We will develop a data science of the natural environment, deploying modern machine learning and statistical techniques to enable better-informed decision-making as our climate changes. While an explosion in data science research has fuelled enormous advances in areas as diverse as eCommerce and marketing, smart cities, logistics and transport, health and wellbeing, these tools have yet to be fully deployed in one of the most pressing problems facing humanity, that of mitigating and adapting to climate change. This project brings together world-leading statisticians, computer scientists and environmental scientists alongside an extensive array of key public and private stakeholder organisations to effect a step change in data culture in the environmental sciences. The project will develop a new approach to data science of the natural environment driven by three representative grand challenges of environmental science: predicting ice sheet melt, modelling and mitigating poor air quality, and managing land use for maximal societal benefit. In each motivational challenge, there is already an extensive scientific expertise, with intricate models of processes at multiple scales. However this sophisticated modelling of system components is usually let down by naive integration of these components together, and inadequate calibration to observed data. The consequence is poor predictions with a high level of uncertainty and hence poorly-informed policy making. As new forms of environmental data become available, and the pressures on our natural environment from climate change increase, this gap is becoming a pressing concern, and we bring an impressive team to bear on the problem. A key theme of the project is integration, developing a suite of novel data science tools which work together in a modular fashion, and with existing scientifically-informed process models. By building a team that spans the inter-disciplinary divisions between data and environmental scientists we can ensure the necessary interoperability of methods that is currently lacking. Working with the full range of stakeholder environmental organisations will enable continual co-design of the programme and training of end-user scientists to ensure a reduction of the skills gap in this area. The resultant culture shift in the data literacy of the environmental sciences will enable better decision-making as climate change places ever greater strains on our society.

Peatlands store more carbon than any other terrestrial ecosystem, both in the UK and globally. As a result of human disturbance they are rapidly losing this carbon to the atmosphere, contributing significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. We propose to turn this problem into a solution, by re-establishing and augmenting the unique natural capacity of peatlands to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and to store it securely for millennia. We will do this by working with natural processes to recreate, and where possible enhance, the environmental conditions that lead to peat formation, in both lowland and upland Britain. At the same time, we will optimise conditions to avoid emissions of methane and nitrous oxide that could offset the benefits of CO2 removal; develop innovative cropping and management systems to augment rates of CO2 uptake; evaluate whether we can further increase peat carbon accumulation through the formation and addition of biomass and biochar; and develop new economic models to support greenhouse gas removal by peatlands as part of profitable and sustainable farming and land management systems. Implementation of these new approaches to the 2.3 million hectares of degraded upland and lowland peat in the UK has the potential to remove significant quantities of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, to secure carbon securely and permanently within a productive, biodiverse and self-sustaining ecosystem, and thereby to help the UK to achieve its ambition of having net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Green infrastructure (GI) river engineering approaches are fundamental to improving the quality, morphology and ecology of our waterbodies; and as part of an overall strategy to help people and communities adapt to the negative effects of climate change. There is also a strong legislative framework which drives the need to protect and enhance the environment. GI solutions include green engineering measures and greening grey river engineering assets with equivalent or increased benefits compared to conventional "grey" infrastructure. They can become self-regenerating and represent a long-term solution that also promotes bio-diversity. There are however, procedural and technical barriers which prevent and obstruct the implementation of green solutions as part of river engineering protection schemes. They are perceived as having a higher risk of failure than grey (or hard) engineering solutions, are insufficiently supported by design and maintenance guidance and procedures or by evidence-based approaches. The objective of the project is to support asset managers, engineers, decision-makers, and other end-users to identify and select green engineering options for river engineering protection in the fluvial environment. The project will develop a decision support framework for selection and application of green infrastructure approaches to fluvial flood defence and erosion risk management interventions in rivers. The proposed work will draw together the existing academic knowledge on green infrastructure measures for flood risk and erosion protection schemes and be complemented with a range of case studies that support their practical application. This will underpin the decision support tool that will be developed. It will answer the questions: what techniques work in different channel typologies and what are their benefits and limitations. The project will pull out the new available and relevant research and experience and knowledge and make it more widely available to practitioners helping them to select green and green-grey solutions using similar type of criteria than when exploring grey solutions. This will help to overcome some of the barriers of prejudice and ignorance and enable the implementation of GI concepts. The uptake of GI approaches will strengthen the functionality of fluvial ecosystems by greening the new and existing river protection and management infrastructure and will assist in compliance with the environmental aspects of the Floods Directive and the Water Framework Directive.

Detrimental effects of air pollution on child health include altered function of the lungs, brain and heart and can begin during fetal development. Therefore, pregnant women have a unique position in efforts to understand and lessen the adverse effects of air pollution. Past years have seen a focus on outdoor pollution from traffic and industry but recently attention has moved to the effects of indoor air pollution. Most people spend more than 90% of their time indoors where they are exposed to pollutants from things like frying foods, wood burning stoves and to the chemicals in clothing, furniture and cleaning products. Outdoor air pollutants also accumulate in the home especially in the colder months; exposure to indoor air pollutants also occurs at work, in school and other places we visit. The little information we have about the effects of indoor air pollution exposures during pregnancy suggests that they have negative effects on the developing baby affecting birth weight and lung function; other effects have not been studied. Our studies are designed to determine how air pollution exposures of pregnant women pass to the baby to affect organ development and poor health in childhood. By sharing our findings with local and national government, business, charities and the public we will provide them with the evidence to make changes to policy and practice that will eventually reduce the ill-effects of pregnancy air pollution exposures on child health. We will study the effects of airborne materials on different biological samples collected from pregnant women at different trimesters, not pregnant women and men. These samples will include nasal samples as a source from the airways that is safe to use in pregnancy, peripheral and umbilical cord blood, placenta and sperm and we will develop a human lung model. Samples will be exposed to PM2.5, components of house dust and volatile organic compounds, such as the chemicals found in cleaning products, alone and in combination including with other airborne materials such as pollen and viruses. This will enable us to track the passage and propagation of the response to airborne materials from the maternal airways, through the circulation to the placenta and fetus. We will measure changes in gene, protein and metabolite expression to determine if the toxicological response made differs in pregnant women. To elucidate the link between these toxicological responses and fetal organ development we will study animal models in parallel to determine what effects the maternal exposures are having. We will also study pregnant women in the community to gather data about their indoor environment. This will be linked to already gathered data about the outdoor environment and to other data collected routinely about all of us such as health data to help us understand how pregnant women change their use of indoor and outdoor environments over pregnancy and what this means for birth outcomes and later health of the child. We will collect biological samples such as nasal fluid, blood, urine and placenta from women in this cohort to see if these tissues from women with natural exposures share changes in gene, protein and metabolite expression with our laboratory models. Overall, this approach will reveal pregnancy-specific toxicological responses to airborne materials that can affect the developing offspring. All participants will be from diverse backgrounds, geographical areas and socioeconomic circumstances incorporating the lowest to highest potential exposures within the UK ensuring broad applicability of our findings and revealing the effects of health inequalities. Our activities will be supported by citizen science and vigorous management structures to ensure cohesive UK-wide consortium activities. The unique insights garnered will shape guidelines and policy and provide a step change in the implementation of behaviours and interventions to truly engender long-term health benefits for children.

Climate change is a social justice issue. It cannot be addressed without revealing and tackling the inequalities within society and where they are happening. Only when we know what is happening in detail, and where, can we make strategic, holistic decisions to benefit people and the planet in the long term. This is why the focus of this pragmatic project is on building a Community Open Map Platform (COMP) to help Local Authorities and their communities picture what is happening in a place as a basis for informed decision making and local action on climate change. The Isle of Anglesey/Ynys Môn in North Wales - the size of Greater London but with an ageing population of 70K - has been chosen as the pilot COMP because it is rural, disconnected and deprived of investment, and also because Anglesey County Council has high ambitions to reinvent itself as a centre of sustainable innovation. The need to include people in decision making about their future is at the heart of the Future Generations Wales (2015) Act (FGA), a ground breaking piece of legislation that is currently being emulated in a range of 'wellbeing economy governments' across the globe. The COMP has developed in response to Welsh Government's need to operationalise the FGA as well as the Isle of Anglesey County Council's need to align its activities and performance with the FGA. Anglesey's priority 'wellbeing objectives' are children and young people, zero net carbon and poverty, hence the focus of this short project on the experiences of children, young people and their families. The COMP will help Anglesey achieve and evidence its progress towards these priorities as part of the green transition through the development of a holistic value map that encompasses layers that demonstrate social, environmental and economic value, the 'triple bottom line of sustainability' and culture, a key pillar of the FGA, one that will be explored through the integration of arts and humanities practitioners (bards) into the mapping process. The project will tap into Anglesey's strong Welsh language storytelling tradition to support the the development of positive narratives that are a legacy for future generations. This will be achieved through 6 work packages (WP). WP1 Developing a Community Open Map Platform: we will use commercial digital design know how to create a bilingual, accessible and well designed data repository (website) that brings together the data layers constructed in WP2. WP2 Mapping the Evidence Landscape: constructing data layers with children, young people and their families: a)Social maps to show what contributes to quality of life in the area; b)Cultural maps made with the assistance of creative practitioners (bards); c)Environmental maps building on existing data, monitoring and observation; d)Census and administrative data maps. WP3 Future Generations Map: the data layers developed in WP2 will be spliced thematically, re-ordered and weighted, using digital technologies, to deliver a methodology for making an accessible digital Future Generations Map. WP4 Community Engagement: a) Inclusion - we will undertake experiments to explore how to make sure that the COMP website and the mapping exercises are as accessible as possible for a wide diversity of people; b) Face to face engagement - we will experiment with ways to make engagement fun & thought provoking; c) Digital engagement - we will explore ways to make our website & social media engaging as accessible as possible. WP5 Capturing impact: qualitative & quantitative methods will be used to gather and map the impact of the project. WP6 Developing the participatory digital mapping design ecosystem: we will promote awareness of the importance of participatory digital mapping while building capacity in this area across Wales and the UK more widely.