The deadline is approaching to respond to a call by the Natural Environment Research Council - the UK’s leading funder of independent research, training and innovation in environmental science to submit proposals for the Environmental Risks to Infrastructure Innovation Programme.

The ERIIP Programme is a collaboration between NERC and infrastructure owners and operators to enable them to access research and use environmental science to identify, quantify and manage environmental risks to UK infrastructure, such as those from extreme weather events and climate change.

Through the second ERIIP innovation funding call, NERC and ERIIP industry members are encouraging proposals that fill gaps in the portfolio of themes, hazards and sectors within the scope of the programme, as well as proposals that address the challenges of ERIIP members which are publicised alongside this call.

Flooding remains single most important issue for ERIIP members

Managing the risk to infrastructure assets from flooding is a common theme for all the members of the Programme. NERC said that although projects relating to flooding have been funded in previous ERIIP funding calls, flooding remains the single most important environmental hazard for most ERIIP members. Some of the hazards which NERC said are under-represented in the current portfolio include:

• Storm damage (including wind and lightning) causing disruption to overhead cables and other surface assets, and whether these are likely to change with climate change
• Drought and low river flows affecting security of water supplies, water for power station cooling, water for canals
• Coastal flooding & erosion affecting infrastructure in coastal zones
• High and low temperature risk and associated temperature changes
• Space weather impacts on UK infrastructure
•  ‘Unknown unknowns’ or ‘black swan’ events – what environmental risks are we not aware of and should be considering?

All projects must specify and address a real industry, policy or regulator issue that arises from managing environmental risks.

Current industry members of the programme who were invited to present the challenges they are interested in addressing at a brokerage event about the latest call are as follows:

• Arup
• Atkins
• EDF Energy
• Environment Agency
• HR Wallingford
• HS2
• National Grid
• Network Rail
• Scottish and Southern Energy
• Scottish Water
• Translink
• Transport Scotland
• Temple Group

Key areas of interest where members are interested in developing proposals for are:

Arup 

• Developing methods to integrate data sources (e.g. point measurements, remote sensing, real-time sensing) to improve the design and/or operation of infrastructure
• Tools to support the development and optimisation of adaptation strategies for infrastructure
• Quantifying environmental risks at procurement stage to influence financing and procurement methodologies for infrastructure assets
• Understanding and mitigating environmental risks to complex infrastructure assets with multiple ownerships

Atkins

• Infrastructure vulnerability to space weather
• Reviewing existing methods (including application of statistics and dynamical methods) for flood prediction and frequency analysis
• Managing future uncertainty (including climate uncertainty) in long-term infrastructure investment decisions
• Potential use of big data in identifying and responding to environmental risks to infrastructure (including decision support)
• Understanding how integrated infrastructure design can deliver local and regional economic resilience and recovery in environmental crises.

Environment Agency

Commenting on the call, the Environment Agency said the ERIIP Programme is important to its work on a range of issues, including to increase the resilience of society and its enabling infrastructure from the risks of flooding and coastal erosion and to protect and manage water quality and resources. Key areas include:

• Developing tools and data to support the analysis of the propagation of flood impacts through networks of infrastructure assets
• Projects to help the Agency take a more collaborative approach during the development of the evidence to support future investment in flood and coastal risk management allowing more open exploration and analysis of investment needs.
• Developing and piloting methods which integrate data sources (e.g. remote, geophysical, real-time sensing) to enhance the Agency’s  inspection and investigation of flood risk asset - thereby closing the gap between expected performance and actual performance.
• Projects to bring forward methods which help the Agency quantify the risks and uncertainties of morphological change and extreme flooding to critical infrastructure at the coast over the very long-term (e.g. 100 – 1000 years).
• Development of methods to set tolerable limits of wave overtopping for the range of flood risk management assets (built and natural) which are proportional to the people, property and infrastructure they protect.
• Projects to improve understanding of the temporal and spatial patterns of extreme rainfall in cost effective and resource efficient way; allowing infrastructure operators to understand the resilience of their networks.

Agency's target audience is UK risk management authorities

Describing its target audience, the Environment Agency said it was interested in research proposals that will help risk management authorities in the UK manage their flood and erosion risk infrastructure assets. Risk management authorities include the Environment Agency, lead local flood authorities, district councils, highways authorities and water and sewerage companies.

Network Rail: flooding is a priority hazard

Key issues Network Rail, which has identified flooding as a priority hazard, is keen to address include:

• How can we adapt the legacy railway so that it is resilient to long-term flooding?
• What innovative low maintenance drainage solutions are available to manage water around the railway?
• Visions for an integrated transport system that is resilient to long-term flood and continues to serve rural and coastal communities
• Can we develop a national flood risk assessment tool so that infrastructure managers can collaborate and develop joined up flood resilience schemes?

Scottish Water interested in projects to construct key hazard scenarios for use in resilience plans

Scottish Water said the Programme (ERIIP) is important as it is the natural environment which presents its asset systems with many of their key challenges. The utility is particularly interested in working with researchers to develop projects which will help it to:

• Understand how climate change may affect raw and treated water quality, for example:
• To what extent more extreme rainfall might lead to high peaks in organics loading.
• How changes in soil moisture may release more, or different types of, organic material into runoff water.
• Whether more extreme storms may increase salinity in coastal freshwater lochs, impacting on the formation of disinfection by-products (e.g. bromides).
• Whether changes to temperature may significantly alter the vegetation in catchments.
• To what extent changes in average temperature may affect the quality of treated water in distribution with factors including the rate at which reactions occur, the solubility of contaminants, and the activity of biological contaminants.

Scottish Water is also interested in projects which can help it to prepare for environmental hazards that can provide an external shock to its asset systems, for example:

• Temperature extremes, their effects on water networks, and how smart technologies could be used to reduce and manage the impacts.
• Innovative low-cost tools and technologies to identify areas at elevated risk from ground movement/ landslips, and provide for their ongoing monitoring.
• Changes in the nature and frequency of lightning strikes and the adequacy of existing protection measures.
• Construct key hazard scenarios for use in resilience plans:
• Hazard datasets provide a bewildering volume of information: can current research be distilled down to something that allows a consistent narrative to be played through business scenario planning?

NERC are inviting full proposals from successful Expression of Interest applicants under the programme. Only applicants successful at the Expression of Interest stage are eligible to submit full proposals.

Deadline for applications is 16:00 on 30 June 2016 - Applications must be submitted through the Joint Electronic Submission (Je-S) system along with a completed 'Case for Support' template. Click here for the proposal form.

Click here to download the ERIIP Members paper