Conventional composites such as carbon fibre reinforced plastics have outstanding mechanical properties: high strength and stiffness, low weight, and low susceptibility to fatigue and corrosion. Composites are truly the materials of the future, their properties can be tailored to particular applications and capabilities for sensing, changing shape or self healing can also be included. Their use is rising exponentially, continuing to replace or augment traditional materials. A key example is the construction of new large aircraft, such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, mainly from carbon fibre composites. At the same time, there is rapid expansion of composite use in applications such as wind turbine blades, sporting goods and civil engineering infrastructure.Despite this progress, a fundamental and as yet unresolved limitation of current composites is their inherent brittleness. Failure is usually sudden and catastrophic, with little or no warning or capacity to carry load afterwards. A related problem is their susceptibility to impact damage, which can drastically reduce the strength, without any visible warning. Structures that look fine can fail suddenly at loads much lower than expected. As a result complex maintenance procedures are required and a significantly greater safety margin than for other materials. Our vision is to create a paradigm shift by realising a new generation of high performance composites that overcome the key limitation of conventional composites: their inherent lack of ductility. We will design, manufacture and evaluate a range of composite systems with the ability to fail gradually, undergoing large deformations whilst still carrying load. Energy will be absorbed by ductile or pseudo-ductile response, analogous to yielding in metals, with strength and stiffness maintained, and clear evidence of damage. This will eliminate the need for very low design strains to cater for barely visible impact damage, providing a step change in composite performance, as well as overcoming the intrinsic brittleness that is a major barrier to their wider adoption. These materials will provide greater reliability and safety, together with reduced design and maintenance requirements, and longer service life. True ductility will allow new manufacturing methods, such as press forming, that offer high volumes and greater flexibility.To achieve such an ambitious outcome will require a concerted effort to develop new composite constituents and exploit novel architectures. The programme will scope, prioritise, develop, and combine these approaches, to achieve High Performance Ductile Composite Technology (HiPerDuCT).

Availability of knowledge of the processes, dynamics, landforms and materials of the physical landscape is vital for sustainable environmental management and for development projects, risk reduction, resource use, and future planning under scenarios of climate change. It is essential for ecological conservation and biodiversity strategies and for conservation of our landscape heritage in Britain and Northern Ireland (NI). This proposal is for the foundation stage of an ambitious project to establish an interactive website which will make existing research knowledge of the physical landscape of Britain readily accessible to end-users. It will see the development of the "Physical Landscape of Britain" website (landscapebritain.org.uk), targeted at professional end-users, which include engineering consulting companies, government agencies concerned with environmental management and conservation, and major landowners and landscape managers. The major end-user partners involved in this proposal, representative of these spheres, are: Mouchel and Halcrow companies; Natural England, The Environment Agency; and The National Trust. Geomorphology is the science that analyses how physical processes, act on the Earth's surface to create landforms and landscapes. This project is promoted by the British Society for Geomorphology (BSG) on behalf of the geomorphological research community in Britain. Much research output is not readily available to potential end-users and there is a lack of awareness of potential benefits of this knowledge. This project is designed to overcome those deficiencies. The foundation phase will build on a pilot study to develop a spatial database of information, create a digital bibliography and produce an interactive website that provides lists and a digest of existing relevant published data. This database will be searchable both textually and spatially through a web map interface. This application is for funding to enable the crucial stage of design of the website interface and database to be completed, for a usable website to be populated with information for selected major parts of Britain, and for the facility to be made available to all potential end-users. End-user partners will provide guidance on what kind of information they require, how they use the information and what are the existing gaps in knowledge and thus help to design a valuable resource, and also eventually to set the future research agenda relevant to society's needs. The project will have feedback to the academic community in increasing their awareness of the key issues and challenges being faced by end-users in environmental management and thus for academics to see how their research could help. This project will provide essential evidence for evidence-based Government policy-making and will increase effectiveness of public services and design of appropriate policy and practices by enhancing availability of knowledge of landscape processes and materials, of past changes and environmental change impacts, and occurrence of hazards as inputs to sustainable environmental management and conservation. Economic benefits will arise from reducing desk study costs and increasing awareness of geomorphological and ground conditions affecting development, as well as more effective planning of infrastructure in relation to natural hazards and likely future environmental changes. Ecological conservation requires geodiversity and the maintenance of the physical habits so geomorphology is an essential component of ecological management. The landscape heritage and enjoyment of landscape are important for a high quality of life and health so knowledge of process and evolution of landscape are fundamental to aiding interpretation and fulfilling those needs. This project aims to provide access to information, data and knowledge on the geomorphology of the British landscape to professional end-users to enable them to deliver these benefits.