Joint project for the modernization of educational programs in climate engineering, regional priority for Russia and China, national priority for Azerbaijan.3 AIMS IN EACH COUNTRY:Reduce skills gaps on intermediate levels (construction site coordinator, design technician) by improving the employability of students and by perfecting corporate executives.Professionalize teaching programs in line with the Bologna Process and the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and relocate them partly into companies.Create a professional Bachelor accessible in distance learning for the energy and environmental performance of buildings and a lifelong training program.ACADEMIC KEY PARTNERS:- CNAM Paris- GIPFIPAG - CRVEP - UNINETTUNO- AGCNAM - Universidad de Sevilla- HTWK Leipzig - Azerbaijan Technical University- Harbin Institute of Technology- North-Eastern Federal University - POLITECNICO DI TORINO- UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PAVIA- Siberian Transport University- Tuvan State University- Irkutsk State Technical University - Far Eastern Federal University- The state institution of vocational education Yakut Municipal Civil Engineering- Dalian University of Technology - BEIJING UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY- Azerbaijan University of Architecture and Construction- Sumgayit State University- Ural State Mining UniversityEXPECTED RESULTS:3 regional strategic action plans.25 teachers professionalized in the EU.3 job descriptions, 3 professional Bachelors, programs, course content and digitized teaching resources available for distance learning.3 poles of excellence, resource centers and three technology platforms for energy efficiency in buildings.3 didactic cyberspaces.480 students and 150 employees trained on site or by distance learning.3 double diplomas or joint degrees.An action plan for sustainability.

The Made in China 2025 report, highlights ocean renewable energy technologies as one of the 10 areas of opportunity for UK and Chinese companies. The "Outline of the National Marine Economic Development Plan" specifically targets the development of novel ocean farming methods, more productive but also more socially and environmentally compatible. In the EU, the "Blue Growth" program aims at sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors, already representing 5.4 million jobs and generating a gross added value of 500 billion euros a year. Offshore structures are very costly. The main idea of a Multi-Purpose Platform (MPP), integrating (for example) renewable energy devices and aquaculture facilities, is to find the synergies to share manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance, and decommissioning costs. This has the potential to, save money, reduce the overall impact, and maximize the socio-economic benefits. MPP development poses cross-disciplinary challenges, since they simultaneously aim to achieve several potentially conflicting objectives: to be techno-economically feasible, environmentally considered, socially beneficial, and compatible with maritime legislations. In the EU, previous research focused on farms of multi-megawatt MPP (ocean renewable devices + aquaculture systems), with very few/no attempts to investigate lower rated power systems suitable for island/coastal communities. In China, previous projects aimed at island communities focused on renewable energy, but they did not integrate any aquaculture elements. Therefore, for island communities, novel fundamental questions arise, especially in terms of techno-economic feasibility and assessment and maximization of socio-environmental benefits at a completely different scale, but still requiring a whole-system, cross-disciplinary approach. The proposed solution is to investigate which are the specific challenges arising from the integration of these different offshore technologies, and with a multi-disciplinary approach to tackle them, making sure that all the dimensions (technological, economic, social, environmental, legal) are taken into account. The renewable energy technologies (Which wind turbine? Which wave device? What kind of solar panel?) and aquaculture systems most suitable for the needs of an island community will be identified, and the "cross-disciplinary" questions will be defined, e.g. "What is the impact of the noise generated by the renewable energy devices on the (closely co-located) aquaculture species growth rate?". Answering these questions, the novel contribution will consist in developing approaches to assess the feasibility of an MPP system, focusing on: global MPP dynamic response to metocean conditions, overall integrated control and power management strategies, environmental impact, socio-economic risks and benefits. The potential of these methodologies will be then show-cased through two case-studies, one focusing on an island community in China, and one in the UK. This consortium brings together internationally recognised experts from three Chinese and three British universities and institutes, for a total of 20 investigators, in the fields of solar and offshore wind and wave energy, control systems for renewable energy devices, environmental and socio-economic impact of renewables and aquaculture systems, aquaculture and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture development, and ecosystem modelling. These investigators are also leading members of the research community, directly involved in: Renewable Energy Key Lab of Chinese Academy of Sciences, IEC and Chinese National Standardization Committee for Marine Energy Devices, Supergen Wind Hub, EU Energy Research Alliance JP Wind, ITTC Ocean Engineering Committee, the Royal Institution of Naval Architects Maritime Innovation Committee, ICES WG-Marine Mammal Ecology, International Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem, Ecopath Consortium Advisory Board.

Production and recovery of energy and industrial materials from novel biological sources reduces our dependency on the Earth's finitie mineral petrochemical resources and helps the UK economy to become a low carbon economy. Recovering energy and valuable resources such as metals from waste materials is an attractive but challenging prospect. The valuable materials are usually present in wastes at very low levels and present as a highly complex mixture. This makes it very difficult to concentrate and purify them in an economically sustainable manner. In recent years there have been exciting advances in our understanding of ways in which microorganisms can extract the energy locked up in the organic compounds found in wastewater and in the process generate electricity. This is achieved in devices known as microbial fuel cells (MFC). In an MFC microorganisms on the anode oxidize organic compounds and in doing so generte electrons. These electrons are passed into an electrical circuit and transferred to the MFC cathode where they usually react with oxygen to form water, sustaining an electric current in the process. In theory MFC can be configured such that, rather than conversion of oxygen to water at the cathode they could convert metal ions to metals or drive the synthesis of valuable chemicals. It is our aim to develop such systems that use energy harvested from wastewater to recover metals from metal-containing wastestreams and for the synthesis of valuable chemicals, ultimately from CO2. This project will bring together experts from academia and industry to devise ways in which this can be achieved and will form the foundation of a research programme where scientists working on fundamental research and those with the skills to translate laboratory science to industrial processes will work together to develop sustainable processes for the production of valuable resources from waste.

In real world water distribution systems (WDS) uncertainty can arise in a number of different ways. Variations in the performance of parts (for example pipe roughness) can affect the performance of the system. Uncertainty in the requirements the system must satisfy (such as demand at a node) will affect the ability of the system to meet those requirements. An algorithm which can reduce the number of fitness evaluations required to find performance probabilities for systems operating under uncertainty has the potential to significantly reduce computation times required for optimisation. Furthermore when system uncertainties include mechanical failures such as pipe bursts, blockages and leaks, costs can be associated with underperformance allowing such an algorithm to offer risk-based optimisations of systems by assigning an expected consequence of failure to each design. Such optimisations will find a family of solutions offering a trade-off between the cost of the system and the expected future costs or consequences due to failures and other uncertainties.The need for an optimisation technique which is not only capable of optimising systems under uncertainty, but is also scalable to large WDS is at the heart of the proposed research.This research project brings mathematical techniques for statistical sampling and evolutionary optimisation together with an engineering knowledge of the design of water distribution systems under uncertainty.