DAFNI Newsletter, April 2025

Welcome to the DAFNI April 2025 newsletter.

I am delighted that we have begun our webinar series for 2025, starting with Dr Xilin Xia and Dr Qian Li’s presentation of their work on STORMS – Strategies and Tools for Resilience of Buried Infrastructure to Meteorological Shocks.

This newly-developed risk assessment framework will certainly help to increase resilience to weather-related risks and thank you to them both for taking the time to showcase their fantastic work.

Sign up below for our next webinar, where I will be presenting the DAFNI-DINI project findings and recommendations, in addition we will shortly be sharing a blog about our March DAFNI-DINI showcase event.

Our team here at DAFNI have been working on many exciting developments with CROSSEU and UrbanAir which are included in this month’s newsletter. We will shortly be announcing the launch of our new website which will be showcasing all our project and partner research and outputs on the DAFNI platform.

We hope to see as many of you as possible at the 2025 DAFNI Annual Conference, to continue to work together to improve the efficiency, reliability and sustainability of infrastructure through better sharing and use of data in order to protect the UK’s natural and built environments.

Dr Brian Matthews, DAFNI Programme Lead

Book now for the DAFNI 2025 Conference!

Join us at The Edge at the University of Sheffield.

Our fantastic line-up of speakers, includes our two keynote speakers, Dr Juliet Mian, Director of Arup’s Climate Services and Sustainability portfolio, and Dr Sarah Hayes, Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo) Strategic Advisor, from Connected Places Catapult.

Invited speakers are:
Oliver (Olly) Tones, DSIT
Dr Richard Kirkham, University of Manchester, on SALIENT
Rachael Steller, Climate Change Committee
Professor Nicholas Vasilakos, University of East Anglia on the CROSSEU project
Paul Hickey, Ofwat, on RAPID (Regulators’ Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development)
Trusted research panel:
Emily Jefferson, Health Data Research UK
Jason Feehily, University of Nottingham
David Batho, Jisc

Prices: £50, student £25.

Book via: https://web.cvent.com/event/f255b158-1692-49f3-9efd-a68e3c86eba1/summary

09:30 Arrival – Networking breakfast
09:30 Welcome
09:45 Keynote: Juliet Mian, ARUP
10:15 Update on DAFNI
10:35 Networking break
11:00 Invited speakers: Dr Richard Kirkham,
Rachael Steller, Professor Nicholas Vasilakos
12:00 Networking lunch, poster session and
demonstrations
13:30 Keynote: Sarah Hayes, Connected Places
Catapult
14:00 Oliver (Olly) Tones, DSIT
14:20 DAFNI-DINI project results and
recommendations
14:50 Networking break
15:15 Trusted Research Panel
16:05 Paul Hickey, Ofwat
16:30 Conference closing remarks – Dr Brian Matthews

DAFNI Webinar Series

21 May 12-1pm – Data Infrastructure for National Infrastructure (DINI)

DAFNI leader, Brian Matthews, will speak on the DAFNI-DINI project, part of
an innovative programme of work driven by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), aiming at better and safer use of data in research, with the DAFNI-DINI project funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s Digital Research Infrastructure programme.

Data sharing has come a long way over the last decade, with increasing awareness of the benefits of data sharing, initiatives to systematically share data, and sector initiatives to support data sharing. The key questions remaining are: What more is needed to support researchers to access and use data and how can we deliver the impact of research to government, industry and society at large?

Book now: https://web.cvent.com/event/780523cf-f878-4026-922f-39b58871a64b/summary

25th June: Modelling the human response to flood events

12-1pm

Richard Dawson, Professor of Earth Systems Engineering at Newcastle University, will present his research on the FIRM (Flood Infrastructure Resilience Model) which simulates flooding and the human response to flood events. That human behaviour element, and the interactions between people and flooding, is the key distinguishing feature of FIRM.

FIRM can be used to explore flood events of different magnitude and test the effect of choices people make in response to extreme weather events, in order to model how people are likely to be exposed to dangerous depths and speeds of water. FIRM is helping flood resilience forums, councils and policymakers implement improved before-the-flood measures such as better public education and warning systems, improved during-event people and traffic flows, and improved infrastructure resilience evacuation sites, in the UK and overseas.

Book now: Book now: https://web.cvent.com/event/e4880dbe-fd42-46f6-b4fc-ef9f2dce8d6a/summary

News from our central team

Power outages across Spain and Portugal highlight importance of BRINES energy systems work

The significance of Dr Hannah Bloomfield and thenBRINES team’s work on whether our present and future energy systems are prepared for new weather extremes, and how to manage them during weather-driven periods of stress on the networks was underlined again this week (w/c 28 April 2025) when Spain and Portugal were unfortunately hit by widespread power outages.

Early reports suggested the power outages are caused by a ‘rare atmospheric phenomenon’.

The DAFNI BRINES (Building Risk-Informed redundancy for Net-zero Energy Systems) project is led by Dr Hannah Bloomfield, an Academic Track Fellow in Climate resilient energy systems at Newcastle University, in a collaborative project with Professor Sean Wilkinson and Dr Colin Manning of Newcastle University and Dr Ji-Eun Byun of University of Glasgow. This is a multi-disciplinary project comprising meteorologists, energy and transport systems modellers.

BRINES helps decision-makers to identify the critical amount of redundancy that is needed in present day and future energy systems – the slack or the back-up generation that’s available – and what would happen if a large power generation asset such as Sizewell A, B or C went off-line. Traditional and new weather system extremes combined with increasing reliance on renewables for generating power cause a challenging system from an operational perspective. The project sought to
provide a way to identify how prepared our present and future systems are for times of ‘high meteorologically-driven stress’, and how they will manage during these weather-driven stress periods.

Click here to find out more about BRINES.

Harnessing quasi real-time transport data for
improved outcomes

The current state of play, challenges and best practices for quasi-real-time transport data were explored in a recently-completed DAFNI-DINI project. The work is part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s Digital Research Infrastructure programme for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, aiming at better and safer use of data in research.

The team of Dr Giuliano Punzo, Lecturer and Director of the Sheffield Urban Flows Observatory, and Toby E Willis, PhD student, University of Sheffield with Professor Daniel Coca, Head of School of Engineering, Newcastle University, sought to further research into barriers to the acquisition and exploitation of this type of data for cars, lorries and other land transport.

Local and central government, GPS systems makers, town planners, vehicle producers, and transport planners will be able to draw on the report to help move forward plans for more robust traffic sensing infrastructure, tapping into the rise of connected vehicles.

Click to read the full case study.

Partnership news

Urban Air and Destination Earth

The team at DAFNI and STFC Scientific Computing’s Computational Engineering group
are working on Horizon Europe’s UrbanAIR project to develop an urban model across five European cities. UrbanAIR helps cities respond to air pollution, heat stress, and climate challenges.

By combining physics-based modelling, digital twins, AI, uncertainty quantification, and behavioural science, UrbanAIR offers decision tools to support resilient, informed planning.

Through close collaboration with city partners and technical experts, UrbanAIR supports practical climate adaptation using real-time data and user-centred tools.
The project focuses on scaling up climate modelling by leveraging Destination Earth, a global digital twin of the planet, and applying it to street-level meteorological models. Unlike traditional climate models, this tool will deliver localised, real-time insights, empowering cities to make targeted and effective decisions to combat extreme heat and poor air quality. This €14.3 million, four-year project is funded under HORIZONINFRA-2024-TECH-01-03: New digital twins for Destination Earth funding opportunity, directly supporting European policies on climate adaptation, urban sustainability, and public health.

CrossEU project: 8 climate change use-cases

The CROSSEU project is gearing up to start the integration of the project’s case studies on to the DAFNI platform.

Within the project there are 8 use cases which cover the following elements of climate change impact in Europe. Case studies will deploy models and data onto the DAFNI platform. This will enable collaboration toward use case outputs, and the results of the project to be shared and utilised beyond the lifetime of the project.

1. Health case study: Led by the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague. This will study the impact of recent heat waves on detected mortality rates within the UK and Czech Republic between 2010 and 2019.
2. Drought case study: Led by the National Meteorological Administration of Romania. This will investigate the socio-economic vulnerability and risks of drought events in Central and South-Eastern Europe and the societal and policy implications for interventions to secure food supply in the context of post-COVID-19 transformation and geopolitical crisis overlapping drought events.
3. Storm damage case study: Led by the Technical University of Denmark. This will investigate the impacts of flooding events in South Western Denmark and Northern Germany. This case study assesses the impacts of flooding events on land use including buildings, business, agriculture, infrastructure, transport, health, tourism, ecosystems, and historical/cultural values on a detailed geographical basis for storm surges, cloudbursts and river flooding and evaluates the damage costs and risks of flooding events as inputs to decisions on adaptation measures.
4. Flood case study: Led by University of Padua. This will assess the social benefits of floods and flash floods adaptation and mitigation in Northeastern Italy. It also explores the magnitude and frequency of current and future floods and their impacts for identifying effective mitigation strategies for relevant policy fields under a range of impact scenarios.
5. Snow case study: Led by the National Meteorological Administration of Romania. This case study will assess the observed and expected climate change related impacts on snow avalanche activity in the European Alps and Carpathian Mountains. It also investigates the socio-economic vulnerability and potential risks of climate change in the avalanche prone areas and exposed communities with the perspective of tourism, forestry and transport sectors.
6. Cross sectoral multi risk case study: Led by the University of Bucharest. This case study will look at the shifting climate seasonality and water availability and risks for socio-ecological systems in the Lower Danube.
7. Indirect impacts case study: Led by the World Energy and Metrological Council. This case study examines the impacts on energy demand and energy security in systems with high shares of renewable energy from heat waves, drought and storms concurrent climate hazards on energy systems in Europe.
8. Spillover effects case study: Led by University College London. This case study examines the transboundary effects on agriculture and labour productivity due to climate impacts in the rest of the world.

DAFNI Platform features and updates

Improvements:

• • We have changed the way users are added to groups. When adding a user to a group you should now enter their full email address, replacing the search by name functionality.
  • When uploading a new version of an asset that has been shared with you, with edit permissions, you will now see a checkbox with the option to copy the permissions of the previous version.
  • Updated the user docs to use Docusaurus v3.

Contact us for help

Our final drop in session took place on Wednesday 23rd April. We have decided to
discontinue our drop-in sessions as we have found users prefer to contact us directly for any help on info@dafni.ac.uk and we will be happy to arrange 1-to-1 support with any aspect of the DAFNI platform.

DAFNI Technical Training

A great opportunity to get up to speed quickly on DAFNI and to ask our technical experts your burning questions. Especially recommended for those developing a research proposal and are thinking of including DAFNI as the platform of choice for the research.

Our regular technical training events (Wednesdays, 1:30pm-4:30pm) are available to book via Eventbrite (see weblink below).

Next training dates:
7th May 2025
2nd July 2025
27th August 2025

To attend the event you will need experience of entering code through a command line interface, for more information and to book, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/dafni-31793198351