A total fund of £1.4 million is available overall for projects. We are interested in proposals of the following types:
1. Supporting key models
The centre seeks to support research software engineers to maintain and evolve existing models of key importance, exploring and evaluating resilience scenarios.
This would entail:
- enhancing the coverage, quality, and robustness of the model
- packaging, licensing, and documenting the model to maintain its open availability on the DAFNI platform through its future versions
- providing use cases of the model
We advise funds of up to £50,000 (80% FEC) would be sufficient to support a model on the platform within the period of the grant. We expect to support four to six of these projects.
2. Developing a resilience framework
The centre will support one or two projects to develop and apply state of the art research in frameworks to evaluate resilience within infrastructure systems engineering, including for example:
- uncertainty quantification
- sensitivity analysis
- redundancy and failover
- cascade effects
- interconnectedness analysis
The projects will provide leadership within the centre in approaches to analysing resilience and recommend tools and approaches which can be adopted within the DAFNI platform. We expect to support one to two projects of up to £200,000 (80% FEC).
3. Exploring resilience scenarios
The centre will support projects developing and exploring scenarios in response to a particular short-term or long-term shock, and develop appropriate solutions which demonstrate an aspect of resilience.
Projects should include how to access, use and combine data and computational models to evaluate the impact of shocks, and propose appropriate responses and adaptations to further resist, absorb and recover from the shock event.
Projects should make use of and be made available to stakeholders via the DAFNI platform. Of particular interest are scenarios which can be transferred from one geographic region to another, can be scaled up to a national scale, or explore the interactions between different infrastructure systems and with environmental and societal features in a multidisciplinary approach.
We would anticipate projects of different sizes ranging from £100,000 to £350,000 (80% FEC) and would expect to support three to six projects in total.
The proposers should specify which funding stream they are applying for and indicate any leveraged resources that are available.
Separate Joint Electronic Submission system submissions are required for each submission.
Eligible project costs can include:
- staff time cost and overheads (can be included at 80% of the FEC, using research council FEC models)
- appropriate travel and subsistence to support the activities
- consumables associated with public engagement and wider outreach activities
What we will not fund
Capital equipment costs (over £10,000) will not be eligible.
Postgraduate studentship costs are not eligible.
Projects should engage with wider stakeholders in academia, government and industry, and proposers should specify how they plan to interact with stakeholders to maximise impact.
STFC will fund 80% FEC.
Projects must start on 1 October 2023 and finish by 31 March 2025.
