Project summary There are growing global concerns over the long-term availability of secure supplies of metals needed by society. Metal consumption is increasing as a result of burgeoning global population and the requirements of new and/or environmental technologies. Of particular concern are the 'critical metals', so called because of their growing economic importance and high risk of supply shortage. Most 'critical' to the UK and EU are antimony, beryllium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, indium, lithium, magnesium, niobium, platinum group metals, rare earth elements, rhenium, tantalum and tungsten. Several countries (e.g. USA, Japan, South Korea) are developing strategies to address these risks, based on diversifying the global supply chain, improving knowledge of and access to indigenous resources, and boosting substitution and recycling. In the UK the House of Commons Committee on Science and Technology has highlighted that accurate and reliable information on the potential scarcity of metals should be made available to help businesses plan to mitigate these risks. This project aims to provide an authoritative, accessible and sustainable knowledge base on critical metals to underpin economic growth, contribute to green technology innovation, reduce resource risks to business, improve national security and enhance the competitiveness of UK PLC. It will promote effective knowledge exchange between industry (extractive, processing and manufacturing), the investment community, government, regulators, academia and other stakeholder groups on all aspects of the life cycle of critical metals to identify key issues relating to supply security and environmental limits. It will thus contribute to the development of coordinated national policies for the critical metals and identify the actions needed for their implementation including associated programmes of research. The project will involve: 1. Publication of a Critical Metals Handbook, to provide a unique, authoritative, one-stop source of information on diverse aspects of the critical metals, including geology, deposits, processing, applications, environmental issues, markets and future supply-demand scenarios. It will be written for the non-specialist by international experts. 2. Holding Critical Metals KE workshops, to promote dialogue among all stakeholder groups concerned with the critical metals supply chain. These will disseminate the core knowledge from the Handbook and will provide industry sectors that rely on critical metals, such as aerospace, clean energy and automotive, with the opportunity to identify key issues of concern. A synthesis report will identify the challenges for raw material supply over various timescales, the key areas in which breakthroughs are required and recommended action plans. 3. Development of new web pages for the non-specialist, to provide essential background information on critical metals and on the key issues related to their security of supply. The completed project will provide a foundation for the continuing provision of analysis and advice to users throughout the metals supply chain and for promoting ongoing dialogue with government. It will also facilitate the development of cross-sectoral linkages, bringing industry users into contact with specialist researchers from all parts of the supply chain, to contribute to the development of a coherent integrated critical metals strategy.

Disease and contaminants both pose major risks to wildlife and Man. This is well recognised and there are a variety of surveillance schemes in the UK that monitor wildlife for occurrence and severity of diseases and/or contaminants. These schemes complement rather than duplicate each other but share many operational procedures and so can face similar challenges. The information gathered from each surveillance scheme is communicated to a wide spectrum of end users. The various surveillance schemes are run by different government agencies and laboratories, research centres, institutes and Universities. The funders of the schemes are an equally diverse range of government departments, agencies and industry. A key difficulty caused by this myriad of researchers and funding organisations is that it hampers communication between schemes. The schemes only have opportunistic and ad hoc mechanisms to exchange knowledge or develop common best practices that would facilitate sharing of samples and data. Such cooperation can also be hampered by differences between funders in the priorities that they wish surveillance schemes to address. Furthermore, because each scheme reports its findings largely in isolation, it is difficult for end users to obtain an overview of common or widespread threats. The main aim of this project is to establish a Wildlife Disease & Contaminant Monitoring & Surveillance (WILDCOMS) network. This will provide a partnership between nine current UK contaminant and disease surveillance schemes. The network will foster and facilitate knowledge exchange, harmonisation towards best practice, collaboration and sharing of resources. It will also enhance and widen communication with and between end-users, and in particular will provide end-users with an holistic overview of environmental disease and contaminant risk. This should make identification of emerging hazards and risks easier and quicker to spot, and provide the more integrated scientific evidence base needed to formulate better and timely policy and regulation. The specific objectives, delivered in four work packages, will be: (i) to establish and develop the network through regular partners meetings (ii) to use the network to maximise communication of integrated surveillance information to a wide range of end-users through an annual Stakeholder Forum and through collation of findings from all schemes into web-based quarterly bulletins (iii) development towards harmonised operational procedures (sample collection, measurement, data recording and sample archiving) that will facilitate sharing and collaboration between schemes and eliminate duplication of effort (iv) to develop a sustainable model for WILDCOMS and extend its scope to a European scale through linkage with key European partners and networks WILDCOMS will thus facilitate sharing of skills, expertise, knowledge, samples and data, thereby maximising the use of available resources. This will result in better value for money overall and foster development of new initiatives. The benefits the network will deliver can be summarised as: (a) ntegrated surveillance leading to an improved scientific evidence base with which regulators and policy makers can assess threats to wild vertebrates and human health (b) better long term management, sharing and dissemination of samples, best practice and data (c) a recognised forum that will facilitate discussion and collaboration between surveillance schemes and different end-users and stakeholders (d) an enhanced UK research base by increasing knowledge through scientific publications and greater awareness of activities and specimen archives (e) benefits for industrial end users including potential for averting costs by preventing problems (f) benefits to quality of life to the through improved risk assessment

Catchment research has traditionally been focussed on the science and management of water flow and quality. In recent years, achieving good ecological status and compliance with the Water Framework Directive has been a priority. This has been challenging not least because the majority of rivers in the UK are heavily polluted with nitrogen, phosphorus, and a range of contaminants including pathogens and transfers of dissolved organic C from upland areas are increasing. These can be detrimental to the ecology of rivers and coastal waters, be a risk for human health and increases costs of the water industry. Following the publication of the National Ecosystem Assessment (2011) and the Government's White Paper on the Natural Environment (2011), catchment managers face an even greater challenge trying to ensure water resource objectives do not compromise delivery of other functions which deliver a range of regulating, provisioning or cultural services which we all benefit from. Underpinning delivery of these ecosystem services are basic ecosystem processes such as carbon fixation by plants and the return of carbon back to the atmosphere through decomposition (the carbon cycle), the cycling of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus through plants, soil, water and the atmosphere and detoxification of a range of contaminants including pathogens. Much is known concerning the individual carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus (C, N and P) and contaminant cycles, however the coupling of these cycles through the landscape and the subsequent impacts on the natural environment and the services provided are rarely studied. To respond to this gap in our current understanding we will address two research questions. The first is when, where and how do coupled macronutrient cycles (of C, N and P) affect the the functioning of the natural environment within and between landscape units at the catchment scale? The second is how will these coupled cycles alter under land use, air pollution, and climate-change and what will be the effect on water quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity (three important ecosyststem services) at both catchment and national scale? To achieve this, we will quantify the fluxes, transformations and coupling of the C, N, and P cycles through key processes (net primary productivity, decomposition, nutrient cycling) and quantify the links to pathogen transfer and viability using a combination of targeted field-based monitoring and field- and laboratory-based experimentation in the Conwy catchment supplemented by measurements in intensively farmed areas of the Ribble. The following outcomes are expected: 1. Quantification and improved process-understanding of coupled C, N and P processes, transformations and fluxes across soil functional types and within processing hotspots. 2. Quantification of the effects of instream ecosystem function and co-limitation of N/P on eutrophication development in freshwaters. 3. Testing of hypotheses that terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity can be explained at the catchment- and national-scales as function of macronutrient flux and primary productivity. 4. Source to sea flux quantification and process-understanding of the fate of pathogens and the controls exerted by macronutrients within very fine sediments (flocs). 5. An integrated, parsimonious coupled macronutrient (C, N, P) air-land-water modelling platform, configured for a 1 km grid across the Conwy (i.e. an enhanced JULES model). 6. Sensitivity analysis of carbon sequestration, water quality and biodiversity to past and future climate, nutrient and land (forest) cover change to determine the key controls on past and future changes in carbon sequestration, water quality and biodiversity. 7. Quantification of trade offs in delivery of carbon sequestration, water quality and biodiversity at the catchment scale and the relationship to land cover type and climate regime.

The water sector in the UK has, by many measures, been very successful. In England and Wales, drinking water standards stands at over 99.9%, water pipe leakage is down by a third, sewer flooding reduced by more three quarters in the last 10 years and bathing water standards are at record high levels. This success has been achieved using a 19th century design approach based on the idea of plentiful resources, unrestrained demand and a stable climate. However, a perfect storm of climate change, increasing population, urbanisation, demographic shifts and tighter regulation is brewing! Each one of these challenges is a threat to the water sector and, taken in isolation, existing approaches may be able to cope. Taken together and compounded by the speed, size and uncertainty of change, the system is heading for failure unless something radical is done. The current way of working looks increasingly out of date and out of step with emerging thinking and best practice in some leading nations. This fellowship aims to meet these emerging challenges and global uncertainties head on by developing a new approach to water management in UK cities. The starting point is a new vision that is: Safe & SuRe. In a sense, our existing water systems are all about safety goals: public health, flood management and environmental protection. These are important and still need to be respected, but they are NOT sufficient to rise to the coming challenges. In the new world of rapid and uncertain change, water systems in cities must also be Sustainable and Resilient. Only a 'Safe & SuRe' system can be moulded, adapted and changed to face the emerging threats and resulting impacts. In this fellowship. my vision will be developed, tested and championed into practice over a period of 5 years. It will draw from multi-disciplinary collaboration with leading academics inside and outside the field. A comprehensive, quantitative evaluation framework will be developed to test in detail what options or strategies can contribute towards a Safe & SuRe water future, focussing on the challenges of water scarcity, urban flooding and river pollution. Recommendations and best practice guidance will be developed in conjunction with key stakeholders.

Our national infrastructure - the systems of infrastructure networks (e.g. energy, water, transport, waste, ICT) that support services such as healthcare, education, emergency response and thereby ensure our social, economic and environmental wellbeing - faces a multitude of challenges. A growing population, modern economy and proliferation of new technologies have placed increased and new demands on infrastructure services and made infrastructure networks increasingly inter-connected. Meanwhile, investment has not kept up with the pace of change leaving many components at the end of their life. Moreover, global environmental change necessitates reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improved resilience to extreme events, implying major reconfigurations of these infrastructure systems. Addressing these challenges is further complicated by fragmented, often reactive, regulation and governance arrangements. Existing business models are considered by the Treasury Select Committee to provide poor value but few proven alternative models exist for mobilising finance, particularly in the current economic climate. Continued delivery of our civil infrastructure, particularly given current financial constraints, will require innovative and integrated thinking across engineering, economic and social sciences. If the process of addressing these issues is to take place efficiently, whilst also minimising associated risks, it will need to be underpinned by an appropriate multi-disciplinary approach that brings together engineering, economic and social science expertise to understand infrastructure financing, valuation and interdependencies under a range of possible futures. The evidence that must form the basis for such a strategic approach does not yet exist. However, evidence alone will be insufficient, so we therefore propose to establish a Centre of excellence, i-BUILD, that will bring together three UK universities with world-leading track records in engineering, economics and social sciences; a portfolio of pioneering inter-disciplinary research; and the research vision and capacity to deliver a multi-disciplinary analysis of innovative business models around infrastructure interdependencies. While national scale plans, projects and procedures set the wider agenda, it is at the scale of neighbourhoods, towns and cities that infrastructure is most dense and interdependencies between infrastructures, economies and society are most profound - this is where our bid is focussed. Balancing growth across regions and scales is crucial to the success of the national economy. Moreover, the localism agenda is encouraging local agents to develop new infrastructure related business but these are limited by the lack of robust new business models with which to do so at the local and urban scale. These new business models can only arise from a step change in the cost-benefit ratio for infrastructure delivery which we will achieve by: (i) reducing the costs of infrastructure delivery by understanding interdependencies and alternative finance models, (ii) improving valuation of infrastructure benefits by identifying and exploiting the social, environmental and economic opportunities, and, (iii) reconciling national and local priorities. The i-BUILD centre will deliver these advances through development of a new generation of value analysis tools, interdependency models and multi-scale implementation plans. These methods will be tested on integrative case studies that are co-created with an extensive stakeholder group, to provide demonstrations of new methods that will enable a revolution in the business of infrastructure delivery in the UK. Funding for a Centre provides the opportunity to work flexibly with partners in industry, local and national government to address a research challenge of national and international importance, whilst becoming an international landmark programme recognised for novelty, research excellence and impact.