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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/Y024257/1
Title: Research Hub for Decarbonised Adaptable and Resilient Transport Infrastructures (DARe)
Principal Investigator: Blythe, Professor PT
Other Investigators:
Ford, Dr AC Schooling, Professor J Flynn, Professor D
Palacin, Professor R Fowler, Professor H Al-Tabbaa, Professor A
James, Professor PM MacAskill, Dr K A Jin, Dr Y
Woodcock, Dr JD Parlikad, Professor A Dawson, Professor RJ
Barr, Professor S Glendinning, Professor S Greening, Professor PK
Wan, Dr L
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Arup Group Ltd Aurrigo Ltd CoMoUK
Connected Places Catapult COWI UK Limited Department for Business and Trade
Dept for Bus, Energy & Ind Strat (BEIS) Freightliner Greater Cambridge Partnership
Highways Agency Jacobs UK Limited KPMG (UK)
Laing O'Rourke Ltd MarRI-UK Network Rail
Northumberland County Council Ordnance Survey Pinsent Masons LLP
Port of Felixstowe rail freight group Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE)
Stagecoach Group plc Transport North East VolkerFitzpatrick Ltd
Department: Sch of Engineering
Organisation: Newcastle University
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 01 September 2023 Ends: 31 March 2027 Value (£): 10,568,485
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Transport Systems and Vehicles
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
19 Jul 2023 UKRI/DfT Transport Hubs Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
Our Vision is for climate resilient, net zero development of the transport system to be guided by systems analysis. When this vision is realised, decision-makers will have access to (and visualisation of) data that tells them how transport is performing against resilience, decarbonisation, and other objectives, now and in the future. We will deliver them systems models that will help to pinpoint vulnerabilities and quantify the risks of failure. This will enable them to perform 'what-if' analysis of proposed investments and to stress-test scenarios for the major uncertainties that will determine the performance of future transport systems, such as population growth, new materials and technologies and climate change.

Our ambition is to deliver co-created research that plots viable pathways and solutions for delivering a resilient, net-zero transport system that works for people and communities by 2050. DARe will be the go-to Hub because we will engage widely and proactively, and provide the evidence, guidance and tools to decision-makers that will enable them to prioritise early interventions and investments.

. Our research programme will take a system-of-systems led approach to transport which recognises and addresses the challenges at the three, distinct but critically interlinked, scales of national, regional and local. It will address the interwoven challenges of resilience and net zero, for both existing and new transport infrastructures, and identify and provide solutions for new vulnerabilities that may occur because of the net zero transition, including critical interdependencies with digital and power infrastructures. It will demonstrate the benefits and opportunities that come from reimagining and rethinking how our transport systems deliver mobility to both people and the goods and services our economy relies on, and will offer insight on how governance and policy can enable and drive these changes.

We have shaped our research programme in consultation with our multiple civic partners in North East and North West England, Northumberland, Cambridgeshire & Heartland and Scotland as well as our strong cohort of additional partners. DARe will build on this by opening the partnership to all and proactively engage in a programme of co-creation events during the first nine months to jointly define scenarios and storylines leading us towards addressing the dual challenge of decarbonising our local regional and national transport infrastructures whilst increasing their resilience and adaptability in a context of climate change. The role and participation of the wider research community via the DARe Flexible Fund will be instrumental in delivering this.

The DARe work programme comprises five integrated work packages (WPs), four focussed research activities plus a management WP.

WP1 delivers the co-created transport futures storylines which shape the research activities of the hub and develops the storylines to stress-test solutions across the three spatial scales, contextualised by the systems-of-systems interactions between transport-power-digital critical infrastructures. WP2 provides a new, transferable open-source modelling framework that will be co-developed with and made available to the wider community as a legacy of DARe. WP3 will address the physical implications for infrastructure assets and how their climate-perturbed performance will impact whole-life management. WP4 will provide insights into the wider implications and real-world impacts of the storylines when considering the policy, socio-economic, behavioural and land use planning aspects of the hub. WP0 will be dedicated to hub management, governance and engagement.

Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Organisation Website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk