Our cities are in crisis. There are real uncertainties about issues such as austerity, economic growth, diversity and sustainability. Most people are beginning to recognise that existing ways of working aren't delivering benefits for the people who need them most. Citizens and third sector organisations are often left out of the picture as formal urban partnerships spend their energies negotiating with central government. Local expertise, innovation and creativity have often not been seen as part of the answer to our urban crisis. But we can see that there are people and organisations taking action locally and coming up with different kinds of solutions. Jam and Justice is a novel project that seeks to address wicked urban problems through collaborative working on messy solutions. 'Jam' is about trying to bring together different constituencies in the city to experiment and innovate to address our shared problems. 'Justice' is about re-connecting with those who have been disenfranchised and excluded from the search for solutions. We want to create an Action Research Cooperative - or 'ARC'. The ARC is a space which will allow a different way of thinking about how to work together to address 21st century urban challenges. Researchers know some of the answers, citizens have other ideas and solutions and insights, practitioners bring yet another perspective, and political leaders have visions for how they want things to be. The ARC will bring these different groups together to co-develop innovative approaches to address complex urban governance problems. The ARC is made by the people who take part in it: academics, politicians, practitioners, citizens and activists. Some of us will try and play more than one role, for example as practitioner researchers and academic-activists. We want to use the ARC to help us bridge the gap between knowledge and action and to shape the action which we can take together. First, the ARC will set the principles for how we want to work together. Then we will initiate a series of 'learn and do' projects, which will generate the primary data needed to answer the research questions: what sorts of new ways to govern the city-region can help transform the debate? How can we include voices that have been neglected previously? Who can help mediate between different groups and interests? We will open up the opportunities to be part of the ARC not only through our projects, but also through a creative social engagement programme, including live debates, online communities, blogs and podcasts. We are going to tell people what we are up to right from the start, so they can follow, share and engage with our work. We will be holding a range of public and special interest events, where people can hear about and become part of the project. So where is this all going to happen? We are going to start in a place we know, working with people who share a commitment to urban transformation. We will build the ARC in Greater Manchester, a place right on the cusp of change, as the first English city-region to be negotiating more devolution of powers from central government. Greater Manchester is a unique test-bed for our research interests, a city-region where we can further academic knowledge and deliver high policy and practitioner relevance. We have already identified key partners across the public, voluntary and community sector in Greater Manchester who want to work with us in the ARC. We will also network with national organisations and learn from what is happening around the world through fieldtrips to Chicago, Paris, Melbourne, Cape Town and Scotland. The ARC is a unique space for social innovation to co-produce, test and learn from new ways of governing cities. This will help us critically reflect on how to organise knowledge better to make positive urban transformations happen that are inclusive and equitable.

Our cities are in crisis. There are real uncertainties about issues such as austerity, economic growth, diversity and sustainability. Most people are beginning to recognise that existing ways of working aren't delivering benefits for the people who need them most. Citizens and third sector organisations are often left out of the picture as formal urban partnerships spend their energies negotiating with central government. Local expertise, innovation and creativity have often not been seen as part of the answer to our urban crisis. But we can see that there are people and organisations taking action locally and coming up with different kinds of solutions. Jam and Justice is a novel project that seeks to address wicked urban problems through collaborative working on messy solutions. 'Jam' is about trying to bring together different constituencies in the city to experiment and innovate to address our shared problems. 'Justice' is about re-connecting with those who have been disenfranchised and excluded from the search for solutions. We want to create an Action Research Cooperative - or 'ARC'. The ARC is a space which will allow a different way of thinking about how to work together to address 21st century urban challenges. Researchers know some of the answers, citizens have other ideas and solutions and insights, practitioners bring yet another perspective, and political leaders have visions for how they want things to be. The ARC will bring these different groups together to co-develop innovative approaches to address complex urban governance problems. The ARC is made by the people who take part in it: academics, politicians, practitioners, citizens and activists. Some of us will try and play more than one role, for example as practitioner researchers and academic-activists. We want to use the ARC to help us bridge the gap between knowledge and action and to shape the action which we can take together. First, the ARC will set the principles for how we want to work together. Then we will initiate a series of 'learn and do' projects, which will generate the primary data needed to answer the research questions: what sorts of new ways to govern the city-region can help transform the debate? How can we include voices that have been neglected previously? Who can help mediate between different groups and interests? We will open up the opportunities to be part of the ARC not only through our projects, but also through a creative social engagement programme, including live debates, online communities, blogs and podcasts. We are going to tell people what we are up to right from the start, so they can follow, share and engage with our work. We will be holding a range of public and special interest events, where people can hear about and become part of the project. So where is this all going to happen? We are going to start in a place we know, working with people who share a commitment to urban transformation. We will build the ARC in Greater Manchester, a place right on the cusp of change, as the first English city-region to be negotiating more devolution of powers from central government. Greater Manchester is a unique test-bed for our research interests, a city-region where we can further academic knowledge and deliver high policy and practitioner relevance. We have already identified key partners across the public, voluntary and community sector in Greater Manchester who want to work with us in the ARC. We will also network with national organisations and learn from what is happening around the world through fieldtrips to Chicago, Paris, Melbourne, Cape Town and Scotland. The ARC is a unique space for social innovation to co-produce, test and learn from new ways of governing cities. This will help us critically reflect on how to organise knowledge better to make positive urban transformations happen that are inclusive and equitable.

The critical challenge for contemporary urbanism is how cities develop the knowledge and capability to systemically reengineer their built environment and urban infrastructure in response to climate change and resource constraints. In the UK and elsewhere cities are increasingly confronted with, or have voluntarily adopted, challenging targets for increasing renewable and decentralised energy, carbon reduction, water savings, and waste reduction. Looking forward to 2020 and beyond to 2050, as current policy drivers and initiatives begin to bite, we need to envisage a systemic transition in our existing built environment, not just to zero carbon but across the entire ecological footprint of our cities and the regions within which they are embedded, whilst simultaneously promoting economic security, social health and resilience. Responding to this challenge in a purposive and managed way requires cities to bring together two strongly disconnected issues: what is to be done to the city (technical knowledge, targets, technological options, costs, etc) and how will it be implemented (institutions, publics, governance). We start from the perspective that the processes of urbanisation which underpin the development of cities are complex, and that urban environments can best be understood as complex socio-technical systems. Cities become 'locked in' to particular patterns of energy and resource use - constrained by existing infrastructural investments, sunk costs, institutional rigidities and vested interests. Understanding how to better re-engineer our cities and urban infrastructure, to overcome 'lock in' and facilitate systems change, will be critical to achieving sustainability. The core aim of the project is to develop the knowledge and capability to overcome the separation between the what and how of urban scale retrofitting in order to promote a managed socio-technical transition in built environment and urban infrastructure. The project will comprise a total of 5 Work Packages. Four interlocking Technical Work Packages: i) Urban Transitions Analysis: ii) Urban Foresight Laboratory (2020-2050); iii) Urban Transitions Management; iv) Synthesis, Comparison and Knowledge Exchange, and; v). the Project Management Work Package. The technical component of the research will explore urban scale retrofitting as a managed socio-technical transition, focusing on prospective developments in the built environment - linking buildings, utilities, land use and transport planning - and in so doing we will develop a generic urban transitions framework for wider application. The geographical focus will be on two of the UK's major 'city regions': Cardiff/South East Wales and Greater Manchester. Both areas have a long history of urbanisation and post industrial decline, and are actively seeking manage a purposive transition to sustainability through harnessing processes of master planning, regeneration, and economic development, and driving through significant programmes of retrofitting and infrastructural development, together with institutional and governance innovations, such as the establishment of Low Carbon Zones. The proposal brings together an experienced, interdisciplinary team of leading academic researchers, with commercial and public sector research users. The academic partners comprise: the Welsh School of Architecture (WSA), Cardiff University; Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures (SURF), Salford University; the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development (OISD) at Oxford Brookes University; and the University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering, Centre for Sustainable Development (CSD). Commercial collaborators will include Corus and Arup. Regional collaborators will include Cardiff and Neath Port Talbot Borough Councils, WAG and AGMA/Manchester City Region Environment Commission. National dissemination will take place through the Core Cities, CABE, RICS, and the national science advisor of DCLG.

Urbanisation has been declared a planetary condition. Cities and urban processes have moved to the core of research agendas across several academic disciplines and interdisciplinary fields. New analytical frameworks and practical tools are needed to model, understand and manage urban transformations. Yet despite the increasing availability of urban (big) data and methods of analysis with the potential to allow an evidence-based understanding of socio-spatial change in different geographical contexts, current approaches fail to understand cities as complex adaptive systems. Although smart cities are seen as offering solutions to pressing global challenges, mainstream strategies do not yet offer an in-depth understanding of correlations and causalities between different urban systems and fail to address the links between 'soft' (economic, ecological and social) and 'hard' (engineered) systems. However, the ability to link and model different kinds of urban data and systems is indispensable for a holistic understanding of cities as complex adaptive systems and will be agenda-setting for future urban research and practice. The proposed international Strategic Network Data and Cities as Complex Adaptive Systems (DACAS) aims to promote a decisively interdisciplinary approach to understanding urban processes and transformations through (big) urban data using a complexity science framework. The Strategic Network has three objectives which are closely aligned with the Government's Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (a) smart cities and (b) development assistance strategies in the following ways: (a) DACAS will bring together noted academics with backgrounds in the social and natural sciences, including architects, engineers, physicists, geographers, mathematicians and ecological economists. Network activities will clarify and calibrate common interdisciplinary terminology using a complexity science framework. Relevant urban systems data will be identified; data sources, structures and methods of acquisition will be compared and methods of data analysis will be tested through cross-case analysis of soft and hard urban data sets (Obj1). Network activities will establish if and how data can be used to link hard and soft urban systems. Modelling techniques will be compared and linked across disciplines and innovative protocols will be established to identify cause-effect relationships in large complex (urban) data sets (Obj2). Network activities will facilitate the development of practical tools and innovative technological applications to exploit (big) urban data, reflect urban complexity and aid urban policy-making and practice (Obj3). (b) DACAS researchers will be based in Japan and the UK as well as Newton countries Brazil and China. Three events and one summer school (targeting specifically PhD and Early Career Researchers) will link academics with user communities from the public, private and third sectors. Two of these events will be hosted by our partners in Brazil and China. In view of global environmental and economic crises where the pressures of urbanisation are expanding, DACAS has the potential to make a real impact in academic, policy and practice circles through multiple deliverables. Alongside academic papers produced by individual Network members, DACAS will publish a synthesis article in an internationally renowned journal. In addition to a dedicated website and a series of contributions to popular magazines and web blogs, DACAS will produce synthesis reports for researchers and practitioners and a UNU Policy Report/Policy Brief for policy makers. At the Manchester School of Architecture, students of Architecture will benefit directly from DACAS activities through the digital research-based MArch atelier Complexity, Planning and Urbanism (CPU). Funding proposals for interdisciplinary research will be developed to ensure continued DACAS activities post-award (e.g. RCUK, ERC H2020, Belmont Forum).

There is significant evidence of the growth of natural disasters on a global level. The Asia-Pacific region continues to be the world's most disaster prone region; it has many low-/middle-income countries and accounted for 47% of the world's 344 disasters in 2015 with 16,046 fatalities and reported economic damage in the region of US$ 5.1 Billion. In this context, the most disaster-prone sub-region is South Asia, recording 52 disasters and 14,647 deaths, representing 64% of the global fatalities, in 2015. Scientific research has shown that disaster risks do not only exist because of the presence of a physical hazard; they are compounded by the presence of vulnerability. Therefore, there is an urgent need to shift our focus from pure emergency response and recovery towards a sustainable disaster mitigation framework that focuses on building resilience within a disaster prone area, involving government agencies and the local community to reduce the impact of a hazard. However, at present there is a lack of tools and methods available to agencies to enable them to come together to understand the underlying vulnerabilities of a disaster prone area and build resilience to reduce disaster impact on a community. Digital technology has the potential for creating a collaboration environment for various agencies and communities to act collectively to reduce the impact of disasters. The goal of this project is to develop a Collaborative Multi-agency Platform that can be used for building resilient communities in disaster prone areas in low-/middle-income countries. The project will focus on the challenges faced by three countries: Malaysia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. These countries are frequently affected by a multitude of natural hazards including floods, landslides, cyclones, droughts, and earthquakes and have therefore been chosen as the focus for this research to capture broader set of disaster conditions and requirements common to low-/middle-income countries. The project aims to address the following research questions: What is the nature of a resilience framework that will allow low-/middle-income countries to assess their vulnerabilities and resilience capabilities and take measures to build resilient communities? How can we enhance multi-agency collaboration within low-/middle-income countries? What changes are required in terms of technology, organizational structures and collaboration processes to enhance multi-agency collaboration? What are the characteristics of a collaboration platform that can support collective vulnerability assessment and reduction by multi-agencies? How can we establish a system dynamic model that can support the simulation of cascading effect on critical infrastructure systems due to a hazard? How can we construct a collaborative 3D environment based on near real-time 3D satellite data and analysis for supporting early response and damage assessment after a major disaster? In addressing itself to these questions, the project will lead to development of an advanced digital platform that can be used in low-/middle-income countries to strengthen their resilience capacities for disaster. The project team is comprised of University of Salford (THINKlab & Centre for Disaster Resilience), the Universities of Moratuwa & Colombo (Sri Lanka), Tun Hussein Onn University (Malaysia) and the University of Peshawar (Pakistan). This team will be supported by a broad set of project partners, including industry and government agencies who are playing a key role in disaster resilience city agenda in UK, including: the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat, the Greater Manchester Resilience Forum, Rockefeller Foundation, Environment Agency, the Satellite Applications Catapult, Telespazio Vega Ltd and Secure Information Assurance Ltd. Similarly, in each partner country we have established industry and government agency stakeholder groups to engage and steer the project to achieve a greater impact.