The global hydrogen generation market is valued at $115.25 billion in 2017 and is projected to grow to $154.74 billion by 2022 [Global Outlook & Trends for Hydrogen, IEA, 2017]. We are witnessing significant market opportunities emerging for hydrogen technologies today. New and existing hydrogen technology developments and market activities are projected to intensify over the coming decade. Sustainable hydrogen solutions are a key pathway for decarbonising transport, heat and power generation sectors. Common challenges to sustainable hydrogen being adopted across these sectors are: - Cost reduction - Safety - Systems level and multisectoral innovations - Managing change Over the next decade innovative solutions are needed to tackle the above challenges, but it will be impossible without a dedicated mechanism to train doctoral Energy Innovation Leaders. These leaders should have a firm grasp of the technology from scientific fundamentals through to applied engineering and a solid understanding of the techno-economic barriers and an appreciation of the societal issues that will impact on the translation of disruptive technologies from research labs through to market. This goes beyond being multidisciplinary, but is a transdisciplinary training, reflecting the translation steps from understanding market driven needs, planning and conducting appropriate basic and applied research to products/solutions/system development through to successful market penetration. This is delivered by a cohort training approach through the cross fertilisation of ideas of a cohort with a diverse background, peer-demonstration of the value of research across a diverse range of stakeholder-led projects, thus facilitating a peer-to-peer transdisciplinary learning culture. The SusHy Consortium, led by Gavin Walker, continues a long running and highly successful collaboration in hydrogen research between the Universities of Nottingham, Loughborough, and Birmingham (UoN, LU, UoB) which started over a decade ago with the Midlands Energy Consortium. The Midlands Energy Graduate School spawned two successful CDTs (Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and their Applications and the current Fuel Cells and their Fuels). The current proposal for a CDT in Sustainable Hydrogen brings together the world leading expertise in hydrogen generation, purification, sensors/monitoring, and storage, along with whole systems issues (resilience engineering, business economic models and life cycle analysis) which exist across the three Universities. A gap in the consortium expertise is in the research field of hydrogen safety and we identified the internationally-renowned Hydrogen Safety Engineering and Research Centre (HySAFER) at Ulster University (UU) as the right partner to deliver on this key aspect. This is the first broad collaboration in the world seeking to investigate, train researchers and produce leaders in Sustainable Hydrogen. Stakeholder Partnerships. A key strength of this CDT is the active involvement of the Stakeholders in co-creation of the training programme which is reciprocated in the value with which the Stakeholders view of the CDT. This shared vision of a training partnership between the Universities and Stakeholders will lead to the smooth function of the CDT with not just a high-quality training programme, but a programme that is tailored to the sector needs for high-quality, industry-ready doctoral Energy Innovation Leaders. The valued CDT-stakeholder partnership will also be a significant appeal to candidates interested in energy-related PhDs and will be used to help market the CDT programme to a diverse talent pool.

Some 5 million people live in flood risk areas in England and Wales, with one in six homes at risk of flooding. In India, similar risks are present: over 40 million hectares (12% of India's land mass) are prone to flooding and river erosion. In this century, the economic losses resulting from damage caused by flooding far outweigh the costs associated with other natural disasters ($21bn in losses from 27 instances in the UK, and $39bn in losses from 128 instances in India). Furthermore, both the frequency and intensity of pluvial and fluvial flooding is expected to increase over time due to climate change - increasing flood risk, financial loss and (human) fatalities. The UK has well-developed emergency planning processes and procedures, and yet there have been a number of recent cases of flooding where the emergency evacuation process has been stretched to its limits and beyond (e.g. Cockermouth and Carlisle). Earlier this year, the Indian Parliament put forward a national action plan under the Disaster Management Act with the aim of substantially decreasing the loss of life, livelihoods and assets, by improving the country's response to disasters. The plan highlights the urgent need for improved (predictive) warning, risk and threat identification and policy assessment, evacuation planning, data collection, information dissemination, cooperation and effective management of the relief operation. At the heart of the management of these issues is developing a good knowledge of the underlying communities and their infrastructure and the state of these endangered systems at critical times, particularly during the onset and development of the flooding event. The deployment and management of unmanned aerial systems (either vertical take-off and landing quad-rotors or small fixed wing aircraft) and of their data product coupled with advanced model prediction capabilities would seem to be a challenging but promising way of supporting emergency planning and management and testing the predicted and actual effects of policy decisions. The project focuses on using instrumented unmanned aerial systems (UASs) to collect and collate pertinent information about an unfolding flooding disaster. The relative ease with which UASs can be deployed (often hand launched) to assess damage across large areas provides emergency responders with the opportunity to assess the situation quickly, allowing the prioritisation of resources and their effective deployment where they are required. One aspect of the research will focus on addressing the challenges associated with flying UASs in such (non-ideal) situations: for example maintaining performance during adverse weather conditions, during intermittent loss of communication with the base station, overcoming the loss of operator visuals, providing the ability to recover the vehicle without a runway and avoiding potential collisions with unexpected obstacles within the flight domain. The project will also consider how the data can be combined with accelerated flood inundation models to generate detailed evacuation plans, and to predict the nature and progress of the flooding to improve allocation of emergency resources, build community flood resilience, save lives and reduce economic damage. The strategy will take into account both the physicality of the flood event itself and the social structures which are subject to the flooding. The concepts will be practically realised by the creation of a prototype decision support system to allow on-the-ground decision makers in the UK and India emergency coordination teams, or government agencies, to better understand the consequences of flooding to help them make timely and better informed decisions. We will also focus on engaging users and building capacity in India and the UK to integrate the use of UASs effectively into current flood response frameworks in a structured way to maximise the benefits they can provide.

The water sector in the UK has, by many measures, been very successful. In England and Wales, drinking water standards stands at over 99.9%, water pipe leakage is down by a third, sewer flooding reduced by more three quarters in the last 10 years and bathing water standards are at record high levels. This success has been achieved using a 19th century design approach based on the idea of plentiful resources, unrestrained demand and a stable climate. However, a perfect storm of climate change, increasing population, urbanisation, demographic shifts and tighter regulation is brewing! Each one of these challenges is a threat to the water sector and, taken in isolation, existing approaches may be able to cope. Taken together and compounded by the speed, size and uncertainty of change, the system is heading for failure unless something radical is done. The current way of working looks increasingly out of date and out of step with emerging thinking and best practice in some leading nations. This fellowship aims to meet these emerging challenges and global uncertainties head on by developing a new approach to water management in UK cities. The starting point is a new vision that is: Safe & SuRe. In a sense, our existing water systems are all about safety goals: public health, flood management and environmental protection. These are important and still need to be respected, but they are NOT sufficient to rise to the coming challenges. In the new world of rapid and uncertain change, water systems in cities must also be Sustainable and Resilient. Only a 'Safe & SuRe' system can be moulded, adapted and changed to face the emerging threats and resulting impacts. In this fellowship. my vision will be developed, tested and championed into practice over a period of 5 years. It will draw from multi-disciplinary collaboration with leading academics inside and outside the field. A comprehensive, quantitative evaluation framework will be developed to test in detail what options or strategies can contribute towards a Safe & SuRe water future, focussing on the challenges of water scarcity, urban flooding and river pollution. Recommendations and best practice guidance will be developed in conjunction with key stakeholders.

BackgroundDuring three multi-segment visits to India, Professor Gerard Parr will visit Institutes of Technology in Madras-Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore, Bombay and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. The purpose of the visits are three-fold in order to:-.(i) develop parallel research proposals on NGN Management to the Indian Department of Science & Technology and EPSRC with Professors Timothy Gonsalves and Mani Subramanian (IIT Madras).(ii) develop plans for future collaborations on architectures and protocols for resource-constrained SLA-convergence in NGNs, taking into account e2e requirements across the fixed-wireless boundaries. This will be between Professor Kumar (IISc Bangalore), Prof Asoke Talukder (IIIT Bangalore) and Professor U.B. Desai (IIT Bombay) and Professor Surendra Prasad (IIT Delhi). (iii) build upon previous and existing collaborations between UK and India to assist in the investigation and development a unique consortium-based research and technology-transfer Centre of Excellence in NGNs/ICT.Leading on from (iii), as a result of an excellent workshop event in Madras, the challenge now is to maintain the momentum with all the interested academics and industrial players who participated in the discussions and technical presentations and to develop an agreed programme of work that will represent the interest of the UK and Indian consortium that was established. The intention is that the programme will help identify and develop priority research areas and seek out relevant funding mechanisms to actively encourage leading researchers and companies to pursue innovative research and technology transfer. Such a research aganda will power the next generation of communications technology and usher in a new era of ICT research and technology transfer between Britain and India, the world's second fastest growing economy. This is very much in keeping with the recent 2006 Budget Statement from the UK government to ensure the UK can maintain its goal as a competitive centre for global investment in technology-led sectors .Context for ProposalPreviously, the Technical Workshop (as evidenced in the appendices) was developed, planned and organised by Professor Parr on behalf of the EPSRC/British High Commission in India in response to a desire to further academic research and technology transfer collaboration between the UK and India. The proposal was based on previous meetings and discussions organised during British High Commission (Delhi) UK-India ICT visits (8th-14th January 2005) and subsequently. These visits included top research Institutes of Technology (Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai) and key companies in the ICT sector within India, including Wipro, InfoSys and Sasken Communications. The background to these visits was to determine the level of interest and capability to develop a more in-depth UK-India collaborative effort in ICT, particularly concerning the fixed-wireless interface and its management. For the past twelve months under the invitation of EPSRC and the British High Commission in Delhi, Professor Parr has established a UK-India advisory group which has been formulating the development plan between the two nations. In the activity, Professor Parr has been designated the UK Consortium Academic Lead.

Investment in innovation and research in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is essential in order to foster social and economic inclusion, better public services, and improvements in the quality of life for citizens. The key purpose of our Network is to strengthen such investment in the area of Next Generation Telecommunications Networks in support of the Digital Economy. Such aspirations are pivotal for social inclusion and economic prosperity in both the UK and India. Within the UK, the situation is improving, but according to Ofcom's recent report on the Nations and Regions 2007, more work needs to be done to ensure that the benefits of the Digital Economy are accessible and affordable to all of its citizens. With a growing middle class that now numbers nearly 400 million people, India's electronics equipment consumption, estimated at $28.2 billion in 2005, is expected to reach $363 billion by 2015. Domestic production totalled $10.99 billion in 2005 and is projected at $155 billion in 2015, according to ISA estimates, thanks to such drivers as mobile phones, wireless equipment, set-tops and smart-card terminals. These developments, and the priorities of government to raise educational and business standards and address social and economic deprivation, are driving the pressure on the enabling communications and service providers to come up with cost-effective solutions that can be rolled out at scale in support of the digital economy in both countries.Within our proposed Network, we will address a number of themes that will contribute to the development and deployment of Next Generation Converged Networks. These themes build on the strengths of our Network Members and also provide the greatest opportunities for the consideration of Technology Demonstrators that will underpin the development of government policies and initiatives for both Rural and Urban Digital Economy programmes in both UK and India.For the past two years, under the invitation of EPSRC and the British High Commission in Delhi, Professor Parr has established a UK-India Advisory Group (see Letters of Support from British High Commission Personnel in India). This group has been formulating a development plan between the two nations, involving an agenda of activities within the context of Next Generation Networking; the purpose is to encourage the development of real and meaningful collaborations that will be internationally leading and economically relevant to both the UK and India. Overall, the intention is the establishment of a joint Indo-UK Virtual Centre of Excellence that will address the domain of Next Generation Networking for the benefit of both nations. The provision of core funding through this EPSRC INTERACT Programme is critical to the creation of our Network and to enable our plans to go forward on a sure footing for the future.