Flooding is a threat to communities in both Malaysia and the UK. Computer modelling is a widely used approach to working out which areas are vulnerable to flooding. This allows government agencies, NGOs and communities to work out how to invest time and resources to protect areas at risk. Understanding of the causes of flooding has increased rapidly in recent years. We now have good data on environmental factors like rain and temperature which can influence where floods will happen. There are now good models of climate change. If we work out where flooding is going to happen, computer models can now be used to work out how flood waters will move around cities and which buildings will flood. One problem that still remains is to include the complexities of real life in these models. We currently assume that the same flood will always lead to the same consequences. This makes models quicker to run, but we know it's not how flooding works. If floods occur just before harvests they can destroy entire crops, but if they occur when fields are empty the costs can be very low. If one flood follows another in quick succession, facilities like hospitals and power stations could remain damaged from the first flood, meaning that the second one has much greater impact on people's lives. With research into how communities are affected by flooding, which takes into account the timing of floods as well as how closely associated they are in time, a genuinely new approach to flood risk could be developed. Malaysia is a very good place to develop these models. Its economy is developing quickly, so new approaches have the opportunity to be tested in a changing environment. Similarly, climate in Malaysia includes monsoons, which are a good test of model ability for environmental modellers. From a development perspective, Malaysia is a success story which is rapidly transitioning towards developed status, but still has large numbers of people at risk and in large areas, development can be set back by severe floods. Lastly, following severe floods in 2014, there is a renewed interest in developing innovative flood risk approaches in Malaysia. Our approach to developing a new flood model in Malaysia would make use of the different experts in our group. Bringing together experts from the UK and Malaysia, both of which have invested significantly in flood research in the last decade, would allow us to combine skills from experts with different specialities. Our economists will use economic modelling to understand how different sectors of the economy might change in future and how they might be exposed to flooding. Our group's environmental scientists will use existing computer models of rivers to show where river levels are likely to become high enough to generate flooding. Our flooding engineers will apply new hydraulics models to show how flood waters move once they have left the rivers. Experts in combining computer model outputs will combine each of these into a new model of flood risks. This new model will be used to find the effects of scenarios (factors we can't control such as climate change and increasing urbanisation) and strategies (factors we can control such as new flood defences and warning systems) which will help to evaluate some of these strategies for their effectiveness and value for money. This will allow future flood planning to be better targeted within Malaysia. We hope that Malaysia will act as a good case study for this research and that it would be taken up by other countries in South East Asia and around the world.

Flooding is a threat to communities in both Malaysia and the UK. Computer modelling is a widely used approach to working out which areas are vulnerable to flooding. This allows government agencies, NGOs and communities to work out how to invest time and resources to protect areas at risk. Understanding of the causes of flooding has increased rapidly in recent years. We now have good data on environmental factors like rain and temperature which can influence where floods will happen. There are now good models of climate change. If we work out where flooding is going to happen, computer models can now be used to work out how flood waters will move around cities and which buildings will flood. One problem that still remains is to include the complexities of real life in these models. We currently assume that the same flood will always lead to the same consequences. This makes models quicker to run, but we know it's not how flooding works. If floods occur just before harvests they can destroy entire crops, but if they occur when fields are empty the costs can be very low. If one flood follows another in quick succession, facilities like hospitals and power stations could remain damaged from the first flood, meaning that the second one has much greater impact on people's lives. With research into how communities are affected by flooding, which takes into account the timing of floods as well as how closely associated they are in time, a genuinely new approach to flood risk could be developed. Malaysia is a very good place to develop these models. Its economy is developing quickly, so new approaches have the opportunity to be tested in a changing environment. Similarly, climate in Malaysia includes monsoons, which are a good test of model ability for environmental modellers. From a development perspective, Malaysia is a success story which is rapidly transitioning towards developed status, but still has large numbers of people at risk and in large areas, development can be set back by severe floods. Lastly, following severe floods in 2014, there is a renewed interest in developing innovative flood risk approaches in Malaysia. Our approach to developing a new flood model in Malaysia would make use of the different experts in our group. Bringing together experts from the UK and Malaysia, both of which have invested significantly in flood research in the last decade, would allow us to combine skills from experts with different specialities. Our economists will use economic modelling to understand how different sectors of the economy might change in future and how they might be exposed to flooding. Our group's environmental scientists will use existing computer models of rivers to show where river levels are likely to become high enough to generate flooding. Our flooding engineers will apply new hydraulics models to show how flood waters move once they have left the rivers. Experts in combining computer model outputs will combine each of these into a new model of flood risks. This new model will be used to find the effects of scenarios (factors we can't control such as climate change and increasing urbanisation) and strategies (factors we can control such as new flood defences and warning systems) which will help to evaluate some of these strategies for their effectiveness and value for money. This will allow future flood planning to be better targeted within Malaysia. We hope that Malaysia will act as a good case study for this research and that it would be taken up by other countries in South East Asia and around the world.

The creative industries are crucial to UK social and cultural life and one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the economy. Games and media are key pillars for growth in the creative industries, with UK turnovers of £3.5bn and £12.9bn respectively. Research in digital creativity has started to be well supported by governmental funds. To achieve full impact from these investments, translational and audience-facing research activities are needed to turn ideas into commercial practice and societal good. We propose a "Digital Creativity" Hub for such next-step research, which will produce impact from a huge amount of research activity in direct collaboration with a large group of highly engaged stakeholders, delivering impact in the Digital Economy challenge areas of Sustainable Society, Communities and Culture and New Economic Models. York is the perfect location for the DC Hub, with a fast-growing Digital Creativity industry (which grew 18.4% from 2011 to 2012), and 4800 creative digital companies within a 40-mile radius of the city. The DC Hub will be housed in the Ron Cooke Hub, alongside the IGGI centre for doctoral training, world-class researchers, and numerous small hi-tech companies. The DC Hub brings: - A wealth of research outcomes from Digital Economy projects funded by £90m of grants, £40m of which was managed directly by the investigators named in the proposal. The majority of these projects are interdisciplinary collaborations which involved co-creation of research questions and approaches with creative industry partners, and all of them produced results which are ripe for translational impact. - Substantial cash and in-kind support amounting to pledges of £9m from 80 partner organisations. These include key organisations in the Digital Economy, such as the KTN, Creative England and the BBC, major companies such as BT, Sony and IBM, and a large number of SMEs working in games and interactive media. The host Universities have also pledged £3.3m in matched funding, with the University of York agreeing to hire four "transitional" research fellows on permanent contracts from the outset leading to academic positions as a Professor, a Reader and two Lecturers. - Strong overlap with current projects run by the investigators which have complementary goals. These include the NEMOG project to study new economic models and opportunities for games, the Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) centre for doctoral training, with 55+ PhDs, and the Falmouth ERA Chair project, which will contribute an extra 5 five-year research fellowships to the DC Hub, leveraging £2m of EC funding for translational research in digital games technologies. - A diverse and highly active base of 16 investigators and 4 named PDRAs across four universities, who have much experience of working together on funded research projects delivering high-impact results. The links between these investigators are many and varied, and interdisciplinarity is ensured by a group of investigators working across Computer Science, Theatre Film and TV, Electronics, Art, Audio Production, Sociology, Education, Psychology, and Business. - Huge potential for step-change impact in the creative industries, with particular emphasis on video game technologies, interactive media, and the convergence of games and media for science and society. Projects in these areas will be supported by and feed into basic research in underpinning themes of data analytics, business models, human-computer interaction and social science. The projects will range over impact themes comprising impact projects which will be specified throughout the life of the Hub in close collaboration with our industry partners, who will help shape the research, thus increasing the potential for major impact. - A management team, with substantial experience of working together on large projects for research and impact in collaboration with the digital creative industries.