The NEO-DEM project will use non-standard data and novel methods to impact business efficiency, encourage community collaboration and provide scholarly insights into consumer behaviour. UK businesses can struggle in the developing world, despite excellent track records at home. The following reasons explain a good deal of this failure in retail, service and consumer oriented sectors: * It is not possible to directly transfer domestic business models into emerging economies due to cultural, infrastructural and behavioural differences. Companies need to generate new analytical and strategic models that identify the differing needs of customers based on an understanding of the novel behavioural and consumption patterns exhibited. * In the developed world consumer oriented businesses are increasingly data-driven. They rely on cross-referenced geo-demographic, socio-graphic, and psychographic data as well as transactional data (e.g. Tesco & Boots in the UK); their use is enmeshed within company strategy. In many countries this kind of data are incomplete or non-existent, their absence inhibits growth and means that targeting and resource use is sub-optimal. Replicating the kind of data that is readily available in the UK will often be impossible or expensive and impractical. Even when transactional data is forthcoming (e.g. Tesco Clubcard Malaysia) there is limited scope to cross-reference them with reliable geo-demographic data-sets and models that are taken for granted in the UK (e.g. Experian's Mosaic). Despite lagging behind in infrastructural developments, developing countries have experienced digital revolutions; providing a largely untapped opportunity to generate business intelligence. In 2010 of the 5 billion mobile phones in the world 80% were in developing countries and this proportion is continues to grow. African countries have embraced new financial technologies such as mobile payment: over 17m Kenyans use mobile money; around 25% of the country's GNP flows in this way. Crowd sourcing systems such as Ushahidi lead the way in the aggregation of social factors. The project will create a decision support and market segmentation platform generated via personal data, collaborative aggregation and crowd-sourced feedback, that will allow the generation new models of consumer behaviour to support innovation. Our work will hinge on three case studies in exemplar developing economies (Tanzania, Malaysia and China) where we will develop example behavioural segmentations via novel computational and clustering methods and in partnership with a range of data providers and internationally significant companies including: Alliance Boots, Dairy Farm International, Bakhresa Group, Boots, E-fulusi, Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Experian. Academic research into consumer behaviour patterns will be significantly advanced by the techniques developed, their application in this field is novel. There is scope to exploit advanced forms of computation and clustering that more readily account for market complexities. There is a very high chance that the project will provide insights into consumer behaviour that have hitherto remained obscure. So the contribution to research in this area could be both methodological and empirical and contextual (robust insights into developing world consumers are more rare). This expeditionary collaboration is likely to open the door to and on-going conversation between the fields of business/consumer analytics and computational analysis.

Lancaster University, together with a formidable consortium of industrial and third-sector partners, proposes a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) aimed at cultivating international research leaders in Statistics and Operational Research (STOR) through a programme in which real-world challenge is the catalyst for cutting-edge methodological advancement. Our partners face a challenging reality: the demand for highly-trained STOR data specialists consistently exceeds the available supply. This situation is exacerbated by the ever-growing significance of data in both the economy and society. Our proposal directly addresses this pressing demand, focussing on the priority area "meeting a user-need". The newly envisioned Centre builds upon the strengths and knowledge derived from an existing, internationally recognised EPSRC CDT. Expanding upon this foundation and with the input of an enlarged partner network, including blue-chip companies, SMEs, and third-sector organisations, we propose a Centre poised to recruit and train 70 students across five cohorts. This program will harness industrial and charitable challenges as inspirational springboards for conducting the highest calibre research. The new programme will innovate by * Developing a new MRes programme co-designed and delivered with our partners; * Including a comprehensive training programme on advanced, reproducible programming for STOR, co-ordinated by the Centre's dedicated, industry-funded, Research Software Engineer; * Embedding industrial and third-sector collaboration throughout the student experience; * Hosting seeded research clusters: vibrant, cross-cohort, cross-sector retreats to explore and develop early-stage challenges emerging from the shared interests of STOR-i and its partners; * Developing an ambitious doctoral exchange programme with highly regarded international university partners, comprising student exchanges, co-supervision and shared training activities. Our partners play an integral role in the Centre's plans, with 80% of doctoral projects adopting a CASE-like approach, receiving co-funding and co-supervision from industrial partners. All other students will engage in industrial research internships. Additionally, partners will lead problem-solving events, data immersion experiences, and contribute to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activities such as leadership talks, fireside chats, and advanced programming training. The partnership is deeply committed to ensuring the broader impact of STOR-i as a national resource. To this end, the Centre will establish a suite of funded activities open to all UK STOR doctoral students. These include an annual STOR summer school with an emphasis on leadership skills, advanced programming, and a data dive focused on charitable endeavours. Additionally, students will have access to masterclasses and research visits. STOR-i will deliver a wide range of benefits and scientific outcomes to the end-user community, underpinned by three fundamental pillars: 1. People: Our CDT will inject 70 highly talented, diverse PhD graduates into the field, armed with the technical, interpersonal, and leadership skills essential for flourishing careers in STOR across a range of sectors. These graduates will serve as catalysts for innovation, driving cutting-edge research, and enhancing the UK's economic competitiveness. 2. Knowledge: The CDT will generate a wealth of cutting-edge research, disseminated in top STOR journals, and presented at major international conferences. This research will tackle substantial real-world challenges, yielding fresh insights and breakthroughs in STOR. 3. Impact: Our CDT will make a tangible difference in society and the economy by producing (i) case studies and (ii) a repository of documented and reproducible software, available to the public. This will facilitate widespread adoption of our research, leading to meaningful societal and economic impact.

This programme brings together teams from Herriot Watt University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Westminster and Durham University: providing a multidisciplinary focus on the research needed to enable and underpin radical measures to decarbonise the UK's road freight transport sector. The researchers are augmented by a consortium of 22 industrial partners, drawn from users, suppliers and participants in the road logistics sector. These industrial members provide advice and guidance as well as a rapid route to prototyping and implementation of solutions. The first 5-year programme, conducted by the same team, laid the foundations and showed that radical measures are necessary to hit the UK Government's CO2 reduction targets. It also showed that integration between logistics solutions, vehicle technology, and policy measures is essential. This experience has shaped the design of the proposed programme. The new research programme will run for 5 years and has three themes: (i) data collection and management, (ii) logistics systems, and (iii) vehicle technology. A portfolio of 23 projects spans the themes. The first strand of projects (funded mainly by EPSRC), will focus on reducing barriers to promising strategic, deep decarbonisation technologies and solutions. These projects will create and integrate new data, new modelling tools and decision support systems, to create new insights about technological and logistical solutions, compelling arguments for their early adoption and recommendations for the necessary policy measures. Driven by a desire to model and then quantify the benefits of radical logistics options, the models will be developed and validated with data from real freight operations by the industrial partners, collected by novel automated means. Alternative vehicle fuels and power trains and ways of significantly reducing energy consumption will be investigated. The second strand of projects (funded mainly by EPSRC and industry) will focus on extending and optimising the capabilities of promising technologies and on increasing their impact when applied to decarbonisation of road freight. Applied research into the dynamics of logistics mode decisions and testing of novel logistics options such as horizontal collaboration, co-loading and reorganisation of logistics infrastructure, will be enabled by tools developed in the first strand. Technologies developed in the first 5 years of the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight (SRF) will be tested in two separate full-scale field trials with consortium partners, funded by InnovateUK. Road-mapping will provide a mechanism for corporates, government departments and researchers to build a common view of the future. The projects in the third strand (funded by Energy Technologies Institute) will focus on implementation of tools and practices that offer immediate impact. These include novel and powerful software systems for industry to use in data collection and for vehicle characterisation and fleet decarbonisation. Research into the drivers of strategy and policy will, likewise identify the most powerful ways to influence adoption of technologies and logistics solutions. The Road Freight Systems Living Laboratory ('Living Lab') is the central integrating element of the SRF's five-year research programme. Almost every project in the Centre will be part of it. The Living Lab will provide a test bed to measure and model freight operations; to develop technical and logistical interventions based on real-time logistics data; to test the interventions in simulation; to develop decision support tools (several based on work done in the first 5 years of the SRF) and eventually to implement and trial the tools and systems in practice. The Living Lab will be based on an integrated software and data platform that is currently being built by the research team and industry partners.

Lancaster University (LU) proposes a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) to develop international research leaders in statistics and operational research (STOR) through a programme in which cutting-edge industrial challenge is the catalyst for methodological advance. Our proposal addresses the priority area 'Statistics for the 21st Century' through research training in cutting-edge modelling and inference for large, complex and novel data structures. It crucially recognises that many contemporary challenges in statistics, including those arising from industry, also engage with constraint, optimisation and decision. The proposal brings together LU's academic strength in STOR (>50FTE) with a distinguished array of highly committed industrial and international academic partners. Our shared vision is a CDT that produces graduates capable of the highest quality research with impact and equipped with an array of leadership and other skills needed for rapid career progression in academia or industry. The proposal builds on the strengths of an existing EPSRC-funded CDT that has helped change the culture in doctoral training in STOR through an unprecedented level of engagement with industry. The proposal takes the scale and scientific ambition of the Centre to a new level by: * Recruiting and training 70 students, across 5 cohorts, within a programme drawing on industrial challenge as the catalyst for research of the highest quality; * Ensuring all students undertake research in partnership with industry: 80% will work on doctoral projects jointly supervised and co-funded by industry; all others will undertake industrial research internships; * Promoting a culture of reproducible research under the mentorship and guidance of a dedicated Research Software Engineer (industry funded); * Developing cross-cohort research-clusters to support collaboration on ambitious challenges related to major research programmes; * Enabling students to participate in flagship research activities at LU and our international academic partners. The substantial growth in data-driven business and industrial decision-making in recent years has signalled a step change in the demand for doctoral-level STOR expertise and has opened the skills gap further. The current CDT has shown that a cohort-based, industrially engaged programme attracts a diverse range of the very ablest mathematically trained students. Without STOR-i, many of these students would not have considered doctoral study in STOR. We believe that the new CDT will continue to play a pivotal role in meeting the skills gap. Our training programme is designed to do more than solve a numbers problem. There is an issue of quality as much as there is one of quantity. Our goal is to develop research leaders who can innovate responsibly and secure impact for their work across academic, scientific and industrial boundaries; who can work alongside others with different skills-sets and communicate effectively. An integral component of this is our championing of ED&I. Our external partners are strongly motivated to join us in achieving these outcomes through STOR-i's cohort-based programme. We have little doubt that our graduates will be in great demand across a wide range of sectors, both industrial and academic. Industry will play a key role in the CDT. Our partners are helping to co-design the programme and will (i) co-fund and co-supervise doctoral projects, (ii) lead a programme of industrial problem-solving days and (iii) play a major role in leadership development and a range of bespoke training. The CDT benefits from the substantial support of 10 new partners (including Morgan Stanley, ONS Data Science Campus, Rolls Royce, Royal Mail, Tesco) and continued support from 5 existing partners (including ATASS, BT, NAG, Shell), with many others expected to contribute.

CENTRE VISION Our vision for the new CDT in Financial Computing and Analytics is to as a national 'beacon' linking PhD & Masters' students, industry and academia in financial computing and analytics. We and our Industry partners are also central to the forthcoming investments in Big Data from EPSRC and ESRC (e.g. Business Datasafe). Its principal objective is to educate the next generation of elite PhDs with unparalleled, cross-disciplinary expertise in applied computing, analytics and financial mathematics, as well as in-depth sector understanding, to meet an increasing demand for their skills within the Financial Service Industry, Government, Retail and other Service sectors. Our existing DTC in Financial Computing is unique (there is no other research & training activity like it in the world) and by placing our PhD students in financial institutions and regulators it has had a major impact on the UK financial sector, as indicated by the Financial Times article (School for QUANTS) and our Letters of Support. The CDT is a new partnership between UCL, LSE and ICL, all providing MRes courses and PhD supervision. NATIONAL IMPORTANCE & GROWING NEED FOR CROSS-DISCIPLINARY SKILLS London is the world's leading international financial centre and the UK financial services industry is the key sector for the UK economy, contributed £124bn to the UK economy, generating a trade surplus of £36bn in 2010 and employing 1 million people. London is also the location for our financial regulators and world-class Retailers. Our Financial and other Service industries are therefore crucial to the UK's, and especially London's, continuing social and economic prosperity. Although we receive over 600 enquiries/applications per annum, and growing, recent reports by McKinsey and Accenture highlight the major and growing skills shortage of (postgrad) IT/data scientists in the USA 22,000 and the UK 4,000. EPSRC PRIORITIES AND RESEARCH The proposed CDT is aligned to EPSRC priorities across a number of Themes, in particular: Data to Knowledge (an ICT Theme priority), Industrially Focussed Mathematical Modelling (Mathematical Sciences) and New Digital Ventures (Digital Economy). The crucially important IT research challenges in just one area, namely the application of software engineering, AI and verification/correctness to algorithms for automated trading, illustrates the enormous research opportunities. IMPACT The current DTC in Financial Computing is acknowledged by the Department of Business Innovation & Skills as having had a major impact on our financial industry partners and on our academic partners. This will continue with the new CDT, impacting Regulators, government, Retailers and analytics companies. * STUDENTS - In 2011 the Centre funded more female PhD students than males, and in 2012 the Centre started 40 new PhD students if we count DTC funded students, students funded by other sources, such as retail and analytics companies, and industry-based part-time students. * ACADEMIA - UCL, LSE and Imperial College have all appointed new faculty in applied financial computing and business analytics; and UCL and ICL have started new Masters programmes. * INDUSTRY - many of the Banks now have established formal PhD programmes, in part due to the current DTC, and proved lecturers to the partners for industry-oriented programmes. * REGULATORS AND GOVERNMENT- we have placed PhD students in the BoE/FSA/PRA/FCA and the Cabinet Office, and as discussed in the Case for Support, we have held individual meetings and workshops with the Regulators (BoE, PRA, FCA) and with new (Retailer) partners (Tesco, BUPA, Unilever) to discuss how we can support them. * SOCIETAL - we encourage and support our PhD students in launching their own start-up, and we provide Masters and Undergraduate students to London-based start-ups, especially in the area called New Finance (e.g. P2P lending, crowdfunding).