Coastal aquifers are valuable resources of fresh water for domestic and industrial use. However, over-abstraction leaves them at risk of contamination by saltwater, which migrates into the aquifer in response to abstraction. Detecting and monitoring the movement of saltwater is difficult, as the methods currently available rely on data acquired at production or monitoring wells. Consequently, it is typically of low spatial resolution. Moreover, once saltwater reaches the production well(s), it is too late to take action; that region of the aquifer has already been contaminated. This problem is exacerbated in chalk aquifers owing to their dual porosity behaviour and high transmissivity. The aim of this project is to develop new technology, based on measurements of electrical potential (the so-called spontaneous- or self-potential), to detect and monitor the movement of saltwater during freshwater abstraction. The electrical potential is measured using electrodes installed at the earth surface and/or in production or monitoring wells. The advantage of the technique is that saline fronts may be monitored while they are several tens to hundreds of metres away from the monitoring location. Consequently, saline water moving into an aquifer may be detected before it reaches the abstraction well(s), allowing abstraction to be managed proactively so as to avoid widespread contamination of the aquifer. The innovative, multidisciplinary project builds on existing work undertaken at Imperial College, in which measurements of the spontaneous potential, acquired from electrodes permanently installed downhole, are used to monitor water movement in oil or gas reservoirs during production. The underlying rationale in hydrocarbon applications is similar, in that waterfronts may be monitored while they are several tens to hundreds of metres away from the production well, allowing production to be managed proactively so as to avoid excessive unwanted water. This is contaminated and so expensive to treat and dispose of. The project will provide new experimental data, which is required to model and interpret measurements of spontaneous potential in coastal chalk aquifers. The project will also use numerical modeling to determine whether the saline front can be detected and monitored, and over what distances and at what spatial and temporal resolution. Finally, the utility of the method will be demonstrated at a well-characterized chalk aquifer test site, via field experiments in which small volumes of saline water are injected and the resulting electrical signals are measured. This is an essential step to establish credibility prior to deployment in a commercial abstraction project. The results will be of direct benefit to UK plc, because they contribute to the sustainable management of water resources, helping to preserve and maintain these as demand continues to increase. See the attached document 'Case for Support' for further details of the scientific case, aims and objectives, and scope of work.

The world's population likes living by the sea. Currently approximately 53% of us live on the 10% of the earth's surface that is within 200km of the coast; this is forecast to rise to 75% by 2050. This increased concentration of people in restricted areas will place greater stress on natural resources including water supplies. These resources must be used in a judicious manner if we are to live within our means. Meeting the needs for providing potable water to 75% of humanity from such a limited resource forms a major global challenge facing society in the 21st Century. Groundwater has been recognised for some time for its capacity to provide good quality water, particularity in places where other water sources have either poor quality, requiring expensive (and environmentally unfriendly) treatment technologies, or are unavailable. However, it needs to be used cautiously. Over-pumping of coastal aquifers can lead to seawater contaminating groundwater supplies, thereby destroying otherwise valuable resources. Contamination by even 1% salt water can be enough to render freshwater unfit for use. This issue is of concern in the UK, where saline intrusion (SI) can affect the quality of water used for human consumption, as well as for industrial purposes (process water and irrigation). Further afield, this matter is of pressing concern across Europe, particularly in Mediterranean countries, as well as in other water-stressed arid and semi-arid regions of the planet where use of desalinisation technologies may not be viable over the long term. The UK Water Research and Innovation Partnership has highlighted weaknesses in the UK water industry that could prevent it from maintaining its position against increasing external competition. In order to develop a 10% Global market share, worth $8.8 billion, the UK needs to invest in water research to maintain its competitive edge. The partnership has identified opportunities for developing innovative water technologies in 21 areas, where it believes that the UK can compete on the world stage. Developing these technologies requires a firm scientific underpinning. This proposal addresses developing expertise in the area of SI using accurate monitoring, prediction and control systems. Findings will underpin protocols that will increase the effectiveness of sustainable water infrastructure management through demand management tools. The proposal's multidisciplinary research team from Queen's University Belfast and Imperial College London brings together expertise in the areas of experimental hydrodynamics, process engineering, numerical simulation, computational fluid dynamics, field hydro-geology and geophysics; this is further strengthened through active involvement of the British Geological Survey. The integration of experimentation with testing and monitoring in real world environments, along with improved numerical simulation that will lead to the development of an early warning system for salt water breakthrough to provide a sustainable managed approach for water abstraction in coastal areas. Understanding the movement of seawater and freshwater within coastal aquifers, and the interactions that take place under naturally complex ground conditions, provides the key to unlocking suitable approaches for designing and maintaining effective water management systems needed to meet the ever growing demand for high quality freshwater in coastal areas. Our vision is to create a novel system capable of providing early warning of salt water intrusion within groundwater wells. This advance notification, of up to 8 days, will allow actions to be taken in advance of contamination occurring. A dynamic model, which will further help with the understanding of the transient processes that govern SI movement under real world conditions, will provide a novel practical management suite of tools for water suppliers and environmental regulators.

The quality of potable water is of vital importance to public health. However, contamination events are observed to occur even in the tiny volume (relative to total supply volume) of the samples collected for regulatory purposes. These events are often unexplained. A possible source of such contamination is pollutant ingress into the distribution system from the surrounding soil and water. Such ingress can occur through the many apertures normally associated with leakage, at times when low or negative pressure conditions occur such as due to hydraulic transients (water hammer).This project will investigate the currently unknown potential for such contaminant ingress into potable water distribution systems by direct measurement utilising a specially developed laboratory facility. Laboratory studies are necessary to address difficulties associated with the short response duration of transient events and the costs, complexity and regulatory unacceptability of field studies. The experimental set up will be full scale and include surrounding ground conditions and a contaminant flow field (for example, an adjacent leaky sewer). Initial studies will investigate the influence of the characteristics of the transients (magnitude, duration etc.) while further studies will investigate the influence of aperture shape, geometry and location.The experiments will provide quantitative evidence of the conditions causing ingress which will be used to develop a new ingress model which, together with existing modelling tools, will enable quantification of the potential for contaminant ingress. The outputs from the new modelling approach will inform improvements to distribution system design, operation and maintenance, management of pollution incidents and ultimately result in improved drinking water quality.The project will be undertaken at the University of Sheffield, with advice and support from Professor Bryan Karney of Toronto University, an international expert in transient analysis and in collaboration with Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal for access to the best currently available relevant field data.

Developments, such as housing estates, generally mean that more rain "runs off" the surface compared to green fields. This increased "urban runoff" often causes more river or surface water flooding downstream and also contains pollutants washed off from surfaces, such as metals and oil from cars. Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) are a drainage concept that aims to mimic the pre-development hydrology by constructing systems to pass rain water back into the ground or store it, and then release it slowly back into rivers. Often this involves creating grass channels and wetlands, which can create attractive urban areas, habitat for animals and plants and also trap and remove pollutants. SuDS are one of the components of the Green Infrastructure ideal. Research has shown that SuDS can deliver these "ecosystem services" and design guidance has been developed. However the SuDS often have a higher land take than traditional piped drainage, a concern to housing developers. They also have very different, often poorly understood, maintenance requirements. There is also uncertainty about their longevity and how to manage any long term accumulation of pollutants. Water Companies "adopt" piped drainage, but in England the long term adoption and payment for SuDS is uncertain. Planning guidance and legislation requiring SuDS to be included in schemes and adopted by local authorities has also been watered down as part of the Government's lighter touch planning policy. This means that achieving the additional benefits of lower pollution in rivers, improved urban environment and increased biodiversity are dependent on SuDS being able to be economically attractive to developers. However there are no standard guidelines for this economic evaluation and different schemes use different methods and boundaries for calculations. Therefore valuation of SuDS needs be standardised so that schemes can be compared, the appropriate amount of land allocated for high quality designs and to give confidence to property professionals in project appraisal. This project will work with stakeholders, including developers, regulators and SuDS designers to arrive at best practice guidance for calculating the capital costs of SuDS, quantifying the economic values to developments (e.g. house prices, willingness to pay for upkeep by residents) and to explore what other contributions can be sought for off-site benefits. Key partners will be the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) who provide professional guidance to quantity surveyors and valuation surveyors. We will work with RICS to create a professional Guidance Note and test this against case study projects. In addition to this valuation toolkit, training materials will be developed and delivered to surveying professionals. The overall aim is to increase the uptake of high quality SuDS designs through synthesising and translating the environmental, social and engineering benefits in a way that allows their inclusion in decision-making processes. The University of Portsmouth team is made up of engineers who have studied the technical aspects of SuDS for over 20 years and valuation surveyors who have experience of valuing social and environmental services. This multidisciplinary team are therefore well placed to deliver this innovative project.

This proposed research is concerned with the current state of buried sewer systems as measured by their remaining safe life. It aims to develop a suite of stochastic models for corrosion effects to be used for the accurate prediction of the remaining safe life of aged and deteriorated sewers. The outputs of the research will enable a step-change improvement in asset management of sewer systems, thereby sharpening the competitive edge of the UK water sector both technologically and economically. The proposed work consists of a number of components: (i) the identification of the most dominant mechanisms of deterioration and the underlying contributing factors for cementitious sewers, (ii) the examination and analysis of the cause/effect relationship of the corrosion process for this group of sewers, (iii) the development of rational and practical models of corrosion effects for this group of sewers, and (iv) the development of a scientifically advanced tool for predicting the remaining safe life of this group of sewers. The models to be developed will be based on corrosion science principles, derived from chemical physical observations through experiments from real world test sites and in laboratory, and validated to real sewers. This approach is in stark contrast to the few existing corrosion models, which are based on empirically data mining and lack of scientific derivation and practical validation. The tool to be developed will be based on advanced time-dependent reliability theory which takes into account not only the uncertainties of various contributing factors but also the time. It is noted that expertise in time-dependent reliability theory is not widely available in the UK and needs to be developed, in particular its application to service life prediction for sewers. The proposed research builds on the success of the PI's previous research on corrosion and its effects on structural deterioration and service life prediction of corrosion affected concrete infrastructure. The outputs of the research will equip engineers, asset managers and operators with a tool to predict and then decide when and where interventions are needed to prevent unexpected failures of sewers so that a risk-informed and cost-minimised management strategy for sewer asset can be achieved. The proposed research has strong support of industry leaders, representing all stakeholders of sewer systems. The 2009 ICE State of The Nation Report Defending Critical Infrastructure identifies system failure as the No.1 threat to UK's infrastructure. This has timely raised the alarm for the urgent need to develop innovative solutions to the better management of the existing but aged and deteriorated infrastructure. In the light of considerable research that has been undertaken on aboveground infrastructure, this threat cannot be more apparent for underground infrastructure, e.g. buried sewers. The situation has been exacerbated due to more unknowns and uncertainties relating to the factors that affect the operation of underground infrastructure: sewer systems in particular, which effectually corroborates the urgent need for assessing the current state of these sewer systems and their remaining safe life.This research will contribute to the advancement of knowledge and skills in the deterioration of cementitious sewers, the modelling of the deterioration and the prediction of the remaining safe life for deteriorated sewers. It will contribute to creating social, economic, environmental and health benefits for the nation. It will also contribute to the UK's international leadership in the optimal management of sewer asset.