A reliable and acceptable quantity and quality of water, and managing water-related risks for all is considered by the United Nations to be "the critical determinant of success in achieving most other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)". Water is essential for human life, but also necessary for food and energy security, health and well-being, and prosperous economies. However, some 80% of the world's population live in areas with threats to water security; the impacts of which cost $500bn a year. Progress in meeting SDG6 (Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all), has been slow and in May 2018 the United Nations reported that "The world is not on track to achieve SDG6". Improvements that increase access to water or sanitation are undone by pollution, extreme weather, urbanization, over-abstraction of groundwater, land degradation etc. This is caused by significant barriers that include: (1) Insufficient data to understand social, cultural, environmental, hydrological processes; (2) Existing service delivery / business models are not fit for purpose - costs are too high, and poor understanding of local priorities leads to inappropriate investments; (3) Water governance is fragmented and communities are engage with, and take responsibility for, water security; (4) Pathways to water security are not adaptable and appropriate to local context and values. These barriers are inherently systemic, and will require a significant international and interdisciplinary endeavour. The GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub brings together leading researchers from Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Malaysia and the UK. Each international partner will host a Water Collaboratory (collaboration laboratories) which will provide a participatory process, open to all stakeholders, to jointly question, discuss, and construct new ideas to resolve water security issues. Through developing and demonstrating a systems and capacity building approach to better understand water systems; value all aspects of water; and strengthen water governance we will unlock systemic barriers to achieving water security in practice.

Governments across the world have become increasingly aware of the social and economic problems caused by inequality. It's not just income inequality that is cause for concern but how different aspects of inequality-in health, education, employment and crime-combine to impoverish particular groups, and deepen divisions in society. For certain types of inequality, Scotland fares worse than comparable countries, particularly with respect to suicide, homicide, overcrowding and children living in poverty. As a result, the Scottish Government has launched a national strategy to create a 'Fairer Scotland'. For this initiative to be successful, however, it needs to have solid evidence which is based on a well-informed understanding of how the different dimensions of inequality interact and change over time. Our goal in this project is to achieve a step change in the quality and usefulness of the evidence base in Scotland by developing world-leading advances in how the multi-dimensional nature of inequality is understood. Working closely with policy makers at local and national level, we aim to support, guide and inform government policies with a view to achieving a genuine reduction in social inequalities. Our project is called AMMISS: Analysing Multi-Dimensional and Multi-Scale Inequalities in Scottish Society. It represents an ambitious and innovative research programme that will explore the causes and consequences of social inequalities in Scottish society in a much deeper and more joined-up way than has been achieved before. It is 'multi-dimensional' because we will explore multiple forms of inequality (e.g. poor health, low educational achievement, exposure to crime, failure to access the labour market, poor social mobility). Developing cutting-edge analysis we shall help policy makers understand how these different dimensions interact to affect life chances. It is 'multi-scale' because looking at inequality for a single level of geography or social unit can lead to a distorted understanding of inequality. So it is particularly important that we understand how inequalities impact at different levels both spatially (e.g. communities and cities) and socially (e.g. individuals and families). Our novel approach will allow us to analyse the causes and effects of multi-dimensional and multi-scale inequalities in a truly joined-up way, taking full advantage of Scotland's world-class administrative and survey data. AMMISS has two main themes. First, we will explore the way in which the neighbourhoods impact on how people experience inequalities and how changing patterns of poverty in Scottish cities impact on those experiences; for example, by affecting access to the labour market and exposure to crime. We will also examine how changing ethnic mix affects educational achievement and experiences of victimisation. Second, we will investigate how inequality impacts individuals over the course of their lives; for example, how experiences in early childhood affect social inequalities experienced later in life. We will also explore why some 'high risk' people and neighbourhoods remain 'resilient' to social inequalities, achieving positive outcomes against the odds. To make sense of such a broad range of issues we have brought together an impressive group of internationally recognised experts from various different areas of research. This will allow us to develop the innovative and insightful research needed to tackle inequality. Working closely with a range of organisations across Scotland, including central and local government and charities, will provide many opportunities for innovation and ensure that our work is relevant and useful for achieving a fairer society. Our ambition is to help those in positions of influence achieve real change. By making Scotland an exemplar for inequalities research, our work has the potential to influence and inspire policies to reduce social inequality around the world.

This strategic network seeks to analyse and respond to three key trends in international development. First, the strong emphasis on accountability and a move towards gathering large amounts of monitoring and evaluation data. Second, the growth of digitalisation and datafication (ie the use of digital tools, technologies and processes to transform organisations and strategic decision-making to being data-driven). New digital technologies are now being used in development practice in numerous cross-cutting ways. Yet there are risks of multiple digital divides and digital exclusions which have to be counter-acted. Third, there are the issues of digital participation. Datafication and digitazation require capacity-building locally to ensure development efforts remain grounded in the priorities of countries and communities of the global South. These trends combine to form a single challenge: how might these increasingly sophisticated and powerful tools of surveillance and analysis be used to empower the marginalised? Advocates of big data and digitalisation see multiple benefits becoming possible because policies can become more data driven, and hence more accurate in their understanding of the problems they tackle. They see many opportunities to engage citizens directly. But critics warn against numerous risks including loss of privacy and the replication of invisibilities and inequalities along geographical, gender, education and class lines that these trends may enhance, rather than diminish. The primary aim of this network is to bring together leading researchers and practitioners from information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), Data Science and participatory practice to develop an ambitious and innovative research agenda. Non-academic partners and collaborators, Oxfam Digital, UNICEF, the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the global umbrella organisation of mobile phone companies, GSMA, have together pledged over 36 person days to contribute to the co-shaping of this research agenda. They recognise that there is an urgent need for more research and collaboration with academic institutions in this area. We will convene a series of meetings and events in diverse formats to bring together members of the collective under the different priorities we have identified. Altogether some 30 participants will work in four thematic groups: 1: Big Data, "small data" and Data Science to inform progress towards the SDGs 2: Participation and value-based design of socio-technological innovation 3: Citizen participation, data science, ICT for peace building. 4: Youth participation and innovative digital methods. Our first aim for these meetings is that they will produce an overarching research agenda and several research programmes as well as research proposals that can be pursued individually or collectively by different members of the collective. The second aim is intensive capacity building. Researchers in partner countries, early career researchers, researchers from different disciplines and those researchers new to research in the global South will all get a chance to expand their research capacity and improve practice. This work fits squarely with all three aspects of compliance with ODA that the ESRC pursues. It is 'for development', because it seeks to solve development challenges faced in the global south over digital development, improving data and participation. It is 'on development', as it entails critical scrutiny of measures which are intended to improve lives and well-being. It is 'as development' as it promotes various forms of individual and institutional capacity building in collaboration with existing and new partners.

The Hub will reduce disaster risk for the poor in tomorrow's cities. The failure to integrate disaster risk resilience into urban planning and decision-making is a persistent intractable challenge that condemns hundreds of millions of the World's poor to continued cyclical destruction of their lives and livelihoods. It presents a major barrier to the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals in expanding urban systems. Science and technology can help, but only against complex multi-hazard context of urban life and the social and cultural background to decision-making in developing countries. Science-informed urbanisation, co-produced and properly integrated with decision support for city authorities, offers the possibility of risk-sensitive development for millions of the global poor. This is a major opportunity - some 60% of the area expected to be urban by 2030 is yet to be built. Our aim is to catalyse a transition from crisis management to risk-informed planning in four partner cities and globally through collaborating International governance organisations. The Hub, co-designed with local and international stakeholders from the start, will deliver this agenda through integrated research across four urban systems - Istanbul, Kathmandu, Nairobi and Quito - chosen for their multi-hazard exposure, and variety of urban form, development status and governance. Trusted core partnerships from previous Global Challenge Research Fund, Newton Fund and UK Research Council projects provide solid foundations on which city based research projects have been built around identified, existing, policy interventions to provide research solutions to specific current development problems. We have developed innovative, strategic research and impact funds and capable management processes constantly to monitor progress and to reinforce successful research directions and impact pathways. In each urban system, the Hub will reduce risk for 1-4 million people by (1) Co-producing forensic examinations of risk root causes, drivers of vulnerability and trend analysis of decision-making culture for key, historic multi-hazard events. (2) Combining quantitative, multi-hazard intensity, exposure and vulnerability analysis using advances in earth observation, citizen science, low cost sensors and high-resolution surveys with institutional and power analysis to allow multi-hazard risk assessment to interface with urban planning culture and engineering. (3) Convene diverse stakeholder groups-communities, schools, municipalities private enterprise, national agencies- around new understanding of multi-hazard urban disaster risk stimulating engagement and innovation in making risk-sensitive development choices to help meet the SDGs and Sendai Framework. Impact will occur both within and beyond the life of the Hub and will raise the visibility of cities in global risk analysis and policy making. City Partnerships, integrating city authorities, researchers, community leaders and the private sector, will develop and own initiatives including high-resolution validated models of multi-hazard risk to reflect individual experience and inform urban development planning, tools and methods for monitoring, evaluation and audit of disaster risk, and recommendations for planning policy to mitigate risks in future development. City partnerships will collaborate with national and regional city networks, policy champions and UN agencies using research outputs to structure city and community plans responding to the Sendai Framework and targeted SDG indicators, and build methods and capacity for reporting and wider critique of the SDG and Sendai reporting process. Legacy will be enabled through the ownership of risk assessment and resilience building tools by city and international partners who will identify need, own, modify and deploy tools beyond the life of the Hub.

CPAID will address critical questions that have bedevilled the outside world's engagement with governance of fragile, conflict affected, marginal and impoverished populations. In these places inclusive growth has proved elusive. We propose a different starting point. Rather than anticipating transitions to accountable and capable Western government familiar to policymakers, CPAID prioritises the everyday lived realities of ordinary people in conflict-affected and fragile situations. In these places, the foundations of such growth are far more widespread and pervasive than state institutions. Through the lens of public authority, CPAID researchers seek to understand how governance actually functions in such circumstances, what forms of growth does this accomplish, and can actually existing forms of inclusive growth be promoted by development practitioners. Only a historically-informed, contextual and interdisciplinary analysis of how political, economic and social factors interact can achieve a full understanding of 'real governance' in conflict affected in places. Understanding these dynamics is critical to inform new and improved models of international development which will actually provide or enhance firm foundations for future inclusive growth. CPAID will explore how forms of public authority shape and are shaped by a set of interlocking global challenges that pose both risks and opportunities for international development and inclusive growth: namely, the provision of security and justice; migration, displacement and situations of endemic violence; global health threats; control and allocation of resources; and advances in media and information technologies. CPAID will fill a serious evidence gap about on the ground realities in large areas of Africa which currently affect other regions, including Europe. The CPAID team includes world- leading authorities on, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Central African Republic. Our primary focus is on public authority as perceived, understood and experienced by populations in locations of research. Research over the last decade or so has challenged prevailing assumptions embodied in the 'failed states' discourse, namely that in the absence of western-style governance institutions, fragile and conflict affected societies collapse or flounder. CPAID will undertake research which can help us understand the various ways in which actual forms of public authority work. This approach is desperately needed in development policy. Conventional conflict and post-conflict state building processes, premised on Weberian notions of the state, are hugely expensive and too often unsuccessful or arguably even counter-productive. Moreover, with the rise of 'resilience thinking', donors are increasingly acknowledging that the world is a place of 'radical uncertainty', and determined, in the words of DFID to 'embrace uncertainty as an opportunity to... bounce back better'. This has underpinned a new, but under-researched agenda to find more cost-effective and culturally 'embedded' forms of governance that donors can support. This research will also take place in the context of massive investments to provide internet connectivity. The next five years will witness unprecedented efforts to connect millions of people who do not currently have internet access in Africa, in remote and borderland areas. Examining the role of new technologies, including social media, in reshaping public authorities and governments will provide crucial entry points to develop policies to achieve new forms of inclusive growth.