Project Description: DECOM-MPA will develop a Decision Support Document (DSD) and strengthen the evidence base to support decision making for decommissioning oil and gas infrastructure on the qualifying features and integrity of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). The DSD will meet the current requirements of the regulatory regime, but provide flexibility to evolve in response to changing regulations. Stakeholders as partners is considered essential to a successful project and significantly increases the likelihood that outputs will be applied to real-world decision-making. Objectives: (1) To develop a user-friendly DSD to facilitate decision-making for understanding the impacts (positive and negative) of decommissioning operations on the condition of MPA qualifying features and site integrity; (2) To gather and assess (providing confidence scores) the best available scientific evidence to underpin the assessment of impacts of decommissioning options on major marine habitats and species, including taking an innovative natural capital focus; (3) To engage end-users (incl. industry, industry bodies, SNCBs, regulators & academia) throughout the project to provide proof of concept, identify sources of evidence and provide case studies; (4) To assess potential short and long-term impacts of decommissioning options on MPA qualifying features and site integrity using industry-led case study examples from the North Norfolk Sandbanks and Saturn Reefs cSAC/SCI, and (5) To provide end-users with an innovative and user-friendly evidence-based approach to better understand the risks, opportunities and impacts of decommissioning on MPAs and the wider marine environment. Impacts: Although it is unlikely that the full impacts of DECOM-MPA will be measurable within the project timescale, expected impacts will provide the best combination of: Environmental benefits: - maintained or enhanced MPA integrity; - reduced impact on marine ecosystems; - maximisation of ecosystem service provision; - improved scientific evidence base to support sustainable decommissioning (as well as renewable energy and other construction activities within MPAs). Economic benefits: - support a transparent decision process, decreasing the likelihood of challenging the method selection and reducing associated additional time and cost of regulatory reviews of decommissioning programmes; - early insights into risks and opportunities presented by decommissioning operations; - strengthened links with academia to influence the future research agenda to deliver industry-relevant knowledge, and - enhancing transferability potential of decision support products to other areas. Societal benefits: - enhanced sustainability and societal acceptability of selected decommissioning options; - translating existing knowledge to make it useable and accessible to users; - improved knowledge gained through research (cognitive benefits); - identifying unrealised benefits from decommissioning options within and out with MPAs; - identified knowledge gaps improving efficiency of public research spending, and - enhanced reputation by exporting UK scientific excellence to inform global decommissioning solutions. Keywords: Decision Support Document, stakeholders, Marine Protected Areas, decommissioning, oil & gas, evidence, assessment, case studies Key Stakeholders: BEIS, JNCC, NE, SNH, Oil and Gas Industry, Oil and Gas Industry Representatives, Marine Scotland, MMO

The complex and multi-scale nature of thin-films poses significant modelling challenges for many systems which occur in nature or industrial contexts ranging from foams, to engine lubricants in electric vehicles, from biomembranes to non-alcoholic beverages, from contact lenses to industrial coatings. The applications of the thin liquid films where the interface is contaminated either accidentally or on purpose, are endless. This naturally leads to considerable research and economic opportunities associated with the ability to understand and control the effect of additives and contaminants on the thin-film interface. The main difficulty here, after many years of intense research, remains with the fact that the role of a contaminant on the interface is generally not well understood. We are starting to understand the effect of surfactants, which is a subset of contaminants with surface-active agents, such as washing up liquid and detergents, but a generalised theory of contaminants remains elusive. This is due to not only the limited models of surface-altering agents upto dilute concentrations, which is not always the case in nature, but also the lack of an unifying framework upon which to study contaminants that are not surfactants. This project will provide such an unifying mathematical framework to study a generalised contaminant on a thin liquid film. By describing the inputs of the generalised contaminant into the system as contributing to an effective gradient in the surface tension, induced by whichever special property the contaminant possesses, our approach introduces new mechanisms into the continuum dynamics and allows comparisons to be made with experimental studies which often combines multiple effects of the contaminant. Disentangling the various nonlinear effects in the contaminant is a difficult problem which cannot be overlooked. The mathematical framework is a vital first step towards a complete categorisation of all the component in the multiphysics soup of a generalised contaminant solution. This categorisation not only allows us to tackle vastly more complex contaminants than previous possible, but also enables us to engineer thin liquid interfaces to an exacting specification or stability for a particular application, such as a non-alcoholic beer with the same foaming characteristics as an alcoholic version or a non-foaming engine lubricant for high-efficiency electric vehicles, both of which are examples of thin liquid interfaces which would benefit from a complete understanding of the role contaminants play on the surface.

In many engineering applications, materials that exhibit heterogeneous or otherwise acoustically scattering microstructure are employed, examples include austenitic steels and alloys, concrete and fibre reinforced composites. In ultrasonic non destructive evaluation (NDE) of such highly scattering media, the defect target signal is frequently obscured by clutter echoes, caused by numerous, relatively small (relative to the ultrasonic wavelengths), stationary reflectors, which form part of the internal microstructure of the material. The extent of this clutter can be significant and even defects that are larger than these randomly scattering regions can be difficult to detect. This type of time-invariant clutter noise cannot be reduced by the standard time averaging or correlation techniques that are used to reduce time varying random electrical noise. Accordingly, defect identification invariably involves a compromise between achievable resolution, which is determined partly by wavelength in the material, and the noise arising from scattering in the propagation medium. This project will investigate a range of methods for improved ultrasonic NDE of difficult materials. The approach will involve a combination of ultrasonic beam modelling, novel transducer design and array signal processing methods.

This proposal seeks funding for a three year research programme into the use of waves which are guided by structural features for the detection of defects, such as cracks or corrosion, in or near the features. The idea is supported by practical observations that a butt weld between two plates has a significant guiding effect, clearly tending to retain the energy of the fundamental extensional wave in and near the weld. The work will include the development of a modelling capability to study and understand the nature of guided waves in welds and other structural features, followed by a study of the application of the model to butt welds and other realistic features of interest to the industrial partners. The proposal is being submitted within the UK Research Centre in NDE (RCNDE) to the targeted research programme, the funding for which is earmarked by EPSRC for industrially driven research.

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.