Groundwater provides about of one-third of global freshwater supplies and it has been estimated that about 2.5 billion people are solely dependent on groundwater for basic daily water needs. It is critical for agricultural irrigation, industrial water supplies, and it sustains important groundwater-dependent terrestrial ecosystems. However, this high level of dependence on groundwater means that communities and ecosystems across the globe are vulnerable to natural changes in groundwater resources and the impacts of climate change. Consequently, groundwater droughts, periods of below-normal groundwater levels, and associated surface water droughts are a major threat to global water security and are potentially susceptible to being modified by climate change. It has been shown that groundwater droughts are becoming more frequent, longer and more intense in the UK consistent with climate warming, and, that regardless of climate setting, nations and communities are increasingly aware of the impacts of climate change on the resilience of water resources. For example, Taiwan and the UK have both suffered recent major droughts. In 2021 Taiwan experienced its worst drought in over 50 years due to failure of the annual typhoon season leading to restrictions in public, industrial and agriculture water supplies. In response, the Taiwan Ministry of Water commissioned 190 new groundwater wells. In the UK, the driest 18 months for over 100 years, from 2010 to 2012, led to record low groundwater levels, 'hosepipe bans' were imposed on ~20 million people in spring 2012, and the environment and farming sectors were significantly adversely affected. In both cases the episodes of drought were driven by exceptional rainfall deficits consistent with the effects of climate change, either by the failure of the annual typhoons in Taiwan, or successive dry winters in the UK. As a result, there is a pressing need to better understand the formation and propagation of groundwater droughts and for improved short- and long-term forecasting and prediction of groundwater and linked surface water resources and droughts under climate change. In response to the call from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST) and Natural Environment Research Council, UK, the Groundwater Research in a Channing Climate (GRCC) Partnership is proposed. The GRCC is a new multi-disciplinary research partnership between the National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Taiwan and the British Geological Survey (BGS) UK that will enable the sharing of knowledge and expertise and will build an enduring research capacity to addresses research challenges and societal needs related to groundwater droughts common to Taiwan and the UK. It will be facilitated by partnership-building activities and by joint working on three technical strands. To ensure that it endures, the GRCC Partnership will explicitly provide support for early careers researchers (ECRs) to grow into leadership roles and it will consolidate learning from all GRCC activities to produce a plan for future collaboration and growth of the partnership following the initial phase of GRCC funding. The GRCC Partnership activities include: regular project team VCs; reciprocal, annual visits for joint workshops and to enable joint working on the three research themes; and, to enable access to and participation in regional (Taiwan and UK) research fora to widen the reach of the GRCC Partnership. The GRCC Partnership will work on and produce joint deliverables on three research strands: groundwater droughts; baseflow (streamflow) droughts; and, groundwater drought prediction and forecasting. The GRCC will enhance our ability to deliver impactful research on this important topic by significantly growing our current capability and future potential to provide world-leading, innovative research that can contribute to improved water resource and drought management planning in Taiwan, the UK, and more widely.

Light has many uses, one of its biggest applications is in optical communications systems where a laser is switched on and off to transmit data. There are also many applications in the world of medicine, biology and biochemistry and tradiationally these have required very expensive, very large pieces of equipment. Currently the life sciences are required to look at smaller and smaller samples, sometimes down to the size of a single molecule. What this means is that the world of nanotechnology could be be used to create very small scale pieces of equipment that shine light onto very small samples and observe the light emitted by the samples. This then enables scientists to understand many important properties of the material. To work with light at these very small scales is very difficult, but recently, a new technology known as Photonic crystals(PhCs) has made breakthroughs in the way light can be confined and controlled. To make Photonic crystals nanofabrication procedures are need that are coming into mainstream use and they are now being applied in many different disciplines. This project will look to use PhCs to guide light onto a sample and then guide light emitted by the sample at a different wavelength towards a detector. A very small light source, a laser, will be included on the chip to make a very compact measurement device. The beauty of this approach is that 1000's of these devices could be placed on to a chip to measure many different samples simultaneously. This is the approach that is need for decoding genes to enable new drugs to be made.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Human Rights Justifications (HRJ) are when States use human rights to justify decisions. Human rights regimes operate on the presumptions that only individual persons can be in possession of human rights. The regulatory gaps occurring when the States use HRJ for their actions are two-fold, one in the regulation of the States’ use of HRJ and one in the individual human rights protection when States use HRJ. This activity is not regulated by any international, regional or national regime. In other words, significant and important gaps in human rights regulations has now been identified, which this project seeks to address. We will develop a theory of HRJ and a process for Systematic Ongoing Civil Society Engagement (ODCSE) as a tool for a gender and intersectional inclusive Civil Society engagement. Through ODCSE, we will identify gaps in human rights regulations and protection, serving as underpinning data for our recommendations to EU in support of a multinational human rights system and promotion of transnational democratic governance. ODCSE will also help us identify geopolitical elements that influence States’ use of HRJ. This will be done through 5 countries: Sweden, Finland, Taiwan, India and Ukraine, through three actions: human rights dialogue, inclusive democratic participations, and protection of human rights defenders, and operationalised through three themes: Covid, Migration and Climate.