The world is changing fast. Rapid urbanisation, large scale population movements, increasing pressure from climate change, natural and man-made disasters create enormous pressures on local and national governments to provide housing, water, sanitation, solid waste (rubbish) management and other critical services. In the UK there is also an ongoing challenge associated with aging infrastructure (many sewers for example are more than 100 years old) and at the same time, calls for new investment in housing, the construction of new towns, and an urgent need to reduce reliance on expensive fossil fuels, reduce pollution and increase the recovery of valuable resources. As economic conditions improve, people naturally demand better services; twenty-four hour water piped direct to the house and convenient safe private toilets have replaced public stand pipes and public toilets as the aspiration of many families in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Latin America (the "global south"). All of this creates both a challenge and an opportunity. In coming decades there will be a huge demand for new infrastructure investments in the global south; more than 4.4 billion people worldwide do not have a sanitation system that effectively collects and treats all the waste produced by families, while 2.4 billion people urgently need new water supply services. The UK engineering industry is poised to play a significant role in meeting both this global demand and the need for new innovations at home. But therein lies the challenge; the new generation of services and infrastructure must, by very definition, be essentially different in nature from what has been traditionally provided. In an era of increasing uncertainty from, for example, the changing climate, the traditional approach to the design of piped water supplies and sewerage networks would result in such a major over design that the investment costs alone would be prohibitive. Similarly, it is no longer acceptable to just keep adding additional treatment processes on to waste water treatment systems to meet increasingly challenging conditions and higher discharge standards, nor is it acceptable to continue to pump valuable nutrients and carbon into our rivers and streams; new approaches are needed, which recover the nutrient and energy value of human and solid waste streams, in fact turning away from the idea of waste altogether and moving towards the idea of resource management and the so-called circular economy. What is needed to meet this demand is a new generation of research engineers and scientists trained not only in the fundamentals of 'what is known' but in the more challenging area of 'what can be re-imagined'. The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Water and Waste Infrastructure Services Engineered for Resilience (Water-WISER) will train five cohorts of researchers with the new skills needed to meet these enormous challenges. Students in the Centre will have the opportunity to study at one of three globally-leading Universities working on resilient infrastructure and development. They will take a one year Masters course and then move on to carry out tailored research, in partnership with engineering consultancy firms, universities or development agencies such as the World Bank, UNICEF or WaterAid; studying how to deliver innovative, effective and resilient infrastructure and services in rapidly growing poor cities. Water-WISER graduates will combine a solid training in the fundamental engineering and science of water and sanitation, solid waste management, water resources and drainage, with much broader training and development which will build the skills needed to collaborate with non-engineers and non-scientists, to work with sociologists and political scientists, city planners, digital designers, business development specialists and administrators, health specialists, professionals working in international development and finance.

The Hub will reduce disaster risk for the poor in tomorrow's cities. The failure to integrate disaster risk resilience into urban planning and decision-making is a persistent intractable challenge that condemns hundreds of millions of the World's poor to continued cyclical destruction of their lives and livelihoods. It presents a major barrier to the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals in expanding urban systems. Science and technology can help, but only against complex multi-hazard context of urban life and the social and cultural background to decision-making in developing countries. Science-informed urbanisation, co-produced and properly integrated with decision support for city authorities, offers the possibility of risk-sensitive development for millions of the global poor. This is a major opportunity - some 60% of the area expected to be urban by 2030 is yet to be built. Our aim is to catalyse a transition from crisis management to risk-informed planning in four partner cities and globally through collaborating International governance organisations. The Hub, co-designed with local and international stakeholders from the start, will deliver this agenda through integrated research across four urban systems - Istanbul, Kathmandu, Nairobi and Quito - chosen for their multi-hazard exposure, and variety of urban form, development status and governance. Trusted core partnerships from previous Global Challenge Research Fund, Newton Fund and UK Research Council projects provide solid foundations on which city based research projects have been built around identified, existing, policy interventions to provide research solutions to specific current development problems. We have developed innovative, strategic research and impact funds and capable management processes constantly to monitor progress and to reinforce successful research directions and impact pathways. In each urban system, the Hub will reduce risk for 1-4 million people by (1) Co-producing forensic examinations of risk root causes, drivers of vulnerability and trend analysis of decision-making culture for key, historic multi-hazard events. (2) Combining quantitative, multi-hazard intensity, exposure and vulnerability analysis using advances in earth observation, citizen science, low cost sensors and high-resolution surveys with institutional and power analysis to allow multi-hazard risk assessment to interface with urban planning culture and engineering. (3) Convene diverse stakeholder groups-communities, schools, municipalities private enterprise, national agencies- around new understanding of multi-hazard urban disaster risk stimulating engagement and innovation in making risk-sensitive development choices to help meet the SDGs and Sendai Framework. Impact will occur both within and beyond the life of the Hub and will raise the visibility of cities in global risk analysis and policy making. City Partnerships, integrating city authorities, researchers, community leaders and the private sector, will develop and own initiatives including high-resolution validated models of multi-hazard risk to reflect individual experience and inform urban development planning, tools and methods for monitoring, evaluation and audit of disaster risk, and recommendations for planning policy to mitigate risks in future development. City partnerships will collaborate with national and regional city networks, policy champions and UN agencies using research outputs to structure city and community plans responding to the Sendai Framework and targeted SDG indicators, and build methods and capacity for reporting and wider critique of the SDG and Sendai reporting process. Legacy will be enabled through the ownership of risk assessment and resilience building tools by city and international partners who will identify need, own, modify and deploy tools beyond the life of the Hub.

Africa is rapidly urbanising and with this growth has come a proliferation of informal settlements. Residents of informal settlements often have limited access to services, insecure tenure and high exposure to shocks and stresses such as flooding and disease. Several global and national frameworks have indicated that a key tenet of sustainable urban growth is building 'resilience'. Yet, resilience can mean different things to different decision makers - an engineer might measure it as the number of alternative cables in the electricity network if one breaks; a psychologist might describe resilience as a person's ability to adapt to adversity. Indeed, resilience often does not have a direct translation in many languages. Those involved in making cities more resilient to natural hazards (e.g., floods) such as engineers and planners tend to have highly technical training. Within these groups, traditionally there is a tendency to quantify resilience in terms of what can easily be placed on the map - such as housing, infrastructure and critical facilities. This can result in some tunnel vision about what types of projects should be taken forward when local experience and perceptions are not taken into account. In spite of these challenges there is a genuine desire in our study city of Nairobi (Kenya) to include the voices of residents in decision making. However, it is not always clear how this more qualitative, experiential information on resilience (e.g., narratives) can be incorporated to existing ways of working by city actors, nor is there necessarily the capacity to undertake major new ways of working. The Expressive Mapping of Resilience (E-MoRF) project aims to mainstream innovative, low-cost ways of representing these community voices on the map, coupled with simple ways for decision makers to incorporate this data into their existing systems to result in more inclusive planning for resilience. The work here builds upon a previous NERC funded project 'Why we Disagree about Resilience' (WhyDAR) that was delivered with Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) in Nairobi (who we work with in E-MoRF). In WhyDAR, artists and residents of informal settlements worked together in a collaborative environment to define a broad range of ways that people cope with flooding, and the threats to their resilience. Using themes that came out of the workshop, coupled with data collected in the settlement using smartphones, we generated immersive maps combining 360 deg photos, audio and text to communicate a broader perspective of what resilience meant to the community. These prototype maps were made publicly available online using free software. We showed these prototype maps to decision makers such as urban planners, consultants and NGOs who stated that these maps are an engaging way to better understand what planning interventions might support the community, and commented that the data layers could be incorporated into their existing mapping software. At present these maps are static and there is no method in place to continually update them to make them regularly useable. In the E-MoRF project, we will move from prototype to operational maps through: A. Creating and distributing training resources for community groups to identify key components of resilience specific to them and then generate expressive map data to visualise this B. Creating an open, online platform where this map data can be uploaded, viewed and distributed to a range of decision makers C. Creating and distributing training resources for decision makers to help understand these new types of map and how they can be incorporated in their daily work D. Throughout the project, having a continuous cycle of feedback from community groups and decision makers to ensure the maps are useful, useable and used E. Exploring how the process affects decision making with regards to resilience F. Disseminating resources to encourage uptake of the approach in additional cities

This research project is concerned with humanity's potential to achieve low carbon, socially just cities. It focuses on rapidly urbanising areas in the global south, where climate change vulnerabilities and access to energy are pressing issues. The contention in this proposal is that achieving low carbon, socially just cities will require a spatial, socio-economic and political transformation. This transformation will depend on our ability to find low carbon development pathways for urban energy systems. Changes in energy systems and urbanisation processes are mutually dependent. Thus, devising sustainable development pathways towards low carbon and socially just cities will require new methods to analyse the shared history and geography of energy systems and cities. Sociotechnical perspectives focus on the heterogeneous nature of energy systems, including both social components (such as energy use norms and behaviour, economic activities, and government regulations) and technical components (such as generation technologies, distribution networks and home appliances). These perspectives have already advanced our understanding of sustainable development pathways identifying structural factors which prevent the rapid transition towards sustainable energy systems and devising institutional processes to catalyse transitions. These theories, however, have not fully engaged with the spatial, historical and political aspects of those transitions. Moreover, few of these studies have linked the operation of energy systems with their impacts on the everyday life of people in cities in the global South. In this project, I join sociotechnical theories of energy and theories which look at the distribution and histories of energy and everyday life in cities in a new concept called Urban Energy Landscapes (UELs). UELs also draw attention to the equity issues raised by the production, transmission and consumption of energy in cities in the global South, in particular, to the unequal distribution of access to energy services and environmental burdens within those UELs. The contention of this project is that focusing on UELs will help to identify barriers and opportunities for sustainable development pathways towards low carbon, socially just cities. The proposal has a strong methodological component because it is concerned with the lack of methodologies to understand UELs. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) handle large amounts of data in databases where location is explicitly included as part of the data. They enable the identification of urban land use features and spatial changes. However, they can also hide important information regarding the complex interactions of social and technical elements in UELs and the political aspects of urban and energy development. This project will develop a new methodology which will combine critical applications of GIS and qualitative research methods. The methodology will be tested in four cities: Maputo (Mozambique), Lima (Peru), Bangalore (India), and Nanchang (China). A comparative analysis of the cases will help identifying barriers and opportunities for achieving low carbon cities. The project will build on collaborations with and mentorship from world-leading experts in energy and cities. Yet, with this project, I will develop a new conceptual framework and methodology connecting previously separated strands of research. The research will contribute evidence for policy-making on energy and development and practical tools for urban development planning that will be disseminated through partnerships with international organisations, charities and businesses working to increase energy access and improving the sustainability of energy in cities. Overall, the project will seek to make a difference in understanding how energy is produced, transmitted and consumed in cities in the global south, by identifying opportunities for a low carbon, socially-just future.

A reliable and acceptable quantity and quality of water, and managing water-related risks for all is considered by the United Nations to be "the critical determinant of success in achieving most other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)". Water is essential for human life, but also necessary for food and energy security, health and well-being, and prosperous economies. However, some 80% of the world's population live in areas with threats to water security; the impacts of which cost $500bn a year. Progress in meeting SDG6 (Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all), has been slow and in May 2018 the United Nations reported that "The world is not on track to achieve SDG6". Improvements that increase access to water or sanitation are undone by pollution, extreme weather, urbanization, over-abstraction of groundwater, land degradation etc. This is caused by significant barriers that include: (1) Insufficient data to understand social, cultural, environmental, hydrological processes; (2) Existing service delivery / business models are not fit for purpose - costs are too high, and poor understanding of local priorities leads to inappropriate investments; (3) Water governance is fragmented and communities are engage with, and take responsibility for, water security; (4) Pathways to water security are not adaptable and appropriate to local context and values. These barriers are inherently systemic, and will require a significant international and interdisciplinary endeavour. The GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub brings together leading researchers from Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Malaysia and the UK. Each international partner will host a Water Collaboratory (collaboration laboratories) which will provide a participatory process, open to all stakeholders, to jointly question, discuss, and construct new ideas to resolve water security issues. Through developing and demonstrating a systems and capacity building approach to better understand water systems; value all aspects of water; and strengthen water governance we will unlock systemic barriers to achieving water security in practice.