Flooding is the deadliest and most costly natural hazard on the planet, affecting societies across the globe. Nearly one billion people are exposed to the risk of flooding in their lifetimes and around 300 million are impacted by floods in any given year. The impacts on individuals and societies are extreme: each year there are over 6,000 fatalities and economic losses exceed US$60 billion. These problems will become much worse in the future. There is now clear consensus that climate change will, in many parts of the globe, cause substantial increases in the frequency of occurrence of extreme rainfall events, which in turn will generate increases in peak flood flows and therefore flood vast areas of land. Meanwhile, societal exposure to this hazard is compounded still further as a result of population growth and encroachment of people and key infrastructure onto floodplains. Faced with this pressing challenge, reliable tools are required to predict how flood hazard and exposure will change in the future. Existing state-of-the-art Global Flood Models (GFMs) are used to simulate the probability of flooding across the Earth, but unfortunately they are highly constrained by two fundamental limitations. First, current GFMs represent the topography and roughness of river channels and floodplains in highly simplified ways, and their relatively low resolution inadequately represents the natural connectivity between channels and floodplains. This restricts severely their ability to predict flood inundation extent and frequency, how it varies in space, and how it depends on flood magnitude. The second limitation is that current GFMs treat rivers and their floodplains essentially as 'static pipes' that remain unchanged over time. In reality, river channels evolve through processes of erosion and sedimentation, driven by the impacts of diverse environmental changes (e.g., climate and land use change, dam construction), and leading to changes in channel flow conveyance capacity and floodplain connectivity. Until GFMs are able to account for these changes they will remain fundamentally unsuitable for predicting the evolution of future flood hazard, understanding its underlying causes, or quantifying associated uncertainties. To address these issues we will develop an entirely new generation of Global Flood Models by: (i) using Big Data sets and novel methods to enhance substantially their representation of channel and floodplain morphology and roughness, thereby making GFMs more morphologically aware; (ii) including new approaches to representing the evolution of channel morphology and channel-floodplain connectivity; and (iii) combining these developments with tools for projecting changes in catchment flow and sediment supply regimes over the 21st century. These advances will enable us to deliver new understanding on how the feedbacks between climate, hydrology, and channel morphodynamics drive changes in flood conveyance and future flooding. Moreover, we will also connect our next generation GFM with innovative population models that are based on the integration of satellite, survey, cell phone and census data. We will apply the coupled model system under a range of future climate, environmental and societal change scenarios, enabling us to fully interrogate and assess the extent to which people are exposed, and dynamically respond, to evolving flood hazard and risk. Overall, the project will deliver a fundamental change in the quantification, mapping and prediction of the interactions between channel-floodplain morphology and connectivity, and flood hazard across the world's river basins. We will share models and data on open source platforms. Project outcomes will be embedded with scientists, global numerical modelling groups, policy-makers, humanitarian agencies, river basin stakeholders, communities prone to regular or extreme flooding, the general public and school children.

This proposal from Loughborough University outlines the case to renew the funding for the Industrial Doctorate Centre for Innovative and Collaborative Construction Engineering (CICE) as part of the Industrial Doctorate Centres call aginst the Towards Better Exploitation element of the EPSRC Delivery Plan. In partnership with an established industry base, CICE is delivering a high quality research and training programme that: meets the core technical and business needs of the construction industry; enhances its knowledge base; and produces high calibre doctoral graduates that can drive innovation. The Centre addresses a wide range of research issues that concern the UK construction industry including: Innovative Construction Technologies; Construction Business Processes; Advanced Information and Communication Technologies; Sustainable Design and Construction; and Transport and Infrastructure. Many of these areas have been highlighted in various reviews of the industry including the Latham Report, the Technology Foresight Report, the Egan Task Force Report, and more recently the National Technology Platform's research priorities. It also contributes to the EPSRC Delivery Plan as part of the knowledge transfer research and training activities. The research areas of the Centre align with the Engineering and Science for Sustainability research theme, as outlined in the EPSRC's Research Priorities and Opportunities, and fall under the 'Construction and the Built Environment' and 'Transport' sub-themes. Within the Construction and Built Environment, the Centre builds on existing strengths in the Department of Civil and Building Engineering established as part of the Engineering Doctorate Centre and other related industry based research to address some of the EPSRC research priorities to improve efficiency across the supply chain, including: encouraging the uptake of ICT to promote efficiency; improving building performance to minimise impacts on the environment ; and the analysis and design of civil engineering structures . Within the Transport area Sustainability and Innovation are key themes of the research that centres on transport operation and management, transport telematics, and minimising energy use and environmental impact . The Engineering Doctorate Centre (CICE) was established in 1999 and has subsequently recruited a total of 94 research engineers sponsored by a total of 63 large, medium and small companies. Loughborough University is a research intensive institution, which integrates its research and teaching activity at every opportunity to provide a top quality research led learning experience for all its students. The Department of Civil and Building Engineering has consistently achieved high research rating in the RAE assessments and the last RAE results were 5* in Built Environment. The Engineering Doctorate is part of Loughborough University's excellent doctoral research training programme, which in addition to supporting the pursuit of a particular project aims to provide a basic professional training to support the research and offer personal development opportunities. The training programme integrates taught and research elements tailored to suit the needs of the research engineer, project, and the sponsoring company while maintaining the expected quality of the academic standards required for a doctoral study. The Centre is managed by the Director, Prof. Dino Bouchlaghem supported by a Deputy Director, a Centre Manager and an Administrator. A Centre Management Board consisting of the Director, Deputy Director, and Industrial Representatives meets twice a year and is chaired by a senior industrialist from one of the sponsoring companies, oversees the work of the Centre and provides direction and guidance on strategic matters. This proposal has the full support of the University and has been subject to an internal review process to ensure synergy with the University's Research Strategy.