The UK uses around 50 GW of energy to heat and cool buildings with only 6% delivered from renewable sources. Heating of buildings represents almost a quarter of UK carbon emissions, while demand for cooling is projected to increase as the climate warms and summers become hotter. The UK Heat and Buildings Strategy is clear that action to reduce emissions is required now to facilitate compliance with legally binding 2050 Net Zero targets. Moreover, the current geopolitical uncertainty has highlighted the risks associated with importing energy. However, heat is challenging to decarbonise due to its extreme seasonality. Daily heat demand ranges from around 15 to 150 GW, so new green technologies for inter-seasonal storage are essential. Geothermal resources offer natural heat energy, very large-scale seasonal energy storage, cooling as well as heating, and steady, low carbon energy supply. Widespread exploitation of urban geothermal resources could deliver a significant component - and in some cases all - of the UK's heating and cooling demand, supporting UK self-sufficiency and energy security. However, barriers remain to uptake of geothermal energy, especially at large-scale in urban areas. There is uncertainty in the size of the underground resource, the long-term sustainability of urban geothermal deployments, and potential environmental impacts. New methods and tools are required to monitor and manage installations to ensure the resource is responsibly used. These knowledge gaps, along with lack of awareness and guidance available for stakeholders and decision makers, result in higher than necessary risks and therefore costs. In this project, we will remove obstacles to uptake by reducing uncertainty about how the ground behaves when used to store and produce heat and cool at a large scale in urban areas. We will focus on relatively shallow (<400m depth) geothermal resources and open-loop systems in which groundwater is pumped into and out of porous, permeable aquifer rocks underground, because these offer large storage capacity and can deliver heat and cool. Shallow, open-loop systems are also deployable in most UK urban areas and have lower investment costs than technologies which require deeper drilling. We will conduct advanced field experiments with state-of-the-art monitoring, supported by laboratory experiments, to determine the response of aquifers to storage and exploitation of heat and use the results to understand how temperature changes over a wide area as groundwater flow transfers heat within the aquifer. We will compare two different aquifers, with contrasting types of underground flow regimes, that can be exploited across much of the UK. We will also determine how temperature changes impact groundwater quality and stress ecological environments and sensitive receptors, as well as understand any risks of ground movement caused by use of the resource. The field data will be used to create calibrated heat flow models, which we can use as a 'numerical laboratory' to simulate and explore the capacity of urban geothermal and how different installations within a city might interact. The results will support planning of future resource use and assess the capacity of geothermal resources to store waste heat from industrial processes and commercial buildings and return it later when needed. We will explore the use of AI-based models that can 'learn' from data provided by geothermal operators to actively manage the resource in a responsible and integrated way. Together, this research will permit regulators to plan and permit installations to ensure fairness and prevent environmental damage, as well as ensuring system designs realistically predict the amount of energy available. Recommendations will be made for resource assessment, safe and sustainable operation and management, to stimulate the widespread development of low carbon, geothermally heated and cooled cities.

The number of people worldwide living with dementia and cognitive impairment is increasing, mainly due to people living longer, so we want to figure out how where we live affects dementia and brain health as we get older. Some research suggests that where we live might influence our brain health. For example, poor air quality in towns and cities, can lead to a decline in brain health. As more of us now live in towns and cities, it is important that the environment where we live is scientifically designed and improved to maximise our brain health. The complex social and physical environments where we live make some people more vulnerable than others to developing cognitive impairment. In other words, the factors that account for who is most likely to develop cognitive ill-health due to the environment has less to do with 'how' we live and more to do with 'where' we live. We do not know how these factors interact to make urban environments a problem for brain health, nor which are the best policies and interventions for promoting healthy ageing and brain health for our poorest communities. Our project will provide evidence for policies and practices that provide supportive urban environments to promote healthy ageing, including promoting brain health. This could include using creative urban designs to support people to adopt and maintain healthier lifestyles such as being more active. However, this needs a strong evidence base with expert community advocates who can articulate how supportive urban environments can improve brain health. Our research has the following steps: 1. First, with the help of stakeholders, including those from business, industry, and local government, and a review of existing research, we will represent the relationships between our biology, our lifestyles and our environment in a diagram illustrating how they likely interact to affect brain health, because visual thinking can help stakeholders better identify possible intervention sweet-spots to improve brain health. 2. By analysing data from over 8,000 older people in Northern Ireland, and linking this to information about where they live, such as the amount of air pollution, the toxins in soil, or how walkable their neighbourhoods are, we will explore how different environmental factors relate to brain health. 3. Next, we will collect new data on a subgroup of 1,000 older people including more in-depth measures of brain health and better measures of physical activity, using GPS devices worn around the waist that monitor our locations. This will allow us to explore how the urban environment influences our brain health. 4. Then, we will explore how aspects of our biology play a role in how the urban environment affects our brain health. 5. We will host workshops with local citizens to 'sense-check' our findings and co-develop promising prevention approaches. In these, we will explore the acceptability, affordability, feasibility and sustainability of new initiatives to improve the environmental influences on brain health. This might include, for example, policies on: expanding the car-free areas of the city to reduce air pollution; increasing the number of footpaths and cycle paths to encourage walking and cycling; improving public transport to reduce car use. As a result of our research we will produce: 1. A map of the system in which our genes, lifestyle behaviours and urban environments interact to affect brain health, to help guide stakeholders towards policies and programmes that can improve brain health. 2. An evidence base exploring how where we live affects our brain health. 3. A suite of potential policies and interventions to improve brain health and promote healthy ageing 'tested' (in terms of acceptability and feasibility) with older people, business, industry, policymakers and other stakeholders.

Northern Ireland (NI) has a long history of lagging behind other regions in the UK across a range of economic performance indicators, most notably in terms of productivity, with NI estimated to be 17% less productive than the UK average. NI also underperforms in terms of early-stage entrepreneurship and has remained in the bottom of the UK Innovation Survey since 2011. The underperformance of NI is a persistent feature of the local economy which is complex, due to the unique features of NI's community and environment. For example, instability of their devolved local government and political systems, cultural divisions between two primary demographic groups, rich heritage and deep inequalities sub regionally presents multifaceted challenges. We suggest that NI's inherent skills deficits and complex supply ecosystem are dominant factors contributing to NI's lagging performance amongst other UK regions and impacting NI's ability to have a clear direction on how to achieve inclusive sustainable growth. The supply and quality of education and skills in an economy is vital for economic growth. The just released independent review of Invest Northern Ireland also identifies that the NI skills ecosystem is cluttered, uncoordinated and involves duplicated efforts. They recommend that a review of skills is needed in NI, requiring co-operations between various organisations across NI. Our project seeks to contribute to this. We argue that NI's skills-based challenges can only be addressed by fostering strong partnerships and collaborations with stakeholders, communities and local leaders to enable fresh thinking and the co-creation of innovative solutions which will have multiplier benefits across the NI region. We identify a vision to develop a Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) in NI which brings together stakeholders and community organisations, who have a role in, and/or an influence on, the skills landscape. The purpose of the NI LPIP would be to develop a value network, built on the premise of a community of practice of proactive actors who wish to not only address their individual agenda but who want to work collaboratively with likeminded individuals, to develop solutions and share 'promising' and best practices which address skills gaps and inequities across a range of sectors and communities. It will build on established pockets of activity, where groups have led previous small scale stakeholder consultations to inform the Northern Ireland Skills Strategy. However, existing conversations have been fragmented, with limited impact, due to the need for an holistic and collaborative approach to solving key skills-based challenges. The overall aim of this Phase 1 project is to bring together existing stakeholder partnerships and community networks who are working on initiatives which aim to address NI's skills-based challenges and to encourage further stakeholder partnerships and community representatives, to join an inclusive open forum to address NI's skills provision and discuss future needs. To achieve this, we will undertake a five month workplan involving landscape evidence analysis and mapping of existing skills provisions, stakeholder and community engagement and partnership building activities via sandpits and workshops, and the development of an action plan on how to operationalise and ensure the sustainability of a LPIP hub focused on enhancing skills provision across NI. This hub will be based around the premises of innovation, co-creation and co-production. The geographical coverage of our project will span the whole of NI since a holistic approach is needed with an open forum, to take stock of existing work being done across groups to tackle NI's skills-based challenges and to develop a value network to move forward collaboratively by co-creating solutions across stakeholder and community groups.

For the first time in 50 years the UK has 'sovereignty' over its trade policy. It must now decide, for example, how to configure its free trade agreements, its regulations for imported food and digital trade and its trade and climate policies. Simultaneously, income distribution has become highly sensitive in the UK, policy-making power is devolved over several UK entities and the world trading system is beset by a range of tensions such as digitisation and Chinese growth. How UK policies respond to this, and who is involved in making and scrutinising them, will shape economic outcomes for generations and affect all parts of society and all regions of the UK. The Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP) will undertake INNOVATIVE, INTERDISCIPLINARY research at the frontier of knowledge, to help understand these challenges and opportunities and contribute to providing the UK with a modern trade policy. As well as being INTERNATIONAL in its approach, the CITP is designed to deliver IMPACT through targeted communications and sustained engagement with a wide range of non-academic stakeholders. Above all, our research responds to the view that trade policy should be INCLUSIVE in OUTCOMES for the people and regions of the UK, and in the FORMULATION OF POLICY by considering the views of all those affected. These five "I's" are core to the work of the CITP. Trade involves exchange and agreement between sovereign states and is thus at the interface of economics and international law; these disciplines form the core of the CITP, together with political science, international relations and business. CITP research is organised into three interrelated themes: 1. People, Firms and Places: focusses on the differential impact of trade (policy) across locations, firms and individuals (as consumers and workers) in the four nations of the UK. In this theme we will address how changes in trade barriers have differential impacts on productivity, the structure of supply chains, local labour markets and regions, and how knowledge of this can make trade policy more efficient and inclusive. 2. Digitisation and Technical Change: addresses the drivers and consequences of digitisation on geographical boundaries transforming what is produced and traded, how, where and by whom. Key here is how this impacts on trade practices and the rules governing them and the interaction between technical change, regulatory autonomy and international cooperation. 3. Negotiating a Turbulent World: considers the way that challenges to the trading system are testing the cooperation and trust that underpins open trade. CITP addresses these issues as well as regulatory coherence in trade agreements and how this may impact on domestic regulation. It will also focus closely on the stresses that trade policymaking is inducing between national and devolved administrations in the UK. Through the themes run genuine interdisciplinarity, the development of innovative methods (including in the economic modelling of trade, especially intra-UK trade), the creation of new data (e.g. on jobs in trade), major stakeholder and public engagement (citizens' juries) to identify what the UK as a whole seeks from trade policy, an Innovation Fund to encourage earlier career researchers to propose new trade research, and a commitment to communication and engagement to achieve impact and ultimately generate change. The CITP builds on the proven research and impact successes of its component Universities - Sussex, Nottingham, Strathclyde, Queens (Belfast), Cardiff, Cambridge, the European University Institute, Berkeley, Tel Aviv and Georgetown (USA). Each partner brings a distinct and complementary element to the CITP, extending its research expertise and its geographical reach and creating new synergies to establish an international centre of excellence for trade policy research.

The global energy sector is facing considerable pressure arising from climate change, depletion of fossil fuels and geopolitical issues around the location of remaining fossil fuel reserves. Energy networks are vitally important enablers for the UK energy sector and therefore UK industry and society. Energy networks exist primarily to exploit and facilitate temporal and spatial diversity in energy production and use and to exploit economies of scale where they exist. The pursuit of Net Zero presents many complex interconnected challenges which reach beyond the UK and have huge relevance internationally. These challenges vary considerably from region to region due to historical, geographic, political, economic and cultural reasons. As technology and society changes so do these challenges, and therefore the planning, design and operation of energy networks needs to be revisited and optimised. Electricity systems are facing technical issues of bi-directional power flows, increasing long-distance power flows and a growing contribution from fluctuating and low inertia generation sources. Gas systems require significant innovation to remain relevant in a low carbon future. Heat networks have little energy demand market share, although they have been successfully installed in other northern European countries. Other energy vectors such as Hydrogen or bio-methane show great promise but as yet have no significant share of the market. Faced with these pressures, the modernisation of energy networks technology, processes and governance is a necessity if they are to be fit for the future. Good progress has been made in de-carbonisation in some areas but this has not been fast enough, widespread enough across vectors or sectors and not enough of the innovation is being deployed at scale. Effort is required to accelerate the development, scale up the deployment and increase the impact delivered.