Manuel Herrera

Welcoming Dr Manuel Herrera as a DAFNI Fellow! Manuel is Assistant Professor in Hydrology at Newcastle University with research expertise in urban water systems, infrastructure modelling, and asset management.

He says, “I am delighted to join the DAFNI Fellowship to help make national infrastructure more resilient through data-driven methods.

“Using a flooding case-study, my work will explore how trustworthy AI can support infrastructure asset management decisions under uncertainty. To encourage the wider adoption of AI across water and other infrastructure systems, I will develop reusable outputs on DAFNI and host a dedicated workshop for key stakeholders to help translate these lessons into practice.”

10 new DAFNI Fellows were selected from 116 applicants for the nationally competitive programme.

Each DAFNI Fellow has been awarded £10,000 to support staff time, travel, knowledge exchange, conferences, and dissemination activities. The programme also helps Fellows build networks across government, industry and academia through workshops, conferences and wider community engagement.

Manuel’s Fellowship addresses how critical infrastructure systems can be better understood, managed, and adapted under increasing uncertainty, climate stress, and operational complexity.

A central focus of his work is improving the reliability and trustworthiness of data-driven models used to support infrastructure decision-making, particularly in risk-sensitive contexts such as flooding, asset degradation, and system performance management. This addresses the need for evidence-based decision support, resilience to environmental and systemic shocks, and the responsible use of digital technologies.

By developing physics-informed and uncertainty-aware modelling approaches that combine data, domain knowledge, and system structure, Manuel’s work enables more robust assessment of infrastructure behaviour, clearer interpretation of model outputs, and improved confidence in decisions taken by operators and public authorities.

Manuel is a Committee Member of the Strategic Asset Management Specialist Group of the International Water Association (IWA) and of the Statistical Engineering Special Interest Group of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), reflecting his engagement with both engineering practice and applied statistics.

He has extensive experience working with industry and public-sector stakeholders on infrastructure management. This includes research collaborations with BT through the EPSRC Prosperity Partnership programme, NG-CDI, where he worked on complex systems and data-driven analysis for the radio access network as well as core and metro network resilience.

Additional collaborations include predictive analytics for intelligent quay crane management at the Port of Felixstowe, whole-system decision-support with Network Rail, and work with Mott MacDonald through a UKWIR project focused on updating the definition of asset health in urban water systems. Across these activities, deliverables typically included technical reports, shared analytical code, and joint scientific publications.

Manuel concludes, “As a DAFNI Fellow, I will build on this experience by using the platform as a trusted environment for collaborative exploration of data-driven decision support approaches for infrastructure asset management. DAFNI will provide a shared space in which stakeholders can interrogate model outputs, explore scenarios, and stress-test assumptions in a transparent and structured manner, supporting the responsible uptake of advanced analytics in infrastructure decision-making.”