Public opinion on complex scientific topics can have dramatic effects on industrial sectors (e.g. GM crops, fracking, global warming). In order to realise the industrial and societal benefits of Autonomous Systems, they must be trustworthy by design and default, judged both through objective processes of systematic assurance and certification, and via the more subjective lens of users, industry, and the public. To address this and deliver it across the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) programme, the UK Research Hub for TAS (TAS-UK) assembles a team that is world renowned for research in understanding the socially embedded nature of technologies. TASK-UK will establish a collaborative platform for the UK to deliver world-leading best practices for the design, regulation and operation of 'socially beneficial' autonomous systems which are both trustworthy in principle, and trusted in practice by individuals, society and government. TAS-UK will work to bring together those within a broader landscape of TAS research, including the TAS nodes, to deliver the fundamental scientific principles that underpin TAS; it will provide a focal point for market and society-led research into TAS; and provide a visible and open door to engage a broad range of end-users, international collaborators and investors. TAS-UK will do this by delivering three key programmes to deliver the overall TAS programme, including the Research Programme, the Advocacy & Engagement Programme, and the Skills Programme. The core of the Research Programme is to amplify and shape TAS research and innovation in the UK, building on existing programmes and linking with the seven TAS nodes to deliver a coherent programme to ensure coverage of the fundamental research issues. The Advocacy & Engagement Programme will create a set of mechanisms for engagement and co-creation with the public, public sector actors, government, the third sector, and industry to help define best practices, assurance processes, and formulate policy. It will engage in cross-sector industry and partner connection and brokering across nodes. The Skills Programme will create a structured pipeline for future leaders in TAS research and innovation with new training programmes and openly available resources for broader upskilling and reskilling in TAS industry.

Since December 2006 four sets of UN Security Council sanctions have been imposed on Iran over its nuclear programme, with Tehran still yet to satisfy the international community that its intentions are solely peaceful. UN sanctions have been augmented by a series of unilateral sanctions regimes notably in the US and the EU. The various regimes target multiple economic sectors. However, while sanctions appear to be widely perceived as constituting a valuable tool for the international community to apply pressure on Iran to negotiate over its nuclear programme, the wide range and scope of the various regimes, and in many cases a lack of detailed guidance on implementation, mean that uncertainty can exist within industry regarding their implementation. Much attention has been focused on the banking sector in recent years as policy-makers have adapted tools initially designed to target the assets and money-laundering capabilities of terrorist organisations to meet the needs of non-proliferation sanctions. This focus on the banking sector has forced banks and financial institutions to enhance greatly their compliance capabilities and procedures. However, other financial service sectors have not been subject to similar attention and, consequently, have not developed similarly sophisticated compliance capabilities. The obligation to comply with sanctions extends to a range of insurance products and activities, especially where these relate to commerce. Implementation can be costly and complex and it can be difficult to determine whether compliance policies and procedures meet the challenges. In terms of reinsurance, for example, ensuring compliance on broad-based, multi-activity coverage has become an important challenge for insurers. The shipping industry has been dramatically affected due to the implications of the sanctions on protection and indemnity insurance coverage. Unusual measures have in some cases been adopted, for example by the government of Japan, which has extended sovereign insurance coverage to Japanese tankers affected by the EU oil embargo on Iran. In this context, the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS) at King's College London proposes to host a two-day themed workshop on Iran sanctions and the insurance industry. This workshop will bring together practitioners from major global insurance and reinsurance providers and brokers (compliance officers, etc), representatives from industries covered by relevant insurance policies (carriers, freight forwarders etc), policy-makers (UK, EU and US) and academia, for a frank discussion under the Chatham House rule. The workshop will have three principal aims: 1. to inform policy-makers on the challenges associated with the implementation of sanctions in the insurance industry; 2. to inform insurance industry participants on how to better implement insurance-related sanctions in practice; and 3. to explore the relationship between the challenges associated with the effective implementation of sanctions in the insurance industry and broader perspectives regarding the effectiveness of sanctions as a viable alternative to military force in addressing Iran's continued failure to comply with UN Security Council demands to suspend sensitive nuclear activities and to fully cooperate with international investigations. The focus on the insurance industry will be of great value in providing participants with an industry-specific, pan-regional perspective on the issues, ideally leading to enhanced understanding by industry of requirements and compliance mechanisms, and by policy makers of the practicalities of implementation. The workshop will also help to inform future policy-making in terms of the challenges and obstacles to the successful implementation of sanctions in the insurance industry.

'Natural' disasters are set to become one of the key challenges confronting governments and communities in the decades ahead as climate change, the number of people living in hazard-prone (especially coastal) locations, and the sheer density of the urban fabric increase the potential for loss from natural hazards. Societies in the past were also severely tested by disasters, however, often to the limits of their endurance. Some cultures proved more resilient and overcame these tribulations; others showed less flexibility and failed. What makes any society vulnerable or resilient in the present is in part an historical question, and understanding how different cultures at different times were able to prepare for, mitigate, manage and recover from such events provides useful lessons for disaster risk managers today. A key aim of this network is to explore how to incorporate the distinctive cultural and temporal insights that history and the humanities more broadly can contribute to DRR. Steps towards collaborative approaches to integrated hazard research are currently emerging through the development of historical databases such as ACRE and the Global Historical Earthquake Catalogue, but there has not yet been a comprehensive conversation to enhance communication between historians, natural scientists and disaster specialists, identify common areas of concern, and frame research questions and methodologies to address them. RHDC is structured to build towards such a conversation. It encourages an interdisciplinary dialogue to identify a) what special input history and the humanities can make to DRR; b) the optimal ways in which our disciplines can collaborate; and c) the practical contribution such an interdisciplinary (but humanities-led) approach can make to disaster risk management today. To this end, we plan to hold a series of themed workshops, each of which will focus on a pressing issue in DRR studies that will enable participants to share perspectives, create a common framework for cooperation, and provide guidance on how such an integrated approach might be better incorporated into disaster risk management. Selected contributions from the workshops will be published in a special edition of an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal such as Disasters or Global Environmental Change. We will engage non-academic audiences via the participation of organisations such as AXA and CAFOD in our workshops, by producing working papers intended for the research community and stakeholders outside academe which we will publish open-access on the network website, and by maintaining a blog to keep network participants and the wider public informed about RHDC events, and provide commentary on past and contemporary natural disasters. We will also hold public-facing events including a public lecture hosted by the University of Bristol's Cabot Institute and a historians and scientists 'in conversation' evening hosted by the University of Oxford. The network will benefit a wide range of academic and non-academic stakeholders. It brings together participants with diverse interests and experience who seek common ground in disaster research through integrating methodologies, sharing data, and identifying critical shared questions. As an outcome of establishing strong interdisciplinary connections, it is anticipated that the network will lead to one or more applications for major collaborative research funding.

CoMEHeRe aims to transform personal healthcare for the benefit of individuals through the use and management of biometric information created by wearable devices. To do this it will combine data from an individual's wearables with DLT (blockchains) and machine learning to securely store and access data to enable the individual to share and benefit from their generated information. Sharing will be with state and private healthcare providers to enable more targeted, personalised patterns of treatment. Other benefits may arise from the individual participating materially in new markets created through the monetisation of this data. Recent interest in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has ignited interest in DLTs and the role they play in how shared agreements are defined, managed, and evolved for a variety of ecosystems and information sources typical of today's digital economy. Indeed, the focus of attention has shifted from DLT as a technological phenomena supporting new types of currency e.g., bitcoin to their likely impact in changing business and society. DLTs have the potential for rewriting conventional notions of how business transactions relate with customers, enhance transparency and trust, and create fresh opportunities for value creation and capture. In domains such as healthcare, the potential of DLTs to disrupt the status quo is clear. However, a critical research need must be addressed: how to expose the opportunities and threats, such as privacy and security from emerging business models enabled by this technological revolution. CoMEHeRe aspires to build and assess the feasibility of the first publicly available software demonstrator to interface with insurers (AXA/PPP and its Seed Factory labs will be a partner) and the general public, using distributed ledger technologies to allow for data to be curated, hosted, and used as tradeable value by the individual's' choice. To achieve this CoMEHeRe will address a number of research challenges by utilising a novel combination of technologies, including the blockchain - a form of secure DLT - to store health evidence derived from multi-modal signals extracted from users' wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) sensors they interact with in the environment. In addition, the project will examine the potential use of Smart Contracts (simple programs) in healthcare management at the research, public policy, and individual levels. Such a use will be challenged by many kinds of contractual, ethical and moral issues: for example if ownership is taken away from the individual, smart contracts could be made partially or fully self-executing, self-enforcing, or both, by authorities or businesses seeking to optimise for cost instead of health benefit to the individual. The CoMEHeRe project is an 18 month research project designed to create value in an innovative application domain for DLT in healthcare. To undertake this exciting, ambitious project we build on a strategic multi-disciplinary partnership at the University of Surrey that unites world-leading research groups focused on examining the business and societal impact of applications of digital technology (CoDE), multi-modal signal processing (CVSSP), and IoT and sensor-based communications infrastructures (ICS and 5GIC). This partnership is contained within a broader delivery consortium. This includes Axa/PPP offering the application context and a basis for assessing practical impact, Guardtime providing a DLT foundation for the research work, and BioBeats delivering machine learning platform expertise. To govern this work there will be an experienced Advisory Board bringing governance and guidance to ensure the project delivers meaningful results from which new research and practice can emerge. This experienced partnership has a practical record of previous work in these areas, and a broad network of relationships bringing deep support, and rapid promotion of research results.

CoMEHeRe aims to transform personal healthcare for the benefit of individuals through the use and management of biometric information created by wearable devices. To do this it will combine data from an individual's wearables with DLT (blockchains) and machine learning to securely store and access data to enable the individual to share and benefit from their generated information. Sharing will be with state and private healthcare providers to enable more targeted, personalised patterns of treatment. Other benefits may arise from the individual participating materially in new markets created through the monetisation of this data. Recent interest in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has ignited interest in DLTs and the role they play in how shared agreements are defined, managed, and evolved for a variety of ecosystems and information sources typical of today's digital economy. Indeed, the focus of attention has shifted from DLT as a technological phenomena supporting new types of currency e.g., bitcoin to their likely impact in changing business and society. DLTs have the potential for rewriting conventional notions of how business transactions relate with customers, enhance transparency and trust, and create fresh opportunities for value creation and capture. In domains such as healthcare, the potential of DLTs to disrupt the status quo is clear. However, a critical research need must be addressed: how to expose the opportunities and threats, such as privacy and security from emerging business models enabled by this technological revolution. CoMEHeRe aspires to build and assess the feasibility of the first publicly available software demonstrator to interface with insurers (AXA/PPP and its Seed Factory labs will be a partner) and the general public, using distributed ledger technologies to allow for data to be curated, hosted, and used as tradeable value by the individual's' choice. To achieve this CoMEHeRe will address a number of research challenges by utilising a novel combination of technologies, including the blockchain - a form of secure DLT - to store health evidence derived from multi-modal signals extracted from users' wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) sensors they interact with in the environment. In addition, the project will examine the potential use of Smart Contracts (simple programs) in healthcare management at the research, public policy, and individual levels. Such a use will be challenged by many kinds of contractual, ethical and moral issues: for example if ownership is taken away from the individual, smart contracts could be made partially or fully self-executing, self-enforcing, or both, by authorities or businesses seeking to optimise for cost instead of health benefit to the individual. The CoMEHeRe project is an 18 month research project designed to create value in an innovative application domain for DLT in healthcare. To undertake this exciting, ambitious project we build on a strategic multi-disciplinary partnership at the University of Surrey that unites world-leading research groups focused on examining the business and societal impact of applications of digital technology (CoDE), multi-modal signal processing (CVSSP), and IoT and sensor-based communications infrastructures (ICS and 5GIC). This partnership is contained within a broader delivery consortium. This includes Axa/PPP offering the application context and a basis for assessing practical impact, Guardtime providing a DLT foundation for the research work, and BioBeats delivering machine learning platform expertise. To govern this work there will be an experienced Advisory Board bringing governance and guidance to ensure the project delivers meaningful results from which new research and practice can emerge. This experienced partnership has a practical record of previous work in these areas, and a broad network of relationships bringing deep support, and rapid promotion of research results.