{"id":2430,"date":"2018-02-28T13:05:57","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T13:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itrc.org.uk\/?p=2430"},"modified":"2020-09-24T19:52:23","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T18:52:23","slug":"epsrc-impact-acceleration-awards-supports-uk-infrastructure-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itrc.org.uk\/collaborations-category\/epsrc-impact-acceleration-awards-supports-uk-infrastructure-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"EPSRC Impact Acceleration Awards supports UK infrastructure planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

National infrastructure systems (energy, transport, water, waste water and solid waste) form the basis of societies\u2019 economic and social wellbeing, requiring significant human and capital investments. Building infrastructure is a long-term commitment that is difficult to reverse and thus has major implications for sustainability, mitigation of carbon emissions and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. Researchers at the University of Oxford have been working closely with UK government bodies to use models to help inform the government\u2019s investment decisions.<\/p>\n

In 2015 the ITRC\u2019s Principal Investigator, Professor Jim Hall, used an EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) award to support the application of the NISMOD-LP model to the analysis of proposed government investments.<\/p>\n

The IAA enabled the ITRC\u2019s research and expertise to be brought directly into infrastructure planning concerns that were relevant to the UK\u2019s HM Treasury. NISMOD-LP achieved a completely new level of insight previously unavailable to HM Treasury, enabling an analysis of the government\u2019s infrastructure \u2018pipeline\u2019 – planned investment in infrastructure – against a set of future scenarios run across all infrastructure sectors; something that was not possible with standalone departmental models. The secondment produced outputs that provided evidence to officials and ministers regarding the robustness of the current infrastructure pipeline to the future uncertainties of socio-economic and climatic change.<\/p>\n

Following the success of this collaboration, a second EPSRC IAA-funded secondment commenced in late 2017, this time with the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), the body now responsible for advising the government on infrastructure policy and strategy. Thanks to this funding, one of the ITRC team, Dr Matthew Ives, is working with the NIC on their Interim National Infrastructure Assessment<\/a> for the UK which features extensive analysis of future demands for infrastructure services based on the modelling outputs of ITRC\u2019s NISMOD-LP tool<\/a>. This collaboration will continue until the release of the NIC\u2019s Full National Infrastructure Assessment later in 2018.<\/p>\n

This case study has been produced by the Communications Team at the University of Oxford\u2019s Mathematical, Physical & Life Sciences Division, as part of their evaluation of the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account.\u00a0Reproduced with permission from MPLS<\/a>.<\/p>\n