The impact of road traffic on local air quality is a major public policy concern and has stimulated a substantial body of research aimed at improving underlying vehicle and traffic management technologies and informing public policy action. Recent work has begun to exploit the capability of a variety of vehicle-based, person-based and infrastructure-based sensor systems to collect real time data on important aspects of driver and traffic behaviour, vehicle emissions, pollutant dispersion, concentration and human exposure.The variety, pervasiveness and scale of these sensor data will increase significantly in the future as a result of technological developments that will enable sensors to become cheaper, smaller and lower in power consumption. This will open up enormous opportunities to improve our understanding of urban air pollution and hence improve urban air quality. However, handing the vast quantities of real time data that will be generated by these sensors will be a formidable task and will require the application of advanced forms computing, communication and positioning technologies and the development of ways of combining and interpreting many different forms of data.Technologies developed in EPSRC's e-Science research programme offer many of the tools necessary to meet these challenges. The aim of the PMESG project is to take these tools and by extending them where necessary in appropriate ways develop and demonstrate practical applications of e-Science technologies to enable researchers and practitioners to coherently combine data from disparate environmental sensors and to develop models that could lead to improved urban air quality.The PMESG project is led by Imperial College London, and comprises a consortium of partners drawn from the Universities of Cambridge, Southampton, Newcastle and Leeds who will work closely with one another and with a number of major industrial partners and local authorities.Real applications will be carried out in London, Cambridge, Gateshead and Leicester which will build on the Universities' existing collaborative arrangements with the relevant local authorities in each site and will draw on substantial existing data resources, sensor networks and ongoing EPSRC and industrially funded research activities. These applications will address important problems that to date have been difficult or impossible for scientists and engineers working is this area of approach, due to a lack or relevant data. These problems are of three main types; (i) measuring human exposure to pollutants, (ii) the validation of various detailed models of traffic behaviour and pollutant emission and dispersion and (iii) the development of transport network management and control strategies that take account not just of traffic but also air quality impacts. The various case studies will look at different aspects of these questions and use a variety of different types of sensor systems to do so. In particular, the existing sensor networks in each city will be enhanced by the selective deployment of a number of new sensor types (both roadside and on-vehicle/person) to increase the diversity of sensor inputs.The e-Science technologies will be highly general in nature meaning that will have applications not only in transport and air quality management but also in many other fields that generate large volume of real time location-specific sensor data.

Unprecedented rate of urbanization constitutes substantial risks to the resilience of cities, with public health and welfare being the most critical concern. This includes the emergence of (non-)communicable disease epidemics due to environment contamination and lifestyle factors. To increase the sustainability of cities, there is a critical need for an early warning system (EWS) for public & environmental health diagnostics that operates on a large scale and in real time. Rapid urbanisation and the young, growing population of Africa are also linked with rapid digitisation and an unprecedented up-take of new technology. This presents a unique opportunity for the development of a digital technology-based, comprehensive and real time EWS that is attuned to public and environmental health risks in rapidly changing Africa. We propose to build a network aiming to develop a public & environmental health diagnostics and hazard forecasting platform in Africa via urban environment fingerprinting underpinned by digital innovation. EDGE-I will develop a conceptual model (and a prototype in EDGE-II) of an environment fingerprinting platform for hazard forecasting and EWS using DIGITAL INNOVATION and state-of-the-art bioanalytical, socioeconomic, statistical & modelling tools. The digital innovation will be focused on the use of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled sensors and cloud computing as a plat-form for capturing, storing, processing, and presenting a wide range of environmental measures to a broad group of stakeholders. EDGE will focus on two key thematic areas of critical importance to rapidly growing and urbanising Africa: (1) Water, sanitation & public health: as a vector for infectious disease spread and environmental AMR. (2) Urbanization & pollution: as a vector for environmental degradation and non-communicable disease. EDGE postulates that the measurement of endo- and exogenous environment & human derived residues continuously and anonymously pooled by the receiving environment (sewage, rivers, soils and air), can provide near real-time dynamic information about the quantity and type of physical, biological or chemical stressor to which the surveyed system is exposed, and can profile the effects of this exposure. It can therefore provide anonymised, comprehensive and objective information on the health status of urban dwellers and surrounding environments in real time, as urban environment continuously pools anonymous urine, wastewater and runoff samples from thousands of urban dwellings. EDGE-I will focus on building a concept of a prototype of EWS in two geographically and socioeconomically contrasting areas in Africa: Lagos (Nigeria), Cape Town (South Africa). The young and growing population of Africa that is rapidly up-taking digital innovation provides a unique opportunity for building a system underpinned by digital channels to provide long and lasting impacts. To achieve above EDGE-I will: 1 Develop a transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral network focussed on building EWS in Africa 2 Develop a conceptual model of an EWS in Afri-ca underpinned by digital innovation in techno-logical solutions and Citizen Science 3 Engage with stakeholders: from citizens, through government to digital tech industry E DGE-I will catalyse the development of a large-scale research programme (EDGE-II).

Horizon will tackle the challenge of harnessing the power of ubiquitous computing for the digital economy in a way that is acceptable to our society and increases the quality of life for all. This will involve establishing a world-leading and sustainable centre of excellence for research and knowledge transfer for the ubiquitous digital economy. Horizon will conduct a five-year programme of research into the key scientific challenges involved in the widespread adoption of ubiquitous computing; collaborate with users to create, demonstrate and study next generation services; deliver a knowledge transfer programme that ensures that the results of our research are fully connected to the digital economy; train a new generation of researchers to meet the demands of industry for skilled interdisciplinary staff; engage with policy makers and the wider public in order to address societal concerns; and provide a focal point for international, national and regional research in this area.Horizon will exploit the distinctive nature of hub funding to develop a unique approach to this challenge. Our Collaborative Research Programme will be driven by the overarching concept of a lifelong contextual footprint, the idea that each of us throughout our lifetimes will lay down a digital trail that captures our patterns of interaction with digital services. Our research will explore the major infrastructural, human and business challenges associated with this concept, adopting a unique multidisciplinary approach that integrates insights from computer science, psychology, sociology, business, economics and the arts and humanities. We will collaborate with over 30 users from different sectors of the Digital Economy in order to create, deploy and study a series of next generation services 'in the wild' so as to drive our underlying research. We will initially focus on the creative industries and transportation sectors, but subsequently extend our focus to additional sectors in partnership with other hubs and major initiatives. In parallel, our Transformation Programme will drive knowledge transfer and long-term economic impact through partnership management, public engagement, international outreach, incubation of new ventures, the transfer of people, and training for 24 associated PhD students, funded by the University.Our team draws on leading groups at Nottingham spanning computer science, engineering, business, psychology and sociology, complemented by expertise at two spokes: distributed systems and communications at Cambridge, and mathematical modelling and advertising at Reading. A series of further mini-spokes will enable us to introduce other key individuals through hub fellowships.These multiple disciplines and partners will be brought together in a new centre at Nottingham where they will be able to engage with a critical-mass cohort of research staff and students to explore innovative and challenging new projects. The Hub will be directed by Professor Derek McAuley who brings extensive experience of working in academia, directing major industrial research laboratories, and also launching spin-out companies. He will be supported by Professor Tom Rodden, an EPSRC Senior Research Fellow who previously directed the Equator IRC. The net result will be a unique partnership between EPSRC, industry, the public, and the University, with the latter committing 16M of its own funds to match the 12M requested from EPSRC.

We will mount sensors on pedestrians and cyclists to monitor their exposure to pollution from transport. This will be an addition to the TIME-EACM project, which is about to use Cambridge City as a test bed for a variety of ways to gather data about traffic flow, and is writing middleware to analyse the data in real time.The initial part of the study will be to confront the technical challenges associated with sensors that need to be highly portable. Sensor technologies are now advancing to the point where parts per billion sensitivities are becoming achievable in small low power devices for species relevant to local air quality including ozone, nitrogen dioxide and a range of hydrocarbons. The challenge will be to link such sensors to effective mobile systems to broadcast data back to central points for analysis and presentation, and to locate their wearers sufficiently accurately. The TIME-EACM project will log and store data and integrate databases with information flow from its sensors, and the data stream from the pervasive environmental sensors will be added to this. The TIME-EACM middleware will be compatible with data on pollution from pervasive environmental sensors. All data will be time-stamped and location-stamped and correlated with TIME-EACM data on traffic flow.

EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Entertainment University of Bath and Bournemouth University The Centre for Digital Entertainment (CDE) supports innovative research projects in digital media for the games, animation, visual effects, simulation, cultural and healthcare industries. Being an Industrial Doctorate Centre, CDE's students spend one year being trained at the university and then complete three years of research embedded in a company. To reflect the practical nature of their research they submit for an Engineering Doctorate degree. Digital media companies are major contributors to the UK economy. They are highly-respected internationally and find their services in great demand. To meet this demand they need to employ people with the highest technical skills and the imagination to use those skills to a practical end. The sector has become so successful that the shortage of such people now constrains them from expanding further. Our Doctoral Training Centre is already addressing that and has become the national focus for this kind of training. We do this by combining core taught material with an exciting and unusual range of activities designed to challenge and extend the students' knowledge beyond the usual boundaries. By working closely with companies we can offer practical challenges which really push the limits of what can be done with digital media and devices, and by the people using them. We work with many companies and 40-50 students at any one time. As a result we are able to support the group in ways which would not be possible for individual students. We can place several students in one company, we can send teams to compete in programming competitions, and we can send groups to international training sessions. This proposal is to extend and expand this successful Centre. Major enhancements will include use of internationally leading industry experts to teach Master Classes, closer cooperation between company and university researchers, business training led by businesses and options for international placements in an international industry. We will replace the entire first year teaching with a Digital Media programme specifically aimed at these students as a group. The graduates from this Centre will be the technical leaders of the next generation revolution in this fast-moving, demanding and exciting industry.