The proposed multi-disciplinary project aims to making South Indian artisanal fishers' livelihoods more secure and sustainable by improving safety at sea. Bringing together these small-scale fishers with weather forecasters and government agencies, it will devise, test and promote effective means for the co-production and communication of accurate weather forecasts, thus increasing resilience of the fishers amidst a trend of extreme and hazardous weather conditions in a changing climate. Moreover, the project will devise an "action template" of practical methods and a road-map for co-producing and communicating accessible and effective weather forecasts to artisanal fishers elsewhere in India and beyond. It will also contribute to academic debates concerning: the understanding and response to environmental risks; the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in disseminating information and warnings to diverse and vulnerable populations; and the knowledge, practices and livelihoods of fishing communities in Asia. The main objective of the proposed project is to close the gap between what marine weather forecasters produce and disseminate, and what artisanal fishers recognize as relevant and actionable inputs for decision-making. Access to trusted and actionable forecasts helps fishers make informed decisions to go to sea or not under hazardous weather conditions, thus reducing risk of potentially life-threatening accidents at sea, diminishing the loss of gear and boats, and, more generally, building resilience against hazardous weather conditions. Such weather-resilient pathways will contribute to promoting more secure and sustainable livelihoods for artisanal fishers in India and elsewhere in the Global South. This project will be part of a larger effort called the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP) to provide science relevant for implementing the SDGs in seventeen low and medium income countries. Drawing on the expertise of a multi-disciplinary research team--comprising anthropologists, geographers, atmospheric and marine scientists, and ICT and media experts - the proposed project combines complementary methodological approaches. It utilizes ethnographic methods to study the wider social, economic and cultural practices underpinning artisanal fishing, as well as to gauge fishers' forecast usage and uptake. It uses satellite and in-situ weather observations to gain insights into changing hazard patterns and forecast challenges, as well as to acquire the necessary data to co-produce area-specific weather forecasts with fishers, forecasters and other stakeholders. It will employ participatory approaches and technologies developed in the fields of human-computer interaction and ICT4D to co-produce and test effective, culturally appropriate communication platforms to disseminate weather forecast and provide feedback on the same. To account for variations in fishing techniques and technologies, and in the socio-economic organization of fishing, as well as different forms of social organization and cultural orientations the field-research will take place in three different fishing communities. These will be located, respectively, in Kanyakumari, Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam districts in South India, a stretch of coast with one of the densest concentrations of artisanal fishers in Asia, using diverse craft, gear and fishing methods in a geographically diverse setting.

Fibre-reinforced composites are finding increased usage in load-bearing structures in a variety of applications in marine, automotive and rail transport industries owing to their specific strength and stiffness properties. A serious problem with these composite materials, particularly glass-reinforced polymeric composites, which are the most prevalent in marine and other surface transport applications, is that they support combustion and in fire conditions burn, most often with heavy soot and smoke. Insulation can reduce the fire hazard, but does not eliminate it. Moreover the insulation adds weight and cost to apply.The combustible part of the composite is organic resin matrix. Most common method of fire retarding the resin and hence, the overall composite is the physical and chemical modification of the resin by either adding fire retardant element in the polymer backbone or using fire retardant additives in the resin. For polyester or vinyl ester resins, usually halogenated chemicals are used. While the presence of halogen significantly reduces the flammability of the resin, due to increasing environmental awareness and strict environmental legislations thereof, halogen - containing fire retardants are being strictly scrutinised. When non-halogen flame retardants are used, invariably they are required in large quantities (>30% w/w) to achieve required level of fire retardancy. The high concentrations of additives however, can reduce the mechanical properties of the composite. Moreover, they also affect resin's processability for resin transfer moulding technique, commonly used for these types of composites. We propose here a step change in the resin matrix by reducing the combustibility of vinyl ester and/or polyester resin by co-blending with inherently fire retardant resins, such as phenolic or melamine-formaldehyde resin.This proposal is a joint attempt by 'Fire Materials' group at the University of Bolton and 'Fluid Structure Interactions Research Group (FSIRG) at the University of Southampton to develop, construct, test and model novel, fire-retardant composites, initially for marine applications. The principal focus is to develop a modified polymeric matrix to reduce the combustibility of the vinyl ester or polyester resins by blending with appropriately modified phenolic and melamine resins, which will increase the thermal stability and char-forming capacity of the matrix. The physical and chemical properties of the modified resin will be optimised to enable: (a) the resin to be infusible for moulding leading to good processing ability: (b) low temperature cure capability to maximize compatibility and bonding with glass fibres; and (c) up-scaling to produce large laminates and structures. It is proposed that two different approaches will be taken: the first one 'Material' based, mainly by Bolton, and the other 'Structure' based, to which both Bolton and Southampton will contribute. The specific tasks include resin blending, chemical / physical modification of the resin, process modelling and resin infusion, composite laminate preparation and flammability evaluation. The composite laminates and structures thus produced are expected to comply with the fire performance requirements contained in the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) as `IMO/HSC Code (Code of Safety for High Speed craft of the International Maritime Organisation). Additionally, the structural performance of the composite would be expected to be comparable with current glass/vinyl ester. We also propose to conduct fire performance modelling, mechanical characterisation and progressive damage analysis from a structural design viewpoint.We expect these composites to find applications also in other engineering arenas for which low-weight, thermally resistant and fire-retardant structures are increasingly being sought.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The achievements of modern research and their rapid progress from theory to application are increasingly underpinned by computation. Computational approaches are often hailed as a new third pillar of science - in addition to empirical and theoretical work. While its breadth makes computation almost as ubiquitous as mathematics as a key tool in science and engineering, it is a much younger discipline and stands to benefit enormously from building increased capacity and increased efforts towards integration, standardization, and professionalism. The development of new ideas and techniques in computing is extremely rapid, the progress enabled by these breakthroughs is enormous, and their impact on society is substantial: modern technologies ranging from the Airbus 380, MRI scans and smartphone CPUs could not have been developed without computer simulation; progress on major scientific questions from climate change to astronomy are driven by the results from computational models; major investment decisions are underwritten by computational modelling. Furthermore, simulation modelling is emerging as a key tool within domains experiencing a data revolution such as biomedicine and finance. This progress has been enabled through the rapid increase of computational power, and was based in the past on an increased rate at which computing instructions in the processor can be carried out. However, this clock rate cannot be increased much further and in recent computational architectures (such as GPU, Intel Phi) additional computational power is now provided through having (of the order of) hundreds of computational cores in the same unit. This opens up potential for new order of magnitude performance improvements but requires additional specialist training in parallel programming and computational methods to be able to tap into and exploit this opportunity. Computational advances are enabled by new hardware, and innovations in algorithms, numerical methods and simulation techniques, and application of best practice in scientific computational modelling. The most effective progress and highest impact can be obtained by combining, linking and simultaneously exploiting step changes in hardware, software, methods and skills. However, good computational science training is scarce, especially at post-graduate level. The Centre for Doctoral Training in Next Generation Computational Modelling will develop 55+ graduate students to address this skills gap. Trained as future leaders in Computational Modelling, they will form the core of a community of computational modellers crossing disciplinary boundaries, constantly working to transfer the latest computational advances to related fields. By tackling cutting-edge research from fields such as Computational Engineering, Advanced Materials, Autonomous Systems and Health, whilst communicating their advances and working together with a world-leading group of academic and industrial computational modellers, the students will be perfectly equipped to drive advanced computing over the coming decades.

The overarching aim is to develop a facility for the testing and evaluating of large structures, called Structure 2025. To construct such a facility it is necessary to purchase specialist equipment, which comprises imaging, loading and control systems. Structures 2025 will provide a novel integrated imaging and loading system that is flexible, and can be used for the testing and assessment of a wide range of structures across industry sectors. The unique feature of Structures 2025 is that it will, for the first time, enable data-rich studies of the behaviour of large components and structures subjected to realistic loading scenarios mimicking the behaviour of a structure in service. It will be possible to model the loads felt by aircraft in flight, railway structures, bridges and cars and understand better how the structure supports the load experienced in service. Structures 2025 will enable the introduction of new lightweight materials into transport systems allowing energy savings and a more sustainable approach to design. The uniqueness of Structures 2025 is predicated on imaging, where large amounts of data can be collected to provide information about the structural response. The imaging will be based on both visible light and infra-red camera systems which capture data from the loaded structure and used to evaluate strains and deformations. Traditional sensors take only point readings, whereas images provide data over a wide field of view, since each sensor in the imaging device provides a measurement, the terminology 'data-rich' is applied. A complete system integration will be developed and implemented, that combines the load application using a multi-actuator loading system with the imaging systems. The combination of techniques into a single integrated system will be unique internationally, and will enable the accurate assessment of the interactions between material failure mechanisms/modes and structural stiffness/strength driven failure modes on a hitherto unattainable level of physical realism. Structures 2025 will provide what can be termed high-fidelity data-rich testing of structural components, to integrate with multi-scale computational modelling to provide better predicitive models of structural failure and create safer and more efficient structures. Structures 2025 will be developed in close collaboration with 16 industry partners, representing the rail infrastructure, civil engineering, experimental technique development, energy systems, marine and offshore, and aerospace sectors, as well as several university partners.