A global survey showed that nearly 10 million people could die each year as a result of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) if the situation is left unchanged. The UK is at the forefront of the global fight against AMR and setting the vision to contain and control AMR by 2040. With reference to the World Health Organisation (WHO) AMR action plan, the global AMR surveillance programme is conducted to understand trends, monitor interventions and develop empiric treatment guidelines for AMR. However, in the water sector, this AMR surveillance effort mainly focuses on conventional treatment stages and does not include nature-based solutions (NbS) infrastructures. Defra's 25-Year Environment Plan, the Water Industry's National Environment Programme, and the Environment Agency 2025 Plan have created a unique opportunity to consider constructed wetlands (CWs) as NbS to deliver wastewater treatment with the provision of environmental and societal co-benefits. All water utilities have deployed their strategies to further promote CWs in sewage works. Therefore, understanding if CW, as an emerging preferred green approach for tertiary treatment in wastewater treatment plants, can act as the final safeguard of natural waters to mitigate such risks while maintaining the contribution of co-benefits is crucial. The experience and lessons learned from the global AMR action could significantly facilitate the current missing NbS focus area on AMR surveillance. Partner Prof Walsh has worked with the WHO on the AMR surveillance programme and the European Joint Programme with a specific focus on AMR. Her expertise and experience will strengthen this project team with key knowledge of the occurrence, transmission, and removal mechanisms of AMR. The AMR investigation in NbS is recently getting attention but suffers from a lack of international-scale assessment with a limited dataset. Partner Dr Carvalho is working on the EU NATURE project to evaluate AMR removal in different CWs from mainland Europe, and the findings will be shared with this project. In this project, PI Dr Lyu will conduct the first field survey in the UK to collect evidence from four different applied CWs in England and Wales with the support of two industrial partners (Anglian Water and Welsh Water). Together with available datasets from the literature and the project partners' network, this project will conduct an international comparative study of AMR removal in CWs as NbS for wastewater treatment. Moreover, the team will also assess the undervalued contribution of reactive oxygen species and indicate adaptations of CWs toward promoting rhizosphere-activated free radicals to oxidise AMR. Ultimately, this project aims to establish a unique collaborative partnership between international academics and industrial practitioners, through sharing experiences, discovering knowledge gaps, exploring technology innovation, and supporting evidence-based policymaking, toward developing a resilient wastewater treatment infrastructure based on NbS to mitigate the spread of AMR.

The PRO-BES project (Pioneering Real-time Observations with BioElectrochemical Systems) will undertake simultaneous field trials of real-time water quality biosensors in wastewater treatment works spread across the UK. The biosensors incorporate Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs), a type of BES technology, which feature an electrode on which bacteria generate small amounts of electricity relative to their consumption of organic pollution in the wastewater. The project progresses an innovative collaboration between Newcastle University and University of South Wales, and is supported by end-users Welsh Water, Northumbrian Water and Chivas Brothers where the field trials will take place. Building upon prior BBSRC funding, the biosensor will advance from a laboratory proof-of-concept beyond prototype stage towards a fully realised commercial device ready for deployment and scaled-up manufacture. An understanding will be gained of how biofilm microbial communities respond to key operational factors (temperature, flow rate, external resistance) and how changes in biofilm dynamics/activity affect response of the sensor. BES biofilms will be grown using diverse wastewaters from water companies in Wales and North-East England and whisky distilling wastewater in Scotland. Analyses of the biosensors across these trials will enable fundamental understanding of the microbiology and bioelectrochemistry of these devices in addition to providing valuable insights for future research, development and optimisation.

The Internet of Things (IoT) represents the next major step for the Internet as it evolves from a communication substrate that connects computers to one that connects and embraces everyday objects (things). This has the potential to revolutionize many different sectors of the economy and society more generally, e.g. enabling smart cities, smart transport systems, intelligent management of energy supplies, etc, all enabled by data collection from sensors. Most research in the Internet of Things has been carried out in cities and urban areas more generally. In our view, IoT has even more potential in rural environments, providing real-time data streams to support a deep understanding of environmental inter-dependencies and the subsequent support for holistic management strategies. More specifically, we argue that the combination of IoT technology coupled with Cloud Computing enables a paradigm shift in our understanding and management of the natural environment in times of unprecedented environmental change. This project will illustrate and evaluate the potential of IoT technology in a given catchment, the Conwy. Through this, we will deliver: 1. An integrated distributed systems infrastructure consisting of an experimental Internet of Things also linking to a cloud computing environment, and achieving interoperability across the resultant complex system; 2. A set of techniques to discover and study inter-dependencies across disparate real-time data streams representing different environmental facets, at potentially different geographical locations and at different scales; 3. Two end user driven applications based on the underlying IoT/ cloud infrastructure demonstrating the impact of a more integrative approach to science and how it can inform holistic environmental management, e.g. across land and water management. The proposed research involves a world class, cross-disciplinary team bringing together the expertise of the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University and the Environment Centre Wales (incorporating CEH and the University of Bangor). The project also has a strong Stakeholders Group involving representatives of key beneficiaries of the work including: Welsh Water, Natural Resources Wales (merged Environment Agency-Wales, Forestry Commission Wales, Countryside Council for Wales), Welsh Government and Conwy CC.

The water industry faces intensifying risks to its water treatment systems through rising dissolved organic matter (DOM) concentrations, especially in upland raw water supplies which provide 70% of the UK's drinking water. Rain and meltwater percolating through soils transports DOM to reservoirs. The water industry has to restrict DOM concentrations to minimise taste and odour problems, reduce the potential for algal growth, and prevent the generation of potentially harmful levels of disinfection bi-products, formed from reactions between DOM and chemical disinfectants. DOM concentrations are increasing primarily as a result of an increase in soil organic matter solubility in response to regional reductions in atmospheric pollutants to soils. However, DOM levels in upland waters are also sensitive to variation, and long-term change, in soil temperatures, amounts and intensity of precipitation, the ionic strength of soil waters, the residence time of reservoirs, and seasalt deposition events during winter storms. The influence of these climate-related effects is increasing as organic matter continues to become more soluble. Currently, the primary industry approach to reduce DOM concentrations is the application of coagulant to precipitate the organic matter from the water, but additional filtration may also be required to remove DOM compounds that are less sensitive to this chemical effect. Both processes have a significant carbon footprint and are estimated to have already cost the industry hundreds of millions of pounds through the installation of new equipment where existing infrastructure was no longer able to deal with rising DOM concentrations. There is a pressing need, therefore, to foster a Climate Change Resilience Community that will combine the extensive expertise of the research and industry communities in the UK in order to address this challenge. FREEDOM-BCCR will develop an entirely new approach to understanding, managing, and planning responses to DOM increases in response to climate change. The community will provide the basis of support for decision making and will deliver adaptive (e.g. infrastructure investment) and mitigative (e.g. land-use interventions) approaches with which to build resilience in the upland water supply. We will augment the capability of a prototype Decision Support tool (DSt), developed by the current NERC FREEDOM Project with support from for Scottish Water, by incorporating catchment-specific climate change projections, predictive models and industry knowledge. This development of the FREEDOM DSt will fill critical knowledge gaps in model functionality including climate change impacts on soil and in-reservoir processing of DOM. We will define operational thresholds for DOM quantity and quality across the treatment chain and combine these to produce forecasts, at a UK scale, of DOM risk to drinking water supply. Proposed activities and respective Work Packages include: generation of UKCP18-based climate change projections using Hydro-JULES downscaled to specific catchments (WP1); Coupling of downscaled climate predictions with catchment and lake/reservoir models to explore the potential impact of climate change in influencing seasonal variation in DOM quantity, quality and vertical distribution in priority intensively monitored drinking water reservoirs and their catchments (WP2); validation of predictions of DOM quantity and quality produced by the FREEDOM DSt, beyond the parameterisation data set from Scottish Water, using hind-casting informed by wider UK industry data (WP3); upscaling application of the FREEDOM-UK DSt to provide predictions of the effects of climate change, land-use change and air pollution scenarios on DOM quantity and quality in other regions of the UK (WP4); and, foster the FREEDOM Climate Change Resilience Community focussing on co-development, application, and show-casing the FREEDOM-UK DSt through a programme of knowledge exchange activities (WP5).

Yorkshire Water (YW), Scottish Water and Dwr Cymru Welsh Water (WW) have extensive networks of clean/waste water pipes made of a variety of materials (ferrous, plastics). It is recognized that pipe failure occurs through a complex set of interactions including corrosion, factors such as geohazards (ground movements), environmental factors (e.g. slope) and other external factors (e.g. traffic vibration, surge demand). When these failures occur it results in loss of supply to properties, causes public highway closures and potentially long-term inconvenience to business and the general public. Changing ground moisture and thermal profiles caused by environmental change may enhance the probability of drought or flooding. In particular, this may increase the impact of ground conditions on the pipe network, exacerbating future failures (causing asset loss, exfiltration undermining of infrastructure and contamination). Increased leakages, particularly in drought years are a potential major concern to the regulator, OFWAT. This project aims to help water companies manage the repair and maintenance of their pipe networks through the development of a spatial model relating pipe failure data to a range of environmental, geohazard and external factors. The model will provide evidence about the primary factors in pipe failure which water companies can use to improve pipe network infrastructure management and resilience within a changing climate. These outputs can be used by water company engineers (i) to provide information regarding pipe failure that can be used to improve design standards for different pipe materials (e.g. plastic, ferrous, concrete) and installation, (ii) to be used as a screening tool to identify areas where additional factors not related to model covariates are causing high incidences of pipe failure and (iii) to identify areas where additional engineering solutions can be used to build climate resilience into the network, particularly in relation to those geo-hazards most influenced by climate (e.g. shrink-swell clays). The proposed work includes a scoping study and exemplar of how those outputs can be delivered to the for water companies. Advice on functionality and content will be sought from YW and WW. Options include the possible integration of outputs into existing company systems or a stand-alone web based system. The output data could be presented as maps, GIS layers or digital services and will be based on significant model covariates presented as individual factors (GIS layers) or combined maps and hazard information. If a web based system is considered preferable we will provide an exemplar service to the water companies demonstrating how their data may be accessed either on a public good basis (via a public portal such as UKSO.org) or via a secure service to commercial users (secure web map services). Keywords: pipe network, water leakage, geo-hazards, spatial model,