In this proposed research project an innovative physical modelling system using transparent soil, glass tubes and computer based image recognition technology will be established to investigate the tube sampling disturbance to soil. Transparent soil is a mixture of amorphous silica powder with pore fluid matching its Refraction Index, which is semi-transparent and has engineering properties similar to clay. Tube sampling is the most widely used sampling technology to obtain soil specimen from the ground during site investigation.Site investigation is important because the biggest source of uncertainties and risks for the construction of civil engineering projects lies in the ground. It is observed that among projects that were delayed, nearly half of the cases were due to unforeseen ground problems and not much improvement has been made during the past three decades (Tyrell et al., 1983; NEDO, 1988; Chapman & Marcetteau, 2004). As a result, projects are often built at costs over the initial budget and it is estimated that across the European Union, about 50 billion euro is spent each year due to such problems (Chapman, 2008).Though it is of critical importance to obtain accurate and representative ground information, the task itself is very challenging for several reasons. Our knowledge of the ground mainly comes from studying soil samples, which by volume are usually less than 1/1,000,000 of the ground affected by construction (Clayton et al., 1995). Most of the time soil samples are retrieved by pushing tube samplers into the ground, a process called tube sampling. Though better sampling techniques do exist, the required technical and financial support makes them impractical for many projects, so tube sampling is still the most widely used sampling method around the world. It has long been recognized that this sampling process might cause significant disturbance to the soil, so the soil samples obtained do not truly reflect the in-situ soil state. Without understanding the tube sampling disturbances, it is impossible to interpret the laboratory test data properly and obtain the correct engineering property values. It has been a primary concern among geotechnical engineers, and though extensive research has been done, our understanding on this problem is still incomplete. Due to the practical difficulties, the real movement of soil during tube sampling has never been measured in the past.The proposed research project aims to visualize and measure the whole-field movement of soil during tube penetration for the 1st time. The process of field tube sampling will be simulated in the laboratory in ways similar to those of Santagata et al. (2006), and transparent soil and glass tubes will be used in this project. The process will be recorded using digital photography, from which the soil movement can be measured very accurately using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). Incremental and accumulated strain paths can be derived from the displacement data (White & Bolton, 2004). Glass tubes of various shapes will be tested in normally consolidated and over-consolidated transparent soil to investigate the effects of sampler design parameters like area ratio, cutting-shoe geometry and inside clearance. The investigation will also be extended into the post-sampling stage to include disturbances during storage and extrusion. The obtained data will provide valuable insights into the whole process from in-situ tube sampling to laboratory testing, and offer practical guidance on the design of the tube samplers, laboratory handling of soil samples, and the interpretation of laboratory tests. It will reduce the financial risks associated with the building of infrastructure, promoting the wealth of the nation and welfare for the general public.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, second in importance only to carbon dioxide. Most methane is produced by microorganisms and methane concentrations in the atmosphere had been increasing rapidly, but now is quite variable. This is important to understand as atmospheric methane increases in the geological past have been linked to global warming. Global methane production in marine sediments is very significant and these sediments contain the largest, global reservoir of methane. This includes huge stores of methane in an ice matrix called hydrates, which might be a future energy store, as well as being a sensitive trigger for rapid climate change. Surprisingly, we know relatively little about the methanogens in ocean sediments that produce this methane, as only a few have been isolated and studied (11 species, representing less than 10% of cultured methanogen species). Also uncultured and little understood, are the microbes related to methanogens, which currently remove approximately 80% of all methane produced in sediments before it can enter the ocean and atmosphere above. These two groups of microbes are intimately connected and together have major influence on the flux of methane from sediments. There are even suggestions that anaerobic methane production and consumption may be due to the same microbes, but nobody knows for sure. Hence, our lack of understanding of the microbes controlling methane flux in marine sediments severely limits our ability to predict controls and future changes in the extremely important global methane cycle. We intend to significantly increase knowledge of the controls on ocean methane flux, and the microorganisms driving this process, by investigating methane production in high-pressure systems. These systems mimic sediment conditions, and within which both methane-producing and methane-consuming microbial communities are active. We will conduct similar experiments with microbial communities from marine gas hydrate sediments to determine their response to temperature and pressure changes, the supply of compounds for methane oxidation or production, and other factors controlling methane concentrations. From these experiments and a range of marine sediments we will isolate a number of methanogens, many of which may be new marine types, as their presence has been indicated by DNA surveys. Study sites include coastal sediments which are strongly influenced by human activity, globally significant gas hydrate sediments and mud volcanoes, which have recently been suggested as being an important potential source of methane. We will identify the physiology and metabolism of these methanogens to significantly increase our knowledge of the biodiversity and function of this important group of microorganisms. This will include, for the first time, investigating their response to high pressure.

The UK's transport infrastructure is one of the most heavily used in the world. The rail network takes 50% more daily traffic than the French network; the M25 between junctions 15 and 14 carries 165000 vehicles daily; London Underground is Europe's largest subway. The performance of these networks is critically dependent on the performance of cutting and embankment slopes which make up £20B of the £60B asset value of major highway infrastructure alone. Many of these slopes are old and suffering high incidents of instability (increasing with time). Our vision is to create a visualised model of transient water movement in infrastructure slopes under a range of current and future environmental scenarios, based on a fundamental understanding of earthwork material and system behaviour, which can be used to create a more reliable, cost effective, safer and more sustainable transport system. The impact of the improved slope management will be highly significant in both direct economic and indirect social and economic terms: planned maintenance costs 10 times less and reduces delays caused by slope failure. This proposal offers a unique opportunity to unite 6 academic institutions and coalesce their field, laboratory and computing facilities; with a large cohort of PhD students and experienced stakeholder community we will undertake world leading science and create a long-term legacy. Individually, the partners in this proposal, in collaboration with key infrastructure owners and engineering companies, have been responsible for the instrumentation of 15 cut slopes and embankments, the development of numerical models which couple hydrological and geotechnical effects, and the development of laboratory and filed testing to provide parameters to populate these models. These studies have helped to define the type of problem that is being faced and begin to understand some of the interactions between weather, soil and vegetation. However, further research is required in order to better understand material behaviour (particularly the composite behaviour of soil, water, air and vegetation); slope system behaviour (particularly the effects of temporal and spatial variations of material properties) and the relationships with environmental effects and engineering performance. Furthermore, the integration of the material and slope behaviour with that of the behaviour of the infrastructure network as a whole has thus far not been possible. It is important for the sustainable management of infrastructure slopes (assessment, planning, repair, maintenance and adaptation) to have models that can assess the likely engineering performance of infrastructure slopes, both now and in the future. Recent model development has started to consider the input of weather patterns, and can therefore model the potential effects of future climate. However it has become clear that these models are sensitive to the way in which a number of the physical processes and properties are incorporated, many of which are complex and difficult to quantify directly. A better understanding of the interactions between earthworks, vegetation and climate is required to formulate robust guidance on which maintenance approaches should be adopted and how they should be applied. iSMART will use a combination of field measurements, lab testing and development of conceptual and numerical models to investigate the uncertainties and knowledge gaps enumerated above and to visualise the complex interactions taking place over time and space. This knowledge will help the managers of the UK's transport infrastructure to identify problem sites, plan and prioritise maintenance activity, and develop assessment and adaptation strategies to ensure future safety and resilience of geotechnical transport infrastructure.

Infrastructure is fundamental to our economy and society, e.g. being one of the 10 pillars of the recently launched UK Industrial Strategy. Long linear (geotechnical) assets (LLAs) are a major component of this infrastructure and fundamental to the delivery of critical services over long distances (e.g. road & railway slopes, pipeline bedding, flood protection structures). Central government infrastructure investment will rise by almost 60% to £22 billion p.a. by 2022 (ONS). This will support both the development of new infrastructure, and the repair of existing infrastructure. At present, there are 10,200 km of flood defences in Great Britain; 80,000 km of highways; 15,800 km of railway). Failure of these assets is common-place (e.g. in 2015 there were 143 earthworks failures on Network Rail - >2 per week), the resulting cost of failure is high (e.g. for Network Rail, emergency repairs cost 10 times planned works, which cost 10 times maintenance), and vulnerability to these failures is significant (748,000 properties with at least a 1-in-100 annual chance of flooding; derailment from slope failure is the greatest infrastructure-related risk faced by our railways). However, the exact reasons for - and timing of - failure is, at present, poorly understood. This leads to unanticipated failures that cause severe disruption and damage to reputation. Current approaches to design and asset management perpetuate this situation as they are based on past experience, which cannot be extrapolated to future performance: the infrastructure is older, ever more intensively used and subject to increasingly extreme weather patterns. Together, these factors significantly increase the likelihood of failures in the future causing reduced performance and poorer service. Climate change has been identified as one of the factors driving this change. There is an exciting opportunity to bring together new advances in research and technology with design and asset management practices from different LLAs to reduce the risks posed to infrastructure systems by deterioration and future change. Current techniques can estimate future rates of deterioration that might lead to failure in transport infrastructure slopes, but are difficult to scale up, do not capture all drivers of deterioration relevant to all LLAs, are poor at dealing with uncertainty and heterogeneity, and lack rigorous validation against representative field data. Different asset owners have access to vast quantities of failure and condition data from their networks (recently enabled by technological advances in data capture and storage) but use different approaches to address failure based on historical data. ACHILLES proposes a research programme that brings these approaches together, coupled with statistical advances to enable rigorous use of network data, and economics to assess the value of design, monitoring and mitigation options. Our long-term vision is for the UK's infrastructure to deliver consistent, affordable and safe services, underpinned by intelligent design, management and maintenance. ACHILLES proposes a Programme to address this challenge by combining laboratory/field experimentation, numerical modelling and simulation, statistical data and cost benefit analysis, and activities to enable its outcomes to be adopted by LLA owners/operators: Deeper understanding of material and asset deterioration and how to model and predict New design tools to account for deterioration; and assessment tools to characterise Strategies to mitigate deterioration from material to asset scale Decision-making framework to prioritise spending on design, monitoring and/or interventions that accounts for heterogeneity and uncertainty, and informs appropriate business cases Better understanding of the importance of characterising heterogeneity and uncertainty for infrastructure decision making processes Knowledge and tools to incorporate data analytics into asset assessment and monitoring

There is irrefutable evidence that the climate is changing. There also is strong evidence that this is largely a result of human activity, driven by our insatiable consumption of resources, growing populations, unsustainable migration patterns and rapid overdevelopment in cities that are resulting in heavy ecosystem services losses. Humankind's solutions to these problems do not always work, as many rely upon quantities of resources that simply do not exist or that could not support the rate of change that we are facing, behaviour changes that sit uneasily with our current consumption patterns and quality of life aspirations, and government policies that emphasise long-term sustainable gain but potential short-term economic loss for businesses and local people. A radical revisioning of the problem is needed, not only to reverse current trends, but also to contribute positively to the sustainability and wellbeing of the planet, now and in the future. This proposal is that radical new vision, adopting a 'whole of government' focus to the changes needed in the ways that societies live, work, play and consume, balancing social aspirations against the necessary changes, and using CO2 emissions as a proxy measurement for the harm being done to the planet and the resources (particularly energy) that we use. Through the development of a city analysis methodology; engineering design criteria for quality of life and wellbeing; engineering design criteria for low carbon pathways and; radical engineering approaches, strategies and visioning-all generated in a multidisciplinary context-we aim to deliver a range of engineering solutions that are effective in sustaining civilised life, in an affordable and socially acceptable style. Our vision is to transform the engineering of cities to deliver societal and planetary wellbeing within the context of low carbon living and resource security. We seek to prove that an alternative future with drastically reduced CO2 emissions is achievable in a socially acceptable manner, and to develop realistic and radical engineering solutions to achieve it. Certain techno-fixes for a low-carbon society have been known for some time (e.g., installing low energy appliances in homes), but are not always deemed successful, in part because they have not been deemed socially acceptable. Current aspirations for material consumption are driven by social factors and reinforced by social norms, yet recent research shows that meeting these aspirations often does not enhance wellbeing. Thus, the challenge the research community faces is to co-evolve the techno-fixes with people's aspirations, incorporating radical engineering strategies within the financial, policy/regulation and technical contexts, to re-define an alternative future. A roadmap is required to chart the path from here to there, identify potential tipping points and determine how to integrate radical engineering strategies into norms. However, this roadmap can only be considered once that alternative future has been established, and a 'back-casting' exercise carried out, to explore where the major barriers to change lie and where interventions are needed. Our ambition is to create an holistic, integrated, truly multidisciplinary city analysis methodology that uniquely combines engineered solutions and quality-of-life indicators, accounts for social aspirations, is founded on an evidence base of trials of radical interventions in cities, and delivers the radical engineering solutions necessary to achieve our vision. We seek to achieve this ambition by using a variety of innovative and traditional approaches and methods to undertake five research challenges, which are outlined in detail in five technical annexes.