VENTURA is a digital service based on interdisciplinary systems approaches to infrastructure that allows end-users to explore housing and water system planning options through a virtual participatory process supported by state-of-the-art process-driven models. The research involves co-creating a web-based and end-user led prototype called a virtual decision room (VDR) to help movements towards a sustainable digital society. The VDR will be co-created with local government, the local community, regulators and water utility companies ('end-users') to collaboratively plan and evaluate the environmental sustainability of urban growth planning scenarios using co-designed water neutrality indicators during the project. The VDR will use a whole-water system Digital Twin (FuturaWat) that supports evidence-led water neutral planning for place making. This will be achieved by integrating two state-of-art digital tools: GIS-based ground risk calculator (GRISC) and whole-water system model (CityWat) with a participatory process to facilitate end-user discussion and decision-making on housing and water system planning scenarios. The key novelty of the proposed research is in applying systems approaches to infrastructure planning, collaborative working and sustainability evaluation. The VDR will be tested by applying it to Greater Manchester and London Borough of Enfield case study examples to enable end-users to align their strategic planning and water management priorities. The VENTURA concept was co-developed with our project partners, who have helped us formulate Greater Manchester (GM) and London Borough of Enfield (LBE) case examples. In GM the work will directly support the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) 'levelling up' strategies and help them to holistically address 'challenges to delivery when considering wider issues such as flood risk, brownfield land remediation, environmental degradation and wider resilience to climate change'. The LBE case example will support Enfield Council in their transition to a digital platform that will enable correlation of infrastructure needs with investment opportunities and help them to more effectively engage with local communities and discuss local plans, which currently do not include water demand and water quality evaluation because of lack of evidence. Both case examples will explicitly account for community perspectives through collaborations with partner local NGOs: Thames21 (LBE) and The Mersey Rivers Trust (GM). VENTURA directly addresses the current UK Government's high-profile strategic initiatives including 'Planning for the future' White Paper and the National Digital Twin Programme. In particular, VENTURA provides a proof-of-concept for the White Paper's highly ambitious proposals that seek to reduce the duration of the planning cycle significantly, supporting net gains in the quality of the environment and front-loading public engagement in the planning system to the plan-making stage of place-making. The research will adapt traditional working practices to help the work become more sustainable. This will be formalised through the development of a sustainability policy for the research and will include initiatives such as monitoring and managing environmental performance by embedding into project management, reporting progress and sharing good practice with other EPSRC projects.

The Science Museum, like all other museums, holds objects and archives which have the potential to be explored and shared for their local, community meanings. One such object is a manual three-operator telephone exchange installed in the centre of Enfield Town in 1925 and in operation there until 1960. The intention of the project is to explore how returning this object to its geographical roots can empower various community groups to access and explore their heritage and their connections to an object and a place. These interested 'community' groups are either geographically located - local to Enfield as local historians and inhabitants - or intellectually or culturally located - as telephonists (usually women) and as telecommunications specialists, enthusiasts and (often) ex BT or Post Office employees. The Museum's researchers form another (academic) community. These diverse groups can bring varying perspectives to the exploration of the meaning - cultural, community heritage - and links - technological and personal - of such an object. This project brings together these various communities, enabling encounters between them, so as to provide fruitful ways of exploring the value and meaning of this particular object and, at the same time trialling generic approaches to using material culture to link researchers and local communities. We will display the exchange equipment in Enfield Museum, close to its original location, to inspire and provoke local involvement and excitement in the objects and its meanings for the community. This piece of telephone exchange equipment has been selected for the project for several reasons. In part, it stands as a symbol of changing meanings of telecommunications in modern societies. Virtually everyone now carries a mobile phone, but that revolution is only a little over a decade old. The manual exchange equipment we will be displaying in Enfield stands for a pre-prehistory of telephony. The penetration of telephones into people's homes was slow; they did not become ubiquitous until the 1960s, the time at which this particular exchange equipment was 'retired' to the Science Museum. It can therefore be used as a focus object for local people to reminisce and recollect how new technologies impact on everyday life. Second, telephone exchange buildings are to be found in every community, generally somewhat mysterious buildings to the majority of local populations, apart from those who worked there. In this project, different communities can share their experiences; different local meanings of the same thing. With the introduction of digital switching technologies over the last decades, many of these buildings have had to find new uses. So, although this project is focussed on the particularity of the Enfield experience, it also exemplifies general stories that apply to the whole of the UK. For the Science Museum, this application sits squarely on the agenda of our Public History of Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine (PHoSTEM) Project. This has been established to develop newly engaging kinds of display and event using the Museum's collections. Seizing the agenda of museum participation (see Simon 2010), it seeks to use collaborative approaches, including co-creation of displays, to gain insights into how lay people think about the past, and especially the past of science and technology. We have already worked with enthusiasts in our exhibition 'Oramics to Electronica: Revealing Histories of Electronic Music' and with family historians in a series of articles for 'Family Tree' magazine. This current proposal represents our first engagement with local historians. Associated outputs will aim to disseminate the findings of this new way of working via blogging, conference papers, Enfield local history societies, local Enfield magazines, peer-reviewed publication, dedicated space on the Science Museum's 'Public History' web pages and other social media.

London and the South-East is the economic 'powerhouse' of England contributing 40% of GDP. Currently there is a shortage of housing, particularly affordable homes, and 50,000 new homes per year are planned for London to 2036. The growing population of London and its planned housing require water to be supplied and flooding to be reduced as far as possible. However, the region is vulnerable to water shortages (droughts) and floods. In the spring of 2012 London was facing potentially its worst drought, with concerns whether Affinity Water could provide sufficient water for some Olympic events. By contrast, the prolonged rainfall that then fell over the summer caused localised flooding and the Thames barrier being closed twice. This swing, over half a year, from extreme shortage of water to excess highlights the major challenge London faces to manage the water environment. This challenge is likely to worsen with climate change alongside the expected economic growth of London and associated increase in population. It also shows how droughts and flooding are two ends of a hydrological spectrum, whose political oversight, i.e. governance, needs to be managed was a whole. It is this need for integrated, collaborative and appropriate management that lies at the heart of CAMELLIA. Focusing on London, CAMELLIA will bring together environmental, engineering, urban planning and socio-economic experts with governmental and planning authorities, industry, developers and citizens to provide solutions that will enable required housing growth in London whilst sustainably managing water and environment in the city. CAMELLIA will be led by Imperial College London, working in collaboration with researchers at University College London, the University of Oxford, and the British Geological Survey. The programme is supported by communities, policymakers and industry including: local and national government, environmental regulators, water companies, housing associations and developers, environmental charities and trusts. Ultimately, the programme aims to transform collaborative water management to support the provision of lower cost and better performing water infrastructure in the context of significant housing development, whilst improving people's local environments and their quality of life. The relationships between the natural environment and urban water infrastructure are highly complex, comprised of ecological, hydrological, economic, technical, political and social elements. It is vital that policy and management are informed by the latest scientific understanding of hydrological and ecological systems. However, for this knowledge to make a change and have an impact, it needs to be positioned within wider socio-technical and economic systems. CAMELLIA will provide a systems framework to translate Natural Environmental Research Council-funded science into decision-making. Enabling a range of organisations and people to contribute to, and apply systems-thinking and co-designed tools to create a paradigm shift in integrated water management and governance underpins CAMELLIA. This will achieve the goal of real stakeholder engagement in water management decisions and provide a template, not just for London's growth, but for other cities, regions and communities both nationally and globally. The proposed work programme consists of four work packages which address 4 key questions, namely: How to understand the system?; How to model the integrated system?; How to analyse that system?; How to apply this systems approach to create impact? To help focus these questions, four London based case studies are being used, each reflecting a key issue: Southwark (urban renewal); Thamesmead (housing development); Mogden (water infrastructure regeneration); Enfield (Flood risk and water quality). From these, an integrated systems model will be applied to the entire city in order to help guide policy, planning and water management decisions.

HILS (Healthy Inclusive Lifestyle through Schools) brings together 8 secondary schools from: Netherlands (Project Coordinators), Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, France, Italy and the United Kingdom. Crucially, we have been able to include in the partnership two non-school government organisations based in the Netherlands and the UK specialised in public health and healthy schools, respectively. These member organisations play an essential role in providing the necessary expertise and knowledge required for an effective delivery of the project's goals. It is not by accident that this partnership brings together educational institutions from a vast variety of EU regions covering rural and urban areas, north and south of Europe, east and west, and most significantly, students from varying degrees of socio-economic and demographic spectrums, as the project's ultimate aim is to robustly challenge the general perception that a healthy lifestyle and all the perks associated with it, is a priviledge of children and adults from the wealthier 'side of town'. In essence this project brings about issues related to social inaquality in the context of healthy living and wellbeing, two highly relevant, hotly debated global issues. Over its 3-year course, HILS will enable a large number of young people across this partnership to explore a large variety of healthy living aspects, tackle a number of barriers to a healthier, longer and more fulfilling life. HILS has been thoughtfully structured by combining methodologies which have been previously tried and successfully tested, as well as by bringing a series of innovative ideas and strategies. The activities have been carefully designed and selected to suit the needs of young people across the partnership, by being both accessible and suitably challenging. These activities will enable the students involved to learn in a progressive way which will lead to the planned outcomes. There is a strong emphasis on students' leadership skills; HILS will empower young people to take control and be the main driving force in their quest for the full implementation of the project's results, which will in turn forge and develop their leadership skills and a let’s do attitude. There is a detailed, progressive carousel of activities covering the most salient aspects of (un)healthy living, as suggested by the public health professionals, also members of the project. The activities are designed to treat each issue through the following cycle: identify, explore, find solutions, implement, report and disseminate. The length for each cycle will be the time between each LTTA, which means a lot of the work will be carried out at school level, involving large number of students, staff and people from the local commuinties and beyond. The main product of the project will be the HILS Review. In essence, this will be a comprehensive and formal assessment of each school's current provision of aspects of healthy living, including a diagnostic report and a detailed analysis of the shortfallings, their root causes, the short and long term impact on young people and members of school community, a rationale for improvement, followed by a list or recommendations susceptible to bring about positive changes and transformations. In addition to the HILS review, there will be a multitude of other products such as: media articles and reports, videos, posters, leaflets and brochures, presentations, questionnaires, surveys and charts, a number of social media accounts, a project website and Etwinning twinspace, a large number of lesson plans for training sessions and workshops, logos and campaign material etc. The HILS review will feature a number of recommendations and suggestions made to school and local governors on how to improve the wellbeing of everyone in their schools, which will also make the basis for a quantity of promotional campaign material.We strongly believe HILS covers two highly pertinent topics, and it has been designed to have a deep and long lasting impact and legacy across the partner school communities and beyond. This will be made possible though its robust implementation policy and a relentless approach by all its members. One of our most powerful tools in achieving our goals are our young people and their leading role, as they will be both the subject and the prime recepient of the project's outcomes. Student voice will resonate loud and clear, throughout this project and well after its completion, in order to fully and effectively implement the recommendations and changes identified in their HILS Review. In many ways, this project has the potential to transform the lives of a great number of young people, who seem to be trapped in a self-imposed vicious cycle of poor lifestyle choices leading to poor health, academic underperformance, lack of aspirations and ultimately, a shorter, less fulfilling life.