In 2019, Birmingham, the UK's largest local authority, declared a climate emergency and in 2021 approved a Route to Zero (R20) Action Plan setting the priority actions and milestones for the council and wider city to become net-zero by 2030\. Tyseley Energy Park (TEP) and the Tyseley Environmental Enterprise District (TEED) in East Birmingham were a key part of the plan to deliver zero carbon power transport, heat, waste and recycling solutions, as well as business incubation and innovation at the University of Birmingham's Energy Innovation Centre (BEIC) based at TEP. In 2023, the TEED strategic partnership formed by Birmingham City Council, University of Birmingham (UoB) and Tyseley Energy Park launched a vision for the area to create the city's Green Energy Innovation Quarter in East Birmingham. The vision builds on the objectives of the East Birmingham Inclusive Growth Strategy to define a clear identity for TEED that reflects the Council's overall commitment to net zero carbon and creating new green jobs, training and business opportunities. The TEED partnership are now developing a Masterplan setting out the initiatives required to deliver the vision. The Fast Followers funding will accelerate this process, and, in turn, the net-zero transition of Birmingham's business sector. Birmingham City Council will recruit a Net Zero Innovation Delivery Officer (NZIDO) to work across Council teams and with partners TEP and Birmingham Energy Institute, UoB. The project's aim will be to engage with businesses, workers, entrepreneurs and residents in TEED and wider East Birmingham to co-create a delivery plan for accelerating the net-zero transition for businesses. The vehicle for engaging with businesses will be a Community of Practice (CoP) -- a group of partners, businesses, industry, schools, colleges and organisations brought together with a shared purpose to decarbonise the business sector whilst ensuring economic, social and environmental benefits for the residents of East Birmingham. The net-zero delivery plan will build on mapping, data analysis, shared learning and best-practice through 8 CoP workshops and engagement with the wider Fast Followers network to identify transition pathways and a set of investable net-zero projects and funding. The plan will also identify skills gaps and training needs and support to get local people into jobs in the area.?By better facilitating and co-ordinating existing governance and resources the NZIDO and the project team make a significant positive impact to accelerate the **Net Zero Transition for Businesses in East Birmingham.**

The frequency and intensity of climate and weather extremes associated with anthropogenic climate change are increasing and will challenge us in terms of adaptation strategies at the local level. The project “Climate Resilient Development Pathways in Metropolitan Regions of Europe (CARMINE)” bridges the local and regional scales by providing impact-based decision support services and multi level climate governance supporting local adaptation, including both traditional and Nature-Based Solutions. CARMINE’s overarching goal is to help the metropolitan communities of Europe become more climate resilient, by co-producing knowledge-based tools, strategies, and plans for enhanced adaptation and mitigation actions in line with the Charter of the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change by 2030. To achieve this goal, focusing on the 2030-2035 timeframe and with longer perspectives up to 2050, CARMINE proposes an interdisciplinary approach aiming at (1) co-creation and co-development of decision-support services and guidelines for enhanced resilience and adaptive capacity, including early warning and disaster risk management systems; (2) cooperating closely with local to regional communities (stakeholders and users), decision-, and policy-makers (local authorities) to co-develop cross-sectoral frameworks for adaptation and mitigation actions; (3) delivering science-based R&I roadmaps for multi-level climate governance supporting local adaptation assessments and plans. The CARMINE methodology will be implemented in eight selected Case Study Areas to demonstrate proof of concept and project methodology will be demonstrated through the digital replication of climate and socio economic characteristics of each area. The co-created knowledge and transferable development pathways from CARMINE will be shared widely via project networks in order to drive adaptation in other metropolitan regions of Europe, and beyond.

Every day we see the development of new "smart" things and come closer and closer to the moment when the perfect "smart" home of the future becomes a reality. A "Smart" home, is one in which each appliance (thing) is not only controllable but is also "intelligent", ie. tailored to our individual needs. Yet, smart objects and smart homes often consider the individual as a passive entity to be 'served', rather than an empowered individual who can make smart decisions based on information. This is often because of the assumption that human cognition isn't able to take on the massive amount of information that could be generated from such smart objects. Indeed, very little is known about how people interact with data and how much of the data which we generate can actually inform our day-to-day decision making. We also do not know whether data generated within a home can change our consumption habits and behaviour. Finally, we are uncertain about whether and to what extent the data that we produce influences other decision makers in our household. Our project offers a new approach to answering these questions by observing actual household behaviour "in the wild" and developing a personal resource planning system (PRP) to support decisions made by individuals, ie. a smart 'me'. Our approach is different from existing IoT research in the following ways. First, while traditional research views the customer, who either accepts or rejects the product/service developed by businesses, to be outside the supply system, our approach offers a new perspective in which the customer is also viewed as an inside component of the supply system. This means that the customer, through his/her behaviour, becomes an inherent component of the supply system, and thereby transforms this system into a collaborative exchange system. This collaborative exchange system allows customers to interact with businesses and make decisions about how much customisation they would like to see in each product/service they themselves consume (e.g., Crowcroft et al., 2011; McAuley et al., 2011; Ng. et al., 2013). Second, since our approach has a person (customer) in the centre, the main focus of this project is to understand how "smart" things interact with human behaviour, and possibly how this behaviour can be informed by the new data from "smart" things to catalyse the appearance of a more informed "smart" consumer (e.g., Ng, 2012). Finally, our third contribution to existing research is to create data architecture through the IoT which would allow customers to make more informed "smart" decisions. In a way, the main output of this project will be a proof of concept that customers could be "nudged" into making "smarter" consumption decisions which would optimise business-customer interactions and create more value for each household.

Public services are presently going through huge changes in response to a range of issues such as the Big Society agenda, increased localisation, greater demands for service user voice and control, increased public expectations and a greater mix in terms of the economy of welfare services. Public service organisations are grappling with significant changes at a time when they are also making significant cuts to budgets. The public service organisations of today are no longer large public sector organisations such as the local authorities of the past but are likely to be smaller in size and increasingly likely to exist in the commercial sector or the third sector. These changes have significant implications in terms of the types of roles that public servants undertake and their career trajectories. Whereas in the past an individual might start out in a junior role in a public sector organisation and work their way through various parts of that organisation, today it is more likely that individuals will work in a range of different organisations and institutions over the course of their career and also cross sectoral boundaries. Even where individuals may remain in the same organisation it is likely that they will be required to work more closely with those from other organisations, institutions and sectors as public services become ever more diversified. The existing knowledge and practice around career development of public servants is yet to catch up with these developments. There is no common and shared route through which public servants are developed or through which they can gain access to information about the types of roles available and the skills and competencies they may need to develop. The training of public servants has traditionally focused too much on the core civil service, whereas the majority of people who work in public services may not fit this model. Whilst those who work outside of the public sector are often trained and developed through different routes. This is compounded by the fact that professionals within the public service workforce (e.g. doctor, social worker, teacher, accountant, lawyer) are trained specifically for that role to a certain set of standards and expectations. Further, the notion of the 'public sector ethos' has been too associated with those working in the public sector which does not well reflect the myriad of organisations who today are involved with designing and delivering public services. Neither does this effectively take account of the shifting role of service users as co-designers, co-producers or citizens. This project aims to build on the findings of the University of Birmingham's Policy Commission into the 'Future of Public Services' which identified the desperate need to pay attention to the changing nature of the roles undertaken by public servants and the associated support and development needs. This project is a partnership arrangement between the University of Birmingham and Birmingham City Council and aims to establish: the existing knowledge base on this topic; undertake new research into public service roles; and, to establish a knowledge portal which should support other public servants and public service organisations. The knowledge portal will set out details about the context of public service, the range of roles which are developing in public service, the skills and resources that are needed to fulfil these roles, an indication of where existing development opportunities are available and detail on the sort of local and national government support that might be required for public servants and public service organisations.

We propose to implement and extend a Scientific Art competition to spark a meaningful and targeted public engagement process. The science and ethos underlying this bid is defined by the 'Birmingham Science City' (BSC) project, which was initiated by our current Prime Minister Gordon Brown MP when he designated 6 Science Cities in 2005. As a result, the Regional Development Agency, Advantage West Midlands (AWM), was in receipt of a large grant, which it chose to invest (since 2007) in the capital research infrastructure of the region within the two Russell-group research-intensive universities, Birmingham (UB) and Warwick (UW). The big-picture is the ambition to make the West Midlands region a major hub for science, technology and innovation on the world-stage with the cultural, educational and economic benefits to the people of the region that will follow. By combining AWM's funding with investment from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), it has been possible to invest across three major Themes: Advanced Materials (20M), Energy Futures (17M) and Translational Medicine (20M) in UB/UW. The PI is the Research Director of these projects for the two universities. Crucially, the appreciation by the public of the importance of Science in our every-day lives, is a major outcome of the wider BSC programme, which has the motto Ideas for Life . Public engagement activity is a key element of the overall Science City package; hence the willingness of BSC to partner with us in this proposal.The scientific research encapsulated by the three Themes is some of the most visually inspiring of all science. The 80 or so researchers who work directly within the Science City projects on these themes at UW and UB will be contacted and asked to submit entries to the SciArt competition. The scope of the call will cover photographs, graphical depictions of results of simulations or experiments, micrographs or even pages from notebooks. The criterion by which SciArt entries will be judged is: the images must be visually striking with artistic merit independent of their scientific interest, however the story behind the picture , the technical expertise and scientific merit will also be taken into consideration. shortlisted entries by Nick Barker and Ally Caldecote.The six winning images, produced as professional posters, will be exhibited , as part of the British Festival of Science, which is to be hosted in Birmingham in September 2010. Science City Research Fellows will contribute their time to staff the exhibition, explaining the science behind the images, and the impact of that science, to the members of the public who attend it. A composite poster will be constructed from the six images by a graphic designer and this will be mailed to 500 schools for Year 6 with an example lesson plan suggesting how it could be integrated into their regular classroom activities. We expect responses in the form of prose, poems, pictures, photographs, and possibly even experiments of their own .These responses will be judged in the SciArt schools competition with a prize ceremony hosted in prominent venue, to be decided in consultation with partner Birmingham City Council, in December. Most importantly, Teaching Fellows based in Chemistry and Physics will proactively engage with schools in Delivering the Science behind the images through their regular visits to school classes at all stages of the education process, and across the full range of socio-economic backgrounds and through working on curriculum-based material to be delivered both on-site and more widely via the web. Visits to UB/UW to experience experiments connected to the images will be hosted as a follow-up. The final output will be a calendar for 2011 featuring the 6 winning images and 6 winning school responses - the aim is to distribute this at no charge to participating schools and to sell it at a commercial rate to other interested parties.