The 2004 Sumatra-Andaman tsunami killed around 15,000 people on the Eastern coast of India, especially from vulnerable communities who were also deeply affected economically as a result. In 1945, between 300 and 4,000 people, including in India, were killed by a tsunami on the Western coast of India, and this coast is possibly exposed to another event soon, potentially larger. The question is then: how do we protect the communities settled on the Western coast of India from a future tsunami? In the long term, only wise planning can reduce exposure, as early warning systems only mitigate the tsunami consequences. The answer to this question will be examined through a better scientific understanding of the tsunami hazard using Geology, numerical simulations, and Statistics. The land use and planning decisions, that should ideally prevent people from settling in zones prone to the dramatic impacts of possible future tsunamis, need to be implemented, strengthened and communicated efficiently based on the science at hand. There is currently no or very little planning for tsunami risk in these regions. These decisions will have to be made under great uncertainties and must reflect local attitudes towards risk, account for the economic value of decisions, and respect the ethical views of the authorities and the communities. The three central aims will be to: 1. Analyse the tsunami risk arising from earthquakes and quantify the uncertainties regarding eventual coastal inundations that it causes. 2. Understand how urbanisation processes, and in particular land use and planning decisions, contribute to the impact of coastal inundation on communities 3. Assess the uncertainties regarding these impacts, the value put at risk by them and the information required by stakeholders to develop mitigation and response strategies that reflect these considerations. This project will take an interdisciplinary approach that brings together natural scientific modelling of hazards, social analysis of urban development dynamic, and decision-theoretic (including ethical) evaluation of the aims of mitigation policies. In this first short-term study, we will focus on two coastal towns in India, with the intent of laying down the foundations for a more ambitious future study. By doing an initial study of this kind we can assess the feasibility of in depth mitigation planning that is sensitive to scientific uncertainty and to community values, and trial a multidisciplinary approach to managing natural hazards.

In summary, the project’s key focus is on building the capacities and perspectives of the community reporters and creating the space within the two slums for a more shared and public understanding of health. We do this in three phases through intensive training workshops and engagement workshops with three kinds of public - first slum residents, and then health researchers and government officials— to collectively examine, reflect and realize care- seeking for shaping health in slum settlements.The community reporters are at the centre of this project to: – a) lead community-led assessment of health issues within and outside the slum clusters; b) collaborating with researchers at IIHS to bridge the gap in policy research and bring scientific knowledge into conversation with more local idioms of well-being and health; and c) mobilising communities to reach out to the public health agencies where the present healthcare systems can integrate their specific needs. If the project succeeds, its gains in public engagement will extend far beyond just health and this timeline but will create a generation of slum residents with the skills, perspective and passion to become the next generation of leaders.

International research suggests that in response to climate change global cities are now engaging in strategic efforts to effect a low carbon transition. That is, to enhance resilience and secure resources in the face of the impacts of climate change, resource constraints and in relation to new government and market pressures for carbon control. But significant questions remain unexplored. First, limited research has been undertaken internationally to comparatively examine how different cities in the north and south are responding to the challenges of climate change. Second, it is not clear whether the strategic intent of low carbon transitions can be realised in different urban contexts. Consequently, we propose to establish an international network, to be undertaken between leading scholars on urban climate change responses as an important step towards addressing these deficits. The network will focus on the research and policy issues involved in comparing and researching the broader dynamics and implications of low carbon urbanism. This network includes Australia, China, India, South Africa and the US and builds on existing scholars and research teams with whom we currently have bilateral and ad hoc collaborations. Our proposed collaboration is designed to create greater density of network connections and enhancing the depth of each connection by three sets of initiatives: 1. International Networking Opportunities: The first element of the ESRC initiative will be to support significant international research opportunities for UK researchers. We will undertake programmed and structure visits to each national context to: increase knowledge of one another's research and plans; to gain intelligence about the research landscape in the partner countries in this field in order to build up a global picture of research expertise; to exchange ideas about possible future collaborative research projects; and to build personal relationships that are at the heart of successful long-distance research partnerships. 2. International Comparative Collaboration: The second element of the network is to facilitate interaction between the partners in the research network and with a wider group of UK and international researchers through two connected forum that will meet four times. A. International Research Workshops (Network partners plus other relevant UK and international researchers). These meetings will focus primarily on enhancing comparison and collaboration with a wider group of researchers but will also serve as an important opportunity for developing publications in the form of special issues and edited collections. B. Network Partners Research Forum (Network partners only). The network will also sponsor a number of much smaller research forums, focused on the network partners. These workshops will enable a structured and protected space for the partners to share the findings from their ongoing work, and to explore and examine the implications of the issues and themes emerging from the larger workshops in this context. 3. International Network Infrastructure: The third element will focus on establishing the necessary infrastructure for promoting effective international research collaboration. The network will pursue two projects. A. Information Infrastructure: Durham will establish a website that facilitates collaboration among international partners. All partner researchers and institutions will have the opportunity to present and regularly update information about their ongoing research. The website will also serve as a base for communicating about events, visits, awards, etc. The website will also host audio and video recordings of workshops. B. International Network Coordinator: Additionally Durham will support a 20% network coordinator to manage and organize the visits, workshops, teleconferences and the website.

This Global Partnerships Seedcorn bid is focused on developing a new research collaboration primarily between UK and Indian scientists. Its primary aim is to start to address the challenge of better understanding the physical risks and limits to the future habitability of the reef islands of the Lakshadweep Archipelago (LA) in the northern Indian Ocean. As with most reef islands, the islands of the LA are inherently vulnerable to sea-level rise, but the question of future habitability is especially pressing in the LA because they support some of the highest rural densities in India (>2,000 people/km2), this representing the highest population density of coral-reef dependent communities worldwide, with 100% of its community within a few kms of the coast. The reefs surrounding the islands in this region, which provide key coastal protection and island-building sediment supply functions, are increasingly threatened locally by rapid human population growth (>6% increase per year), rapidly growing fishing pressure, and poorly controlled (at the local level) infrastructure development. At the same time, population pressures and development threaten both groundwater resources and water self-sufficiency. Understanding the magnitude of change to these key physical limits to island habitability in the LA is thus critical to guide adaptation planning. In the context of these challenges our aims through this partnership are two-fold. The first is to develop and then establish a framework for understanding the current natural physical limits to island habitability in the LA. We will bring the collective expertise of the PI and international PPs to bear on the question of changing risk from reef ecological change, the consequences for reef growth and island-building sediment supply, and consider the impacts of changing island hydrological regimes. This data will be used to undertake initial mapping of zones of highest physical risk for island habitability. From a longer-term collaborative perspective, we envisage work is this area leading directly to a range of joint PhD and MRes project opportunities for students to work alongside the NCF, as well as the development of grant proposals aligned to exploring, for example, changing coastal wave exposure. Secondly, in collaboration with a range of other international PPs (see CfS Part 1), we are interested to start exploring how local jurisdiction and governance structures may either aid or hinder island adaptation planning options. There are a range of local political structural challenges in this respect within the LA, which lacks the political autonomy of atoll nations like the Maldives. Rather it sits under subnational island jurisdictions where national development aims do not necessarily align to local concerns. To explore the influence (both positive and negative) of different governance structures across the atoll nations of the world, we will host an interdisciplinary workshop towards the end of year two of the project drawing on the experience from the work in the LA, but also bringing in those with adaptation and policy experience across atoll nations and at different levels of governance. In a longer-term context, we are then interested to use this work as a springboard to seek future funding to work with social scientists to examine, for example, how historical and recent physical evidence of land changes align with the lived experience of island vulnerability. The issues we seek to address are highly relevant to global scale questions about reef island resilience and adaptation and are thus high agenda topics both in the LA, and across the atoll nations.

International research suggests that in response to climate change global cities are now engaging in strategic efforts to effect a low carbon transition. That is, to enhance resilience and secure resources in the face of the impacts of climate change, resource constraints and in relation to new government and market pressures for carbon control. But significant questions remain unexplored. First, limited research has been undertaken internationally to comparatively examine how different cities in the north and south are responding to the challenges of climate change. Second, it is not clear whether the strategic intent of low carbon transitions can be realised in different urban contexts. Consequently, we propose to establish an international network, to be undertaken between leading scholars on urban climate change responses as an important step towards addressing these deficits. The network will focus on the research and policy issues involved in comparing and researching the broader dynamics and implications of low carbon urbanism. This network includes Australia, China, India, South Africa and the US and builds on existing scholars and research teams with whom we currently have bilateral and ad hoc collaborations. Our proposed collaboration is designed to create greater density of network connections and enhancing the depth of each connection by three sets of initiatives: 1. International Networking Opportunities: The first element of the ESRC initiative will be to support significant international research opportunities for UK researchers. We will undertake programmed and structure visits to each national context to: increase knowledge of one another's research and plans; to gain intelligence about the research landscape in the partner countries in this field in order to build up a global picture of research expertise; to exchange ideas about possible future collaborative research projects; and to build personal relationships that are at the heart of successful long-distance research partnerships. 2. International Comparative Collaboration: The second element of the network is to facilitate interaction between the partners in the research network and with a wider group of UK and international researchers through two connected forum that will meet four times. A. International Research Workshops (Network partners plus other relevant UK and international researchers). These meetings will focus primarily on enhancing comparison and collaboration with a wider group of researchers but will also serve as an important opportunity for developing publications in the form of special issues and edited collections. B. Network Partners Research Forum (Network partners only). The network will also sponsor a number of much smaller research forums, focused on the network partners. These workshops will enable a structured and protected space for the partners to share the findings from their ongoing work, and to explore and examine the implications of the issues and themes emerging from the larger workshops in this context. 3. International Network Infrastructure: The third element will focus on establishing the necessary infrastructure for promoting effective international research collaboration. The network will pursue two projects. A. Information Infrastructure: Durham will establish a website that facilitates collaboration among international partners. All partner researchers and institutions will have the opportunity to present and regularly update information about their ongoing research. The website will also serve as a base for communicating about events, visits, awards, etc. The website will also host audio and video recordings of workshops. B. International Network Coordinator: Additionally Durham will support a 20% network coordinator to manage and organize the visits, workshops, teleconferences and the website.