence that is relevant for decision making about the priority issue. Scientific rationale for the proposed research: Evidence-informed policy-making aims to improve decision making by using the best available research. Organisational and cultural barriers within the current system have made this approach difficult to achieve. New methods and approaches are needed which bring together researchers, practitioners and policy makers in local government, where evidence is only one contributing factor to decision-making. Embedded researchers and knowledge brokers can help to ensure evidence is used by building understanding of the context, accessing existing, and co-producing new evidence. Intervention(s) of interest and the potential applications and anticipated benefits of the work: By the end of the project we will: 1. Increase research capacity and 'no how' in each LA, focusing on a local NCD priority issue, enabling access to evidence to inform local decision-making. We will develop and share learning which is generalisable across the UK 2. Build and support new partnerships for active and effective research use with practitioners, policy makers, and academia 3. Build knowledge and skills in local government and universities to maximise use of different kinds of evidence for policy, practice and public decision-making 4. Co-create evidence that addresses local government priorities, with a focus on prevention, by working across sectors and disciplines, utilising novel methodological approaches, including complex systems models 5. Develop a range of health and system interventions that have been co-produced and tested across LA areas 6. Create sustained change in research culture in LAs and academia so that evidence use is embedded across local government 7. Evaluate this new approach and methods to see if we made a difference to the health of people living in each area, related to their priority topic, and whether/how this approach could be rolled out across the UK We anticipate that this work will improve population health and wellbeing and increase the use of scientific research. It aims to improve quality, efficiency and effectiveness of public health interventions and services, reduce waste, and improve staff morale and retention. Consortium management: Our across-UK academic leadership brings together experience of applied translational research in prevention from four of the UKCRC funded Centres of Excellence in Public Health. Senior leaders in local government public health, bring practical experience of putting evidence into action. Other members have expertise in systems thinking, embedded research, knowledge brokerage and other skills essential to our success.

Climate change is causing, and will continue to cause, more intense precipitation events and greater amplitude of warm and cold temperatures leading to severe flooding, extreme drying, freezing and thawing. This will affect many parts of the urban geo-infrastructure such as shallow foundations, retaining structures, buried utilities, road subbase and railway formations. The costs of damage due to shrink/swell movements on clay soils have resulted in economic losses of over £1.6 billion in the UK during drought years. The novelty of the proposed research is the development of "climate adaptation composite barrier systems" (comprising water holding layers and a capillary barrier) capable of limiting the impact of a changing environment on the geo-infrastructure and hence increasing their engineering sustainability and resilience. Environmental cyclic actions imposed on our infrastructure are governed by soil-plant-atmosphere interaction, which is a coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical problem driven by the atmosphere and influenced by soil type, stress history, stress level, mineralogy, soil-water chemistry and vegetation. Understanding this complex problem requires systematic research and a coherent approach. This proposal describes systematic experimental and numerical modelling studies to understand the response of composite barrier systems, when subjected to extreme weather events and long-term climate changes, and to develop appropriate sustainable adaptation technologies to mitigate potential impacts on urban geo-infrastructure.