There is an urgent and increasing need to protect the UK’s natural and built environments. From a surge in population growth, and severe weather events such as extreme floods and droughts caused by climate change, the UK’s infrastructure resilience against these types of events must improve.
To help address the critical need to combat potential losses arising from the growing impacts of climate change and strengthen the UK’s natural and built environments, in April 2023, UKRI funded a £4m investment for the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to establish a national ‘Centre of Excellence for Resilient Infrastructure Analysis’. The virtual centre is an extension of the DAFNI platform (Data & Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure) and forms part of the UKRI ‘Building a Secure and Resilient World’ (BSRW) programme, a 5-year initiative which seeks to tap the research and innovation system to tackle large-scale, complex challenges.
The aim of this new Centre is to foster multi-disciplinary research and DAFNI, as the high performance platform, brings together research areas including engineering, data sciences, environmental science, health sciences and social sciences.
In August 2023, STFC Scientific Computing’s Centre of Excellence for Resilient Infrastructure Analysis announced an award of £1.4m across eight UK-based projects to boost infrastructure resilience against these types of events.
Using computational modelling on the DAFNI platform, these eight projects strive to strengthen the UK’s resilience against severe weather events and other complex challenges, reducing the risks of road closures, energy failures, sewer overflow flooding, and water shortages, as well as helping underground infrastructure such as water pipes and electrical cables to withstand extreme weather-related events.
For example, a project led by Dr Anna Murgatroyd of the University of Oxford is addressing the concerns around England’s water supply, as traditional water resource management is no longer sufficient to address such complex issues. Anna has now moved to University of Newcastle and is continuing the work there.
Another project, from University College London, has created a model that can be used by transport planners in the UK, allowing users to run “what-if” scenarios to predict the impact of infrastructure changes, such as the impact of the HS2 railway, on transport and land use.
The outputs from the Centre of Excellence will be instrumental in providing policymakers, local councils, and private companies with the essential analysis and scenario-planning vital to ensure the UK is resilient against potential future risks.
Dr Brian Matthews, DAFNI Facility Lead and leader of the Open Data Systems Group at the STFC Scientific Computing Department said,
“The successful projects explore a range of research challenges in infrastructure resilience that will provide the momentum to deliver the Centre of Excellence for Resilient Infrastructure Analysis on DAFNI. These are exciting projects which will deliver essential research models for informed decision making.”
The projects are all due to complete by spring 2025.
Kristine Zaidi, Associate Director for UKRI’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, and lead for the Building a Secure and Resilient World theme added,
“To build a more secure and resilient world, we must put people at the heart of our research. The eight projects will help communities of all sizes improve their ability to prevent and respond to threats from extreme weather occurrences. By working across disciplines and improving access to robust evidence and information, we can strengthen the UK’s resilience. I look forward to seeing the impact these projects will have on a wide range of sectors.”