To achieve these, the project will: Test and develop machine learning tools for scraping the web to produce thoroughgoing - human verified - datasets covering live music ecologies. The automated element of this process will be a step-change from prior, resource intensive, data gathering models that have sought to map these ecologies. Combine the venue datasets with publicly available data (e.g. house prices, rateable value, licensing, planning) and commercial data (e.g. ticket prices, attendance), each provided by public and private research partners (local authorities, LIVE, Night-Time Industry Association), and collate these outputs into a reusable, widely applicable, data-driven 'switchboard' that displays economic and social indicators for use by commerce and policymakers alike. Work with partners to explore stakeholder perspectives and establish protocols on the appropriate levels of data aggregation and visualisation on the maps/dashboards to develop transparent and trusted sector agreed baseline data frameworks. Aligning public and commercial datasets, longitudinally and comparatively between cities, will offer new capabilities for informed policymaking beyond the silos of specific departmental concerns, and greatly enhance analytic capacity for industry organisations and academic researchers in promoting civically sustainable cultural development. In pioneering an interoperable digitised/automated approach to mapping live music sectors, to the best of our knowledge, Live Music Mapping Project 2.0 is a world first. With potential for regional, national and international application and impact, developing these systems will enable academics and industry bodies to unlock longitudinal collaborative potential within venue operations and their urban contexts, allowing for critical assessments of metropolitan policies that demonstrate where musical activity adds socio-cultural and economic value, locate regulatory pinch-points that constrain cultural growth, and identify clear markers of success and challenges for night-time economies.

Significant growth in the capacity of variable wind and solar generation technologies and inflexible nuclear power stations in UK is crucial to achieving a net-zero electricity system by 2035 and a net-negative electricity system by 2050. Decarbonising the transport sector and a greater reliance on electricity for heating are expected to increase electricity peak demand further. The growing use of variable renewable energy sources for power generation poses several challenges to the operation of power systems, in particular, supply and demand imbalances. Currently, the GB power system relies on significant input from gas-fired and hydro-electric power stations for balancing peak demand. Further, 13 GW of new electricity storage is required by 2030 to balance the 34 - 77 GW of new wind and solar generation. Existing technologies for grid-scale energy storage have their own pros and cons in terms of cost, life cycle environmental impacts, and scalability. Tidal Range Schemes (TRSs) are renewable generation technologies that can also be operated as grid-scale energy storage facilities. This is a unique feature of TRSs which has not been investigated significantly and is the key focus of this project. TRSs, such as tidal lagoons and barrages, generate renewable electricity by creating an artificial head difference between water levels on the seaside, driven by tides, and water levels inside the basin, controlled by flow through the structure. TRSs have a significant advantage over many other forms of renewable energy generation in that they are based on a highly predictable resource. Electricity generation has been traditionally considered as the primary goal of TRSs and they are mainly designed to maximise electricity generation. However, such schemes - particularly with pumping - can be highly controllable and therefore can be used as energy storage facilities. There are a number of tidal range schemes at different sizes proposed in UK coastal waters, with several other sites being investigated. One of the barriers to TRS development is their relatively high capital cost (but typically connected to a long capital cycle). This leads to a high expected cost of electricity generation. However, operating TRSs as energy storage facilities enables them to increase their revenue through price arbitrage and providing ancillary and reserve services. This consequently makes the TRS business model more financially viable while supporting the operation of the electricity system. The capability of TRSs to function as grid-scale energy storage facilities can be enhanced by new approaches to design and operate TRSs. It is also crucial to consider techno-economic and life cycle environmental impacts of TRSs being utilised as storage facilities compared to other grid-scale storage technologies. In this proposed project, we will investigate the optimal design and operation of TRSs as configurable grid-scale energy storage. This also includes an economic assessment of the revenue of TRSs when they are utilised as energy storage, and techno-economic and comparative life cycle assessment of TRSs and other common storage technologies in order to provide a better understanding of the potential impacts of TRSs. The proposed project is formed of 6 work packages which are closely connected. The project team will be working with an Advisory Board to ensure that project will respond to the key challenges related to the utilisation of TRSs as grid-scale energy storage facilities as highlighted in the proposal and benefit a wide range of stakeholders.

Chemistry impacts most areas of our lives, including healthcare, energy production, and the environment. It is also the UK's second largest manufacturing industry, employing 140,00 people. This hub will bring the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) to the area of chemistry, and by doing so have a major societal impact. Both AI and chemistry are fast-moving and historically separated research disciplines, and there is huge untapped potential to collaborate at the interface of these two fields. Today, relatively few UK experimental chemists are exploiting AI (e.g., for reaction optimization), and few have corresponding automation facilities to do this, which is a missed opportunity. The use of machine learning methods is more common in computational chemistry, but here also we are often data poor, and data is sparse. In some AI fields, such as natural language processing, there is also rapidly evolving, leading-edge industrial research, necessitating a cross-sector approach if we are to exploit the cutting edge of this technology. This hub (AIchemy) will bring together leading researchers in AI and trailblazers at the interface of AI for chemistry, spanning both university and industry. We will exploit unique established facilities and institutes in the four core partner institutions (Universities of Liverpool, Imperial, Cambridge, and Southampton) where cross-discipline working has already been achieved: this includes the Materials Innovation Factory (MIF), the Institute for Digital Molecular Design and Fabrication (DigiFAB), and the I-X Centre for AI in Science. In addition to the 6 lead investigators, we have aligned 25 other investigators across nine institutions, spanning the areas of AI, robotics, and a diverse range of experimental and computational chemistry sub-disciplines, and career stages. The team also includes unique expertise in robotics and automation (Liverpool & Imperial), natural language processing for chemistry problems (Cambridge) and data curation in the Physical Sciences Data Infrastructure (PSDI, Southampton). This diverse team and associated facilities give us the breadth of expertise and critical mass to become the core of a UK hub for this activity. AIchemy will carry out world-leading research at the AI/chemistry interface, building on distinctive UK strengths in this area and developed initially via 6 Forerunner Projects. The Hub will also build an approach for sharing chemistry research data and code in a common format to unite the currently fragmented UK research landscape. We also aim to dramatically broaden the number of AI researchers tackling chemistry problems, and vice versa, through a mixture of pump-priming funding in the hub, bespoke training, access to datasets, and events (e.g., AI challenges using hub-generated data). To ensure the long-term health of this discipline, we will also focus resource on projects that are led by early career academics. The hub will build a UK-wide consortium involving university and industry stakeholders outside of the core partners, including a broad set of 15 day-one industry partners across the sectors of AI and chemistry, to be further expanded in the full proposal. The team has an excellent collective track record in industry engagement and knowledge transfer; e.g. MIF collocates 100 industry researchers in a common facility with academics; Chemistry is co-located with IX at Imperial's £2 Bn White City campus, and there are shared spaces to enable 800 scientists and industry partners to work together on common challenges, with tailor-made labs and offices for early stage companies. Mirroring the enormous benefits that have been achieved in other science areas, such as structural biology, this hub will transform the UK landscape for the discipline of chemistry, transforming engagement with AI from a relatively niche activity to a core, platform methodology.

The Government's commitment to increasing offshore and marine renewable energy generation presents significant technological challenges in designing, commissioning and building the infrastructure, connecting offshore generation to onshore usage, and considering where these new developments are best placed, whilst balancing the impact they have upon the environment. In tandem, this commitment presents opportunities to advance UK capabilities in cutting-edge engineering and technologies in pursuit of net zero. Liverpool is home to one of the largest concentrations of offshore wind turbines globally in Liverpool Bay, the second largest tidal range in the UK, some of the largest names of maritime engineering alongside numerous SMEs, and the Port of Liverpool, a Freeport and Investment Zone status. The latest Science and Innovation Audit (2022) highlights Net Zero and Maritime as an emerging regional capability, and is an area in which the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority has stated its ambition to grow an innovation cluster. The University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University each host world-class research expertise, environments and facilities relevant to addressing these maritime energy challenges, and have an established, shared track record in collaboration with industrial and civic partners. The Centre for Doctoral Training in Net Zero Maritime Energy Solutions (N0MES CDT) will play a vital role in filling critical skills gaps by delivering 52 highly trained researchers (PGRs), skilled in the identification, understanding, assessment, and solutions-delivery of pressing challenges in maritime energy. N0MES PGRs will pursue new, engineering-centred, interdisciplinary research to address four vital net zero challenges currently facing the North West, the UK and beyond: (a) Energy generation using maritime-based renewable energy (e.g. offshore wind, tidal, wave, floating solar, hydrogen, CCS) (b) Distributing energy from offshore to onshore, including port- and hinterland-side impacts and opportunities (c) Addressing the short- and long-term environmental impacts of offshore and maritime environment renewable energy generation, distribution and storage (d) Decommissioning and lifetime extension of existing energy and facilities The N0MES CDT will empower its graduates to communicate, research and innovate across disciplines, and will develop flexible leaders who can move between projects and disciplines as employer priorities and scientific imperatives evolve.

We will train a cohort of students at the interface between the physical and computer sciences to drive the critically needed implementation of digital and automated methods in chemistry and materials. Through such training, each student will develop a common language across the areas of automation, AI, synthesis, characterization and modelling, preparing them to become both leader and team player in this evolving and multifaceted research landscape. The lack of skilled individuals is one of the main obstacles to unlocking the potential of digital materials research. This is demonstrated by the enthusiastic response toward this proposal from our industrial partners, who span sectors and sizes: already 35 are involved and we have already received cash support corresponding to over 27 full studentships. This proposal will deliver the EPRSC strategic priority "Physical and Mathematical Sciences Powerhouse" by training in "discovery research in areas of potential high reward, connecting with industry and other partners to accelerate translation in areas such as catalysis, digital chemistry and materials discovery." The CDT training programme is based on a unique physical and intellectual infrastructure at the University of Liverpool. The Materials Innovation Factory (MIF) was established to deliver the vision of digital materials research in partnership with industry: it now co-locates over 100 industrial scientists from more than 15 companies with over 200 academic researchers. Since 2017, academics and industrial researchers from physical sciences, engineering and computer sciences have co-developed the intellectual environment, infrastructure and expertise to train scientists across these areas. To date, more than 40 PhD projects have been co-designed with and sponsored by our core industrial partners in the areas of organic, inorganic, hybrid, composite and formulated materials. Through this process, we have developed bespoke training in data science, AI, robotics, leadership, and computational methods. Now, this activity must be grown scalably and sustainably to match the rapidly increasing demand from our core partners and beyond. This CDT proposal, developed from our previous experience, allows us to significantly extend into new sectors and to a much larger number of partners, including late adopters of digital technologies. In particular, we can now reach SMEs, which currently have limited options to explore digitalization pathways without substantial initial investment. A distinctive and exciting training environment will be built exploiting the diverse background of the students. Peer learning and group activities within a cross-disciplinary team will accelerate the development of a common language. The ability to use a combination of skills from different individuals with distinct domain expertise to solve complex problems will build the teams capable of driving the necessary change in industry and academia. The professional training will reflect the diversity of career opportunities available to this cohort in industry, academia and non-commercial research organizations. Each component will be bespoke for scientists in the domain of materials research (Entrepreneurship, Chemical Supply Chain, Science Policy, Regulatory Framework). External partners of training will bring different and novel perspectives (corporate, SMEs, start-ups, international academics but also charities, local authorities, consultancy firms). Cohort activities span the entire duration of the training, without formal division between "training" and "research" periods, exploiting the physical infrastructure of MIF and its open access area to foster a strong and vital sense of community. We will embed EDI principles in all aspects of the CDT (e.g. recruitment, student well-being, composition of management, supervisory and advisory teams) to make it a pervasive component of the student experience and professional training.