The impact of road traffic on local air quality is a major public policy concern and has stimulated a substantial body of research aimed at improving underlying vehicle and traffic management technologies and informing public policy action. Recent work has begun to exploit the capability of a variety of vehicle-based, person-based and infrastructure-based sensor systems to collect real time data on important aspects of driver and traffic behaviour, vehicle emissions, pollutant dispersion, concentration and human exposure.The variety, pervasiveness and scale of these sensor data will increase significantly in the future as a result of technological developments that will enable sensors to become cheaper, smaller and lower in power consumption. This will open up enormous opportunities to improve our understanding of urban air pollution and hence improve urban air quality. However, handing the vast quantities of real time data that will be generated by these sensors will be a formidable task and will require the application of advanced forms computing, communication and positioning technologies and the development of ways of combining and interpreting many different forms of data.Technologies developed in EPSRC's e-Science research programme offer many of the tools necessary to meet these challenges. The aim of the PMESG project is to take these tools and by extending them where necessary in appropriate ways develop and demonstrate practical applications of e-Science technologies to enable researchers and practitioners to coherently combine data from disparate environmental sensors and to develop models that could lead to improved urban air quality.The PMESG project is led by Imperial College London, and comprises a consortium of partners drawn from the Universities of Cambridge, Southampton, Newcastle and Leeds who will work closely with one another and with a number of major industrial partners and local authorities.Real applications will be carried out in London, Cambridge, Gateshead and Leicester which will build on the Universities' existing collaborative arrangements with the relevant local authorities in each site and will draw on substantial existing data resources, sensor networks and ongoing EPSRC and industrially funded research activities. These applications will address important problems that to date have been difficult or impossible for scientists and engineers working is this area of approach, due to a lack or relevant data. These problems are of three main types; (i) measuring human exposure to pollutants, (ii) the validation of various detailed models of traffic behaviour and pollutant emission and dispersion and (iii) the development of transport network management and control strategies that take account not just of traffic but also air quality impacts. The various case studies will look at different aspects of these questions and use a variety of different types of sensor systems to do so. In particular, the existing sensor networks in each city will be enhanced by the selective deployment of a number of new sensor types (both roadside and on-vehicle/person) to increase the diversity of sensor inputs.The e-Science technologies will be highly general in nature meaning that will have applications not only in transport and air quality management but also in many other fields that generate large volume of real time location-specific sensor data.

Across Europe, cities are attempting to radically reduce their reliance on car-based mobility in order to address a full range of sustainability challenges. Two major shortcomings, however, are hindering these efforts towards a 'post-car' city: first, they lack proactive vision towards cities that are not only sustainable but also accessible without cars, and second, they lack effective strategies to deal with strong, built-in systemic resistance to a change of the status quo. This project will generate knowledge addressing these shortcomings. Central to EX-TRA's approach are transition experiments in city streets, or 'intentional, temporary changes in street use, regulation and/or form, aimed at exploring systemic change towards a 'post-car' city'. By way of urban living labs in Amsterdam, Bologna, Milan, Ghent, Munich and London, we will generate insights into: (1) possible combinations of physical design and regulation that increase the types of usage and inclusivity amongst users of city streets; (2) transport and land use conditions for the purpose of enabling and improving walking and cycling accessibility in city districts; (3) shared mobility platforms and micro-mobility and freight delivery options which complement attractive streets and accessible districts; and (4) strategies of change that can accelerate the transition towards a 'post-car' city.

This research seeks to address the long-standing issue of poor performance in infrastructure projects, also known as the productivity paradox. This paradox can be described as the inability of infrastructure projects to improve performance, despite the steadily increasing global demand for infrastructure and long track record of project delivery. To address this issue, this research aims to (1) develop understanding of how business innovation occurs in infrastructure projects and (2) provide strategic guidance on implementing business innovation strategies in this setting. Drawing upon business innovation and project management literatures, this Future Leaders fellowship focuses on processes of value creation and capture (VC&C) and seeks to understand how they determine the performance of infrastructure projects. Despite the growing need to advance the understanding of VC&C for participating actors and end-users of infrastructure projects, there is, however, very little empirical research in this area. Building on the applicant's international connectivity and track record of research into construction and project-based organisations, the fellowship will achieve two principal goals. First, it will initiate a long-term programme of empirical research into VC&C processes in infrastructure projects. Second, it will enable the applicant to achieve a distinctive and internationally recognised leadership profile in mainstream management, strategy and innovation studies. To this end, the applicant will conduct research to understand the organisational dynamics of VC&C in infrastructure projects, develop business innovation strategies for infrastructure projects working with internationally recognisable partners, and undergo experiential career development programme comprising the acquisition of new theoretical and methodological knowledge, development of research management and supervisory skills, and expansion of international connectivity. The research will initially develop five qualitative case studies with the following infrastructure providers as partner organisations: Heathrow Airport Ltd, Transport for London, UCL Estates, Rijkswaterstaat (the Dutch Highways and Waterways Agency), and the European Investment Bank. The applicant will be hosted by the Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, working primarily with Prof Andrew Davies as mentor along with other leading researchers in business innovation and infrastructure. To validate the findings in an international context, expand his international network, and gain additional methodological skills, the applicant will spend three months visiting and working closely with researchers in the Global Projects Center at Stanford University. By the end of the fellowship, the applicant will have established a recognisable research programme into business innovation dynamics in infrastructure projects. The long-term programme of enquiry arising from this research is anticipated to constitute a step change generating research outputs that directly support business innovation and progressive policy-making facing the challenges and opportunities in infrastructure provision, both in the UK but also internationally. In such a way, this fellowship will promote disruptive thinking on business innovation and working practices and ways to implement improvements across private, public and civil society sectors participating in infrastructure provision.

CREATE addresses the task Tackling Urban Road Congestion, taking a long-term view of how this can be achieved, especially in cities experiencing rapid growth in car ownership and use. It deals with most of the issues set out in the recent Urban Mobility Package. Objectives: • Rigorously and systematically develop practical definitions of urban road congestion and of network performance, and identify factors influencing conditions in different cities. • Work with Western European (WE) cities that have succeeded in decoupling traffic growth from economic growth, to analyse quantitatively the objective factors which have contributed to this, and the qualitative factors which have enabled a policy evolution from ‘supporting traffic growth’ to ‘encouraging sustainable mobility’. • Develop concrete guidance and provide capacity building for cities in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and the EuroMed region, enabling them to move rapidly to develop a feasible, effective and deliverable Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP). • Anticipating future pressures on city transport systems (congestion and overcrowding), to investigate how new transport technologies might increase transport efficiency, and how non-transport technologies and changes in business and social practices could reduce pressures on transport systems. These objectives will be achieved by: • Analysing congestion and network performance data provided by INRIX and WE cities. • Using detailed household travel data from repeat surveys in WE cities since the 1970s/1980s and complementary data on network, economic and demographic conditions; and documents setting out historical policy development. • Preparing detailed guidance and training for our CEE cities, which will then be delivered to a much larger set of cities. • Working with leading technology providers, businesses and futurists, to explore what options there might be to provide high quality mobility in cities facing increasing population and employment.

Emergency services (Ambulance Service; Fire & Rescue Service) play a crucial role during flood response, as they participate in joint command-control structures and are central to rescue and relief efforts (Frost 2002). Emergency services are often legislated to meet defined response times. UK legislation requires that emergency responders comply with strict timeframes when reacting to incidents. Category 1 responders such as the Ambulance Service and the Fire & Rescue Service are required to reach 75% of 'Red 1' (high-priority, life-threatening incidents) in less than 8 and 10 minutes respectively from the time when the initial call was received. This includes blue-light incidents such as life-threatening and traumatic injury, cardiac arrest, road collisions, and individuals trapped by floodwaters. In 2015-16, only one England ambulance trust met the response time targets and 72.5% of the most serious (Red 1) calls were responded to within 8 minutes, against a legislative target of 75% (National Audit Office, 2017). Between 2007-2014, the highest percentage Scottish Ambulance Service achieved was 74.7% in 2013 (HEAT standard). Rising demand combined with inefficient call handling and dispatch systems are often cited as the reasons for missing the above targets. However, response times can also be affected by flood episodes which may limit the ability of emergency responders to navigate through a disrupted road network (as was the case during the widespread UK flooding in 2007). The impact of flooding on road networks is well known and is expected to get worse in a changing climate with more intense rainfall. For example, in Portland, USA under one climate change scenario, road closures due to flooding could increase time spent travelling by 10% (Chang et al. 2010). The impact of an increased number of flooding episodes, due to climate change, on road networks has also been modelled by for the Boston Metropolitan area, USA (Suarez et al., 2005). This study found that between 2000 and 2100 delays and trip-time losses could increase by 80% and 82% respectively. The Pitt Review (2008) suggested that some collaborative decision making during the 2007 event was hampered by insufficient preparation and a lack of information, and better planning and higher levels of protection for critical infrastructure are needed to avoid the loss of essential services such as water and power. More recently, the National Flood Resilience Review (HMG, 2016) exposes the extent to which a significant proportion of critical assets are still vulnerable to flooding in England and Wales. In particular, it highlights that the loss of infrastructure services can have significant impacts on people's health and wellbeing. This project will combine: (i) an established accessibility mapping approach; (ii) existing national flood datasets; and (iii) a locally tested, recent-expanded real-time flood nowcasting/forecasting system to generate accessibility mapping, vulnerability assessment and adaptation evaluation for various flood conditions and at both the national and city-region scale. The project will be delivered via three sequential Work Packages, including: (a) Mapping emergency service accessibility according to legislative timeframes; (b) Assessing the vulnerability of populations (care homes, hospices and schools); and (c) Evaluating adaptation strategies (e.g. positioning standby vehicles).