We will train a cohort of 65 PhD students to tackle the challenge of Data Creativity for the 21st century digital economy. In partnership with over 40 industry and academic partners, our students will establish the technologies and methods to enable producers and consumers to co-create smarter products in smarter ways and so establish trust in the use of personal data. Data is widely recognised by industry as being the 'fuel' that powers the economy. However, the highly personal nature of much data has raised concerns about privacy and ownership that threaten to undermine consumers' trust. Unlocking the economic potential of personal data while tackling societal concerns demands a new approach that balances the ability to innovate new products with building trust and ensuring compliance with a complex regulatory framework. This requires PhD students with a deep appreciation of the capabilities of emerging technology, the ability to innovate new products, but also an understanding of how this can be done in a responsible way. Our approach to this challenge is one of Data Creativity - enabling people to take control of their data and exercise greater agency by becoming creative consumers who actively co-create more trusted products. Driven by the needs of industry, public sector and third sector partners who have so far committed £1.6M of direct and £2.8M of in kind funding, we will explore multiple sectors including Fast Moving Consumer Goods and Food; Creative Industries; Health and Wellbeing; Personal Finance; and Smart Mobility and how it can unlock synergies between these. Our partners also represent interests in enabling technologies and the cross cutting concerns of privacy and security. Each student will work with industry, public, third sector or international partners to ensure that their research is grounded in real user needs, maximising its impact while also enhancing their future employability. External partners will be involved in PhD co-design, supervision, training, providing resources, hosting placements, setting industry-led challenge projects and steering. Addressing the challenges of Data Creativity demands a multi-disciplinary approach that combines expertise in technology development and human-centred methods with domain expertise across key sectors of the economy. Our students will be situated within Horizon, a leading centre for Digital Economy research and a vibrant environment that draws together a national research Hub, CDT and a network of over 100 industry, academic and international partners. We currently provide access to a network of >80 potential supervisors, ranging from leading Professors to talented early career researchers. This extends to academic partners at other Universities who will be involved in co-hosting and supervising our students, including the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University. We run an integrated four-year training programme that features: a bespoke core covering key topics in Future Products, Enabling Technologies, Innovation and Responsibility; optional advanced specialist modules; internship and international exchanges; industry-led challenge projects; training in research methods and professional skills; modules dedicated to the PhD proposal, planning and write up; and many opportunities for cross-cohort collaboration including our annual industry conference, retreat and summer schools. Our Impact Fund supports students in deepening the impact of their research. Horizon has EDI considerations embedded throughout, from consideration of equal opportunities in recruitment to ensuring that we deliver an inclusive environment which supports diversity of needs and backgrounds in the student experience.

As a first stage in the analysis of storm surge risks to UK port infrastructure and supply chain operation, this project aims to improve the resilience of the port of Immingham and its critical biomass/coal transport link to power stations. The project includes the following three activities: WF1: To refine and operationalize an innovative artificial neural network (ANN) extreme sea-level prediction model (NE/M008150/1) for application at Immingham (with potential application for other UK ports, especially within estuaries). WF2: To translate predicted surge height and duration to risks to infrastructure (equipment, facilities) and operations (i.e. impacts on biomass/coal flows) through stakeholder engagement. WF3: Incorporate railway infrastructure and freight train movements to UCL's MARS model (used in NE/M008150/1) to predict the cascading impacts on the power sector.

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.

Cement manufacture accounts for about 5% of global carbon dioxide emissions, the single largest contribution of any man-made material. Despite this, research has shown that concrete is generally inefficiently used in the built environment. This fellowship will look to reduce the global environmental impact of concrete construction through a new method for the analysis of reinforced concrete structures that is well suited to producing the optimised designs that have the potential to significantly reduce material consumption. The new analysis method will be considered alongside practical construction processes, building on previous work by Dr Orr in this field, thus ensuring that the computationally optimised form can actually be built, and the research adopted, in industry. Most existing computational methods poorly predict the real behaviour of concrete structures, because their underlying mathematics assumes that the structure being analysed remains continuous as it deforms, yet a fundamental property of concrete is that it cracks (i.e. it does not remain continuous as it deforms). In contrast to finite element methods, this fellowship will develop a meshfree analysis process for concrete based on 'peridynamics'. The term 'peridynamic' (from 'near' and 'force') was coined by Dr Silling (see also statements of support) to describe meshfree analysis methods in solids. This new approach does not presume a continuous displacement field and instead models solid materials as a collection of particles held together by tiny forces, the value of which is a function of each particle's relative position. Displacement of a particle follows Newton's laws of motion, and is well suited to reinforced concrete since: 1) concrete really is a random arrangement of cement and aggregate particles; 2) failure is governed by tensile strain criteria, which is ideal as the only real way that concrete fails is in tension (all other failure modes in everyday design situations are a consequence of tensile failure) and the model can therefore accurately predict behaviour, and 3) since the elements fail progressively in tension, the peridynamic approach automatically models cracking behaviour, which is extremely difficult to model conventionally. A variety of force-displacement relationships can be defined to model the concrete, the reinforcement, and the reinforcement-concrete bond that together define the overall material response. The approach models the material as a massively redundant three-dimensional truss in which the randomly arranged particles are interconnected by elements of varying length. Although an optimal 'element density' has not yet been determined (see Section 2.4.1 in the case for support) proof of concept work has used tens of millions of particles and hundreds of millions of elements per cubic metre of concrete. From the simple rules and properties applied to these elements, all the complex behaviour of concrete can be predicted. Individual element definitions will be determined by laboratory tests and computational analysis, with both historic and new test data utilised. Crucially, the model has been shown in proof-of-concept work to be able to predict the cracking behaviour of concrete, overcoming a key computational challenge. Optimisation routines, in which material is placed only where it is needed, will then be integrated with the new analysis model to design low-carbon concrete structures. Consideration of the practical construction methods will also be given, building on previous work in this area by Dr Orr. The designs that result from such optimisation processes will have unconventional but completely buildable geometries (as evidenced in Dr Orr's previous work) - making them ideal for analysis using the proposed random elements approach.

Although there are many issues facing the built environment, decarbonisation is THE central challenge: The UK has the stated aim of an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050. This target can only be met if we transform society. The built environment is responsible for 50% of relevant emissions, making it the largest single emitter, and therefore it will need to be near fully decarbonised by that date. The Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering together with the Departments of Mech. Eng., Psychology, Computer Science and Maths at the University of Bath propose a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in the Decarbonisation of the Built Environment. The £3.5m requested from the EPSRC will be leveraged by £6m from the University and at least £1.3m for industrial partners to fund a CDT operating at the interface of Architecture, Building Science, Social Science and Computing. The CDT will place the fundamental need of society to decarbonise at the core of a broad spectrum of research and training. A dynamic, multidisciplinary research and training environment (the combined research income since 2008 of the 7 departments is >£60m (£22.8m from EPSRC)) will underpin transformative research and training in the built environment. This will respond to a national and global need for highly skilled and talented scientists and engineers in the area, as evidenced by a recent report by the Royal Academy of Engineering, and as testified to by our key industrial partners. This, multidisciplinary, Centre has three aims, all centred on aiding this rapid decarbonisation: (i) to further the UK research agenda on sustainable building design including retrofit, materials and energy in-use; (ii) train the next generation of research-led engineering leaders and architects that will enter the construction profession through the UK's major engineering companies and architectural firms; (iii) help provide the next generation of academics who will have prime influence in this field from 2020 onwards. All students will receive cohort-based foundation training to supplement their original undergraduate or masters knowledge, as well as training in the post-carbon built environment and transferable skills. They will all conduct high quality and challenging research within EPSRC's Sustainable Built Environments priority area and be directed by joint supervision from different disciplines within the CDT and other departments where necessary. The broad research themes encompass the areas of: materials; building physics; construction management; control; social science; resilience to climate change, economics and architecture. Participation from key industry partners will address stakeholder needs, and partner institutions such as the Building Research Establishment, Arup, Atkins, Buro Happold, Arup, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Lhoist, Expedition will provide world-leading external input, along with meaningful opportunities for student placements. Detailed management plans have been developed in order to facilitate the smooth running of the centre and to enable excellence in the training and research aspects of the proposal. The CDT will be supported by the creation of physical and virtual laboratories for the students. This initiative has attracted strong and influential support: "Within this field, decarbonisation is a crucial factor for our clients" and "There is no doubt in my mind that Bath University is the right place for such a Centre......it is the best of the multi-disciplinary schools in the country that allows people to bridge between the traditional disciplines" Michael Cook, Chairman Buro Happold. (See letters of support.)