Professor Andrea Zisman

The manufacturing industry in the UK is facing growing productivity challenges due to supply and price volatility of raw materials. Manufacturing firms are consequently embracing the opportunities of circular economy approaches as a means to save costs, prevent disruptions in materials input and generate additional revenue from waste streams. The development of circular economy capability and competence requires an industrial symbiosis approach. Industrial symbiosis is a fundamental building block of the circular economy. It provides a means to build industrial competitiveness through the creation of manufacturing ecosystems involving networks of organisations that generate new economic value through the continuous exchange of resources (materials and energy). The industrial symbiosis capability of the UK manufacturing industry as a whole remains underexploited, with most of the circular economy initiatives being developed in sectoral silos. Such fragmented condition holds the economy back from achieving better sustainability performance overall. To unlock the untapped circular economy potential of the manufacturing industry in the UK, a cross-sectoral industrial symbiosis approach is necessary. Such approach entails a systemic expansion of manufacturing synergies involving the exchange of resources across diverse sectors. A major challenge to implement a cross- sectoral bridging approach is the lack of supporting channels, tools and business models that enable industrial symbiosis initiatives across manufacturing sectors. The UK Manufacturing Symbiosis NetworkPlus (UKMSN+) will promote, support, facilitate and stimulate the creation of a UK-wide community of academics, practitioners, government and civil representatives who will address the challenges above mentioned with basis on the central question of ‘how the industrial symbiosis capability of the UK manufacturing industry as a whole can be galvanised within sectors and fertilised across sectors?’

This EngageKTN project is investigating forensic-readiness requirements of unmanned aerial systems, to help identify causes of safety and security related air traffic incidents. Unmanned aerial vehicles (or drones) are increasingly creating challenges for managing the safety of aircraft that share the airspace with them. The collection and use of forensic data associated with drones and surrounding physical contexts is key to effective incident investigations. The research is focusing on the architecture and concept of operations for European unmanned traffic management, and the ability to preserve such vital information as evidence for forensic investigations. The team of the project include Dr. Yijun Yu (PI), Mr. Danny Barthaud (Research Software Engineer), and Prof. Bashar Nuseibeh, Prof. Blaine Price, Prof. Andrea Zisman, Prof. Arosha Bandara at The Open University, and Dr. Anthony P. Rushton, Dr. David L. Bush, and Dr. George S. Koudis at NATS. The project URL is at https://droneidentity.eu.

An efficient and productive food chain that provides readily available, high quality and safe foods at reasonable cost is needed by all in society. As a consequence, food & drink is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK, contributing over £26.9bn to the UK economy and employing 420,000 people. It supports a food chain which generates GVA of £108bn, with 3.9m employees in a truly international industry, with £20bn of exports in 2016. From 2006-’15 the UK food chain increased GVA by 30%, exports by 72%, branded food exports by 100% and food chain employment grew by 5% (DEFRA 2016, FDF 2017). Underpinning this scale and successful growth are innovations in: digital technology, food automation & robotics, process engineering, food science, consumer choice behaviour, food safety. The UK is recognised as a World leader in food safety, provenance and traceability. However, the environmental and societal impacts of the food chain are still significant for example; Obesity alone costs the UK £47 billion per annum; the food chain uses 17% of UK energy consumption; post farm-gate food chain is responsible for 15million tonnes of food waste and more than 20 MtCO2e of GHG emissions (Wrap, 2013); there are still c.500,000 cases of food poisoning per year (FSA, 2016; regular food “scares” undermine consumer confidence and cause alarm, i.e. “Dutch Egg Scandal, 2017”; “Hepatitis E sales of pork, 2017”; “Horsemeat, 2013”

In the last decade, the role of software engineering has changed rapidly and radically. Globalisation and mobility of people and services, pervasive computing, and ubiquitous connectivity through the Internet have disrupted traditional software engineering boundaries and practices. People and services are no longer bound by physical locations. Computational devices are no longer bound to the devices that host them. Communication, in its broadest sense, is no longer bounded in time or place. The Software Engineering & Design (SEAD) group at the Open University (OU) is leading software engineering research in this new reality that requires a paradigm shift in the way software is developed and used. This platform grant will grow and sustain strategic, multi-disciplinary, crosscutting research activities that underpin the advances in software engineering required to build the pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems that will be tightly woven into the fabric of a complex and changing socio-technical world. In addition to sustaining and growing the SEAD group at the OU and supporting its continued collaboration with the Social Psychology research group at the University of Exeter, the SAUSE platform will also enable the group to have lasting impact across several application domains such as healthcare, aviation, policing, and sustainability. The grant will allow the team to enhance the existing partner networks in these areas and to develop impact pathways for their research, going beyond the scope and lifetime of individual research projects.