There are many interesting open questions at the interface between applied mathematics, scientific computing and applied statistics. Mathematics is the language of science, we use it to describe the laws of motion that govern natural and technological systems. We use statistics to make sense of data. We develop and test computer algorithms that make these ideas concrete. By bringing these concepts together in a systematic way we can validate and sharpen our hypothesis about the underlying science, and make predictions about future behaviour. This general field of Uncertainty Quantification is a very active area of research, with many challenges; from intellectual questions about how to define and measure uncertainty to very practical issues concerning the need to perform intensive computational experiments as efficiently as possible. ICONIC brings together a team of high profile researchers with the appropriate combination of skills in modeling, numerical analysis, statistics and high performance computing. To give a concrete target for impact, the ICONIC project will focus initially on Uncertainty Quantification for mathematical models relating to crime, security and resilience in urban environments. Then, acknowledging that urban analytics is a very fast-moving field where new technologies and data sources emerge rapidly, and exploiting the flexibility built into an EPSRC programme grant, we will apply the new tools to related city topics concerning human mobility, transport and infrastructure. In this way, the project will enhance the UK's research capabilities in the fast-moving and globally significant Future Cities field. The project will exploit the team's strong existing contacts with Future Cities laboratories around the world, and with nonacademic stakeholders who are keen to exploit the outcomes of the research. As new technologies emerge, and as more people around the world choose to live and work in urban environments, the Future Cities field is generating vast quantities of potentially valuable data. ICONIC will build on the UK's strength in basic mathematical sciences--the cleverness needed to add value to these data sources--in order to produce new algorithms and computational tools. The research will be conducted alongside stakeholders--including law enforcement agencies, technical IT and infrastructure providers, utility companies and policy-makers. These external partners will provide feedback and challenges, and will be ready to extract value from the tools that we develop. We also have an international Advisory Board of committed partners with relevant expertise in academic research, policymaking, law enforcement, business engagement and public outreach. With these structures in place, the research will have a direct impact on the UK economy, as the nation competes for business in the global Future Cities marketplace. Further, by focusing on crime, security and resilience we will directly improve the lives of individual citizens.

There are many interesting open questions at the interface between applied mathematics, scientific computing and applied statistics. Mathematics is the language of science, we use it to describe the laws of motion that govern natural and technological systems. We use statistics to make sense of data. We develop and test computer algorithms that make these ideas concrete. By bringing these concepts together in a systematic way we can validate and sharpen our hypothesis about the underlying science, and make predictions about future behaviour. This general field of Uncertainty Quantification is a very active area of research, with many challenges; from intellectual questions about how to define and measure uncertainty to very practical issues concerning the need to perform intensive computational experiments as efficiently as possible. ICONIC brings together a team of high profile researchers with the appropriate combination of skills in modeling, numerical analysis, statistics and high performance computing. To give a concrete target for impact, the ICONIC project will focus initially on Uncertainty Quantification for mathematical models relating to crime, security and resilience in urban environments. Then, acknowledging that urban analytics is a very fast-moving field where new technologies and data sources emerge rapidly, and exploiting the flexibility built into an EPSRC programme grant, we will apply the new tools to related city topics concerning human mobility, transport and infrastructure. In this way, the project will enhance the UK's research capabilities in the fast-moving and globally significant Future Cities field. The project will exploit the team's strong existing contacts with Future Cities laboratories around the world, and with nonacademic stakeholders who are keen to exploit the outcomes of the research. As new technologies emerge, and as more people around the world choose to live and work in urban environments, the Future Cities field is generating vast quantities of potentially valuable data. ICONIC will build on the UK's strength in basic mathematical sciences--the cleverness needed to add value to these data sources--in order to produce new algorithms and computational tools. The research will be conducted alongside stakeholders--including law enforcement agencies, technical IT and infrastructure providers, utility companies and policy-makers. These external partners will provide feedback and challenges, and will be ready to extract value from the tools that we develop. We also have an international Advisory Board of committed partners with relevant expertise in academic research, policymaking, law enforcement, business engagement and public outreach. With these structures in place, the research will have a direct impact on the UK economy, as the nation competes for business in the global Future Cities marketplace. Further, by focusing on crime, security and resilience we will directly improve the lives of individual citizens.

This project builds upon our previous research on particular forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG), and on police responses to such violence, and will gather new evidence on the policing of such violence committed against racially minoritised women and girls. It will establish new partnerships and consolidate existing ones with three police forces in England to achieve the following key objectives: a) document existing patterns in the reporting of VAWG within racially minoritised communities; b) identify emerging policing challenges and best practice associated with supporting racially minoritised victims/survivors of VAWG; and c) enhance police investigative techniques, safeguarding responses and multi-agency working to more effectively support racially minoritised victims/survivors of VAWG and to prevent such violence from occurring in future. We will achieve these aims by designing and disseminating outputs from this research through knowledge-exchange activities, training and best practice guidance aimed at informing frontline police officers and policing policy. Our project will advance the state of policing knowledge in a range of domains, including on particular forms of VAWG; on the issues and needs facing specific communities, including any relevant socio-cultural contexts; on the contexts and dynamics of withdrawal of victim support by racially minoritised women and girls; and on the most effective policing techniques/approaches for tackling VAWG and/or working with racially minoritised communities. In doing so, this project will improve outcomes for racially minoritised (potential) victims/survivors of violence and abuse in England and beyond. It will also contribute to academic debates on policing at the intersection of gender and race, and on policing practice/policy.

Preventive policing of serious crime sometimes involves deception and disguise. A case in point is the prevention of abuse arising from paedophile grooming and peer to peer networks where abuse images of children are discussed and exchanged. The preventive techniques by police investigators include assuming identities of existing community members, and of children, so that interventions and arrests can be made. Often, there are tight time constraints associated with this process - investigators have only a small window in which to learn and assume the identity in question before arousing suspicion in their target(s). The training that undercover online investigators currently receive, although broadly informed by linguistic theory, is in need of development. Furthermore, the time constraints mean that a semi-automated system to assist in identity assumption would represent a crucial contribution to the investigative toolkit. Research taking a computational approach to the analysis of online communications has thus far focussed overwhelmingly on the structural elements of Computer Mediated Discourse (CMD), such as typography, orthography and other low level features, with little to no attention being paid to the socially situated discourses in which these features are embedded. The Centre for Forensic Linguistics (CFL) - a research centre within Aston University combining leading-edge research and investigative forensic practice - and Lexegesys - a consultancy and technology company specialising in developing and implementing data analysis solutions, recently collaborated on a project that was successful in automating the process of identification and extraction of low-level features for the purposes of attributing authorship of unknown texts within the context of Twitter. Yet CMD has widely been recognized to operate on a number of linguistic levels, such as those of meaning, of interaction, and of social practice. Outside of the computational linguistic field, the characteristic features of CMD are understood as resources that users draw on in the construction of identities in particular contexts, and CMD constitutes social practice in and of itself rather than simply being shaped by social variables. Taking an inductive approach, which is to say that the phenomena of interest, rather than a specific theoretical paradigm, are primary, this research aims to bridge the gap between complex theories of the discursive construction of online identities on the one hand, and computational approaches to analysing online communications on the other. A small scale study CFL and Lexegesys are currently engaged in is addressing the challenges of automation at the pragmatic and interactional levels, working towards the semi-automated identification of phenomena such as indirect speech acts and topic management. The work is extremely practical and is informed by real-world police investigations. A partner in the project, the West Midlands Police, Technical Intelligence Development Unit is crucially committed to providing data and operational insights. In addition to empirical applied linguistics, the project conducts proof-of-concept work for software that will assist in an ethical use of assumed identities in policing. Furthermore, it will involve an assessment of the ethical and policy implications for policing and security of complexity in online identity performance. This proposal was previously submitted to the AHRC, and is resubmitted here on their advice.

Over recent years, the ways in which members of the public can contact the police have undergone significant change. Whilst much contact is still face-to-face, many police organisations have introduced different types of communication technology, such as online reporting of crimes and answering of queries, body worn video cameras, mobile data terminals, and the use of social media accounts. As a result, the public is increasingly likely to encounter policing in ways that are 'technologically-mediated'. In the UK, the National Police Chiefs' Council supports this shift, and has a portfolio of work focused on developing technologies for use by the public to contact the police because, they believe, the public now expects that policing will be 'online' just as other services are. However, while attention is being paid to what technology can do, and particularly what it can do for the police, the public side of this encounter has barely been considered. Online reporting (for example) may appeal to some people, or be particularly useful for some crime types, but we do not know enough about how people experience these types of interactions to be confident that they will benefit everyone, in all circumstances. Nor do we know if and how these developments might affect the way people feel about, and act in relation to, the police. This project therefore focuses on understanding the implications of introducing technologies into conversations between the police and the public. Two main objectives are to explore how members of the public feel about these new developments, and to consider the ways in which the police can and should design their systems to better reflect people's needs and expectations. PoLITiC is designed to include a range of different groups and individuals, for example those who are more and less confident using digital technologies, and those with particular access needs (for example the deaf community). We aim to shape policy and practice, with a view to improving service provision. We will work closely with three police forces, with various communities, and with national policing organisations, so that our findings can directly and positively influence what the police do, and therefore what the public are able to do to access police services. We know that when people interact with the police they come to conclusions about how much they support the police, how good the police are at their jobs, and how much they trust what the police do. But this knowledge is based on research which assumes that most or all police and public contact happens face-to-face, person-to-person, as it has done for decades. At most a telephone may be involved. Given that this situation is changing, it is important that we reconsider our theories of public trust and police legitimacy, and explore if they are fit for purpose in the current environment and future-proof against new developments. PoLITiC therefore aims to explore police and public experiences and understandings of technologically-mediated contact by using methods such as interviews, focus groups, and extended observations to gain a deeper understanding of these new forms of contact in action. To help us understand how experiences may differ, we will carry out our research in a variety of different locations (for example urban and rural) and will work with various communities. We will also consider what it means for the police to be 'visible' and 'accessible' in a digital age and assess how the public feel about the different ways the police can be seen and contacted. A series of on-line experimental studies will complement the qualitative methods, and allow us to estimate the causal effects of, for example, different forms of mediation on trust. Using a variety of methods our research will develop understandings of police legitimacy in changing times, and allow us to recommend ways for the police to stay legitimate in the eyes of the public in the 21st century.