Decarbonised Adaptable and Resilient Transport Infrastructures (DARe)
DARe is an EPSRC investment from September 2023 led by Newcastle University that is closely aligned with the Heriot-Watt-led TransiT programme. Visit the hub website at https://dare.ac.uk/.
Vision
The vision of Research Hub for Decarbonised Adaptable and Resilient Transport Infrastructures (DARe) 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. The project 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.
DARe aims 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.
Research goals and approach
DARe 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.
The research programme has been shaped 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.
Work Programme
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.
Project Lead
- Prof. Phil Blythe, University of Newcastle
Investigators
- Heriot-Watt University: Prof. Phil Greening
- University of Glasgow: Prof. David Flynn
- University of Cambridge: Dr Jennifer Schooling, Dr Kristen MacAskill, Prof. Ajith Parlikhad, Dr Yin Jing, Dr Li Wan, Prof. James Woodcock, Prof. Abir Al-Tabbaa
- University of Newcastle: Prof. James Dawson, Prof. Hayley Fowler, Prof. Stephanie Glendinning, Prof. Roberto Palacin, Prof. Alistair Ford, Prof. Stuart Barr, Prof. Philip James
Researchers
Heriot-Watt University: Meg Bartholomew
University of Glasgow: Tang Wenshuo,
University of Newcastle: Daniel Bell, David Alvarez Castro
University of Cambridge: Dr Sripriya Rengaraju, Dr Christos Vlachakis, Dr Manu Sasidharan, Dr Omar Abo Madyan, Dr Sam Cocking, Dr Ali Abbas, Dr Ismail Saadi, Prof. Abdullah Kahraman, Tze Yeung Cho
RMIT University: Dr Belen Zapata-Diomedi
Funding
EPSRC