SummaryThe focus of this collaboration is to link research groups who undertake full-scale monitoring of slopes through a range of people-based activities. These include: visits of UK researchers and academics to a number of field sites both in the UK and overseas; exchanges of young researchers between UK and overseas academic institutions; secondments of researchers to industry; a dissemination workshop and the establishment of a web portal for the storage and exchange of data and for the running of on-line meetings and seminars. Despite its main focus, the collaboration will necessarily provide links between members of the extended research teams with expertise in numerical simulation, constitutive modelling, soils testing and instrumentation. It is the intention that these activities will also be linked within the wider collaborative framework created by this funding.

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.

The focus of this collaboration is to link research groups who undertake full-scale monitoring of slopes through a range of people-based activities. These include: visits of UK researchers and academics to a number of field sites both in the UK and overseas; exchanges of young researchers between UK and overseas academic institutions; secondments of researchers to industry; a dissemination workshop and the establishment of a web portal for the storage and exchange of data and for the running of on-line meetings and seminars. Despite its main focus, the collaboration will necessarily provide links between members of the extended research teams with expertise in numerical simulation, constitutive modelling, soils testing and instrumentation. It is the intention that these activities will also be linked within the wider collaborative framework created by this funding.

The focus of this collaboration is to link research groups who undertake full-scale monitoring of slopes through a range of people-based activities. These include: visits of UK researchers and academics to a number of field sites both in the UK and overseas; exchanges of young researchers between UK and overseas academic institutions; secondments of researchers to industry; a dissemination workshop and the establishment of a web portal for the storage and exchange of data and for the running of on-line meetings and seminars. Despite its main focus, the collaboration will necessarily provide links between members of the extended research teams with expertise in numerical simulation, constitutive modelling, soils testing and instrumentation. It is the intention that these activities will also be linked within the wider collaborative framework created by this funding.

The three stakeholders in this project, Transport Northern Ireland (TNI), Northern Ireland Rail (NIR) and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) all have one common need which this project addresses. They are required to monitor ground deformations across their geotechnical assets (e.g. embankments, cuttings and earth retaining structures) using the most efficient, cost effective methods, with a view to minimising and managing the geotechnical risk to their businesses and the road/rail users. The objective of the work therefore is to apply the methodologies that the British Geological Survey (BGS) have already developed through past research projects of assessing the deformation of geotechnical infrastructure, such as slope movement or ground subsidence, using Satellite Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). The project will validate this methodology through ground truthing, using geotechnical monitoring and high resolution photogrammetry developed by Queen's University Belfast (QUB). Through this project, the stakeholders will be able to monitor ground deformations in a more cost effective, efficient, more thorough and more robust way, and embed the use of this methodology across their organisations making a step change on how they approach assessment and manage the resilience of their geotechnical infrastructure. TNI anticipate that the use of InSAR data will help form their strategies for monitoring their geotechnical assets and will feed into the existing GIS based risk assessment methods for their infrastructure assets. The site at Straidkilly is only one of many sections along the A2 coast road that is unstable and it is hoped that InSAR will give a much greater insight into the behaviour of a variety of geohazards that impact on the road and will inform their maintenance strategies and lead to more cost effective better targeted maintenance. TNI also are committed to having a better understanding of the mechanisms of failure on the slow moving failures on the Throne Bend in Belfast. The InSAR data will allow a much better correlation between slope movement and rainfall intensity and duration to be undertaken. InSAR data will also allow better mapping of the extent and magnitude of the instability. NIR also hope to be able to correlate the slope instability against rainfall data on the Belfast-Bangor rail line. DETI anticipate that the project will validate new methods of monitoring and provide baseline data of ground motion to form the basis of future strategic decisions in regards to geohazards. The use of InSAR at sites in Carrickfergus will potentially provide greater knowledge of extent of subsidence boundaries and provide indicators to potential catastrophic collapse by analysing SAR data against periods of known rapid collapse of ground.