Grant awarded: 1,965,583.75 EUR (Total EU Grant Awarded); DMU to receive 353,396.25 EUR
Funder: EU – HORIZON-SESAR-2023-DES-ER2-WA2-2
Project Leads: Raouf Hamzaoui (PI) and Feng Chen (Co-I)
The ATMACA (Air Traffic Management and Communication over ATN/IPS) project proposes an innovative solution that enables effective, seamless, interoperable air-to-ground datalink communication and digital flight monitoring and management through aeronautical telecommunication (ATN) based on the Internet Protocol Suite (IPS) within all domains of flight. ATMACA aims at supporting the “air-ground integration and autonomy” initiative in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), which presents strategic roadmaps to achieve SESAR phase D “Digital European Sky” in the European ATM Master Plan 2020 edition. ATMACA proposes a beyond the state-of-the-art IP-based datalink communication solution by introducing an application-layer mobility management for ATN and enabling commercial of-the-shelf equipment. It will also provide a next generation human-machine interface (HMI) that will process higher quality data, enable interactions with existing and future aeronautical applications and services, and meet the needs of end-users. The ATMACA solution will be validated through real-time simulations and real-time monitoring tests by considering relevant applicable SESAR key performance areas and indicators, as well as industry standards. The consortium consists of a balanced mixed of universities and industrial partners (an air navigation service provider, an airline, and a research and consultancy firm specialized in HMI design) to ensure the project meets its objectives.
Funder: Research Council, Innovate UK (RA) – Research, British Academy
Project Lead: Andrew Mitchell
As a rapidly growing and urbanised economy, the number of vehicles in India is expanding exponentially, and due to the reliance of these vehicles on fossil fuels, the local road transport sector contributes a significant percentage of the vehicular pollution and carbon dioxide and related emissions that make most of India’s cities among the most smog-laden globally. However, many of India’s poorest rely on the use of high emitting vehicles for making their livelihoods, so while the call to decarbonise the transport sector in India is an urgent policy priority, it is nevertheless fraught with complex tensions and challenges at both local and national scales.
To further our understanding of the multiple challenges involved in facilitating a just transition in the decarbonisation of the Delhi road transport sector, a British Academy research grant supported researchers from IESD at DMU in partnership with colleagues at the TERI School of Advanced Studies in New Delhi to conduct a rapid academic and policy review to explore the issues involved in designing and implementing such a policy.
The research grant supported four key objectives, these being: To explore and map the understanding/ perception/ expectation of just transition by different stakeholders (e.g., policy makers, employees, communities, businesses, service providers, users and beneficiaries etc.) in relation to decarbonisation of the transport sector in India; To evaluate the impacts of a just transition from a socio-economic and environmental perspective using Delhi as a case study;
To suggest just transition options for decarbonisation pathways in the transport sector in the country, which is inclusive, sustainable and futuristic (considering the growth of the transport sector in future); and, To undertake a Developmental Evaluation of learnings from the research for strategic deployment of lessons to future work.
The study adopted a mixed methodology, including a detailed review of the academic, policy and grey literatures, as well as key informant interviews, a stakeholders’ engagement workshop and a structured survey involving wide range of stakeholders.
Although this project has not yet concluded, initial findings are that from a just transition perspective, employment and livelihood considerations are a major dimension of any such transition. However, coal is a significant component of India’s national energy mix, and a potent political influence in part due to being a major employer of Indian workers, so decarbonisation already poses a critical threat to the country’s existing economic and energy security infrastructure. Additionally, a switch to electrification of vehicles poses its own challenges, not least due to battery and rare earth minerals imports, infrastructure, as well as purchase costs and the additional burden this places on people and their livelihoods.
Finally, the analyses carried out to date endorse an incremental rather than radical approach to a decarbonisation agenda, and this has been articulated by key stakeholders as reflecting a three phased Reduction, Shift, and Improvement protocol. Reduction refers to the policy process change of reducing current emissions by integrating cleaner transport solutions, shift implied transitioning to wider modes of clean transportation, focusing on both reducing private vehicular pollution, and improving public transport penetration, and finally informing improved technologies by focusing in developing integrated technological solutions.
A further consideration in an emphasis on a just transition requires that special consideration is given to the different needs, challenges and opportunities found between those urban populations and their more rural and peri-urban counterparts, as it is becoming clearer that there cannot be a one-size-fits all transition process that is both meaningful and just.
The DMU project team comprises Prof Subhes Bhattacharyya, Dr Andrew Mitchell, and two PhD research candidates Daniel Kerr and John Rowlatt, and the TERI SAS team is made up of Dr Gopal K Sarangi, Dr Sukanya Das, and research assistants Nupur Ahuja, Nehal Gautam, and Naman Agarwal. The project is funded for five months and concluded in March 2022.
This was a multi-stakeholder project collaboration, motivated by adoption of a “circular economy-driven systems approach” to delivering a sustainable solution to olive mill waste/wastewater (OMW) management with lower environmental burdens and energy demand, suiting arid regions in Jordan. It involved academics from the School of Engineering and Sustainable Development and School of Pharmacy, DMU and Engineering Department at Al-Balqa Applied University, and industrial researchers, business investors and institutional training providers. The project also saw the inauguration of a 15kW renewable off-grid capacity by the UK deputy ambassador to Jordan, Ms Helen Fazey to fully operate a wastewater treatment plant in Fuheis City near Amman. These activities were supported by the UK Royal Academy of Engineering under the Transforming Systems through Partnership (TSP1306) project.
Energy is crucial for the developing World and must be provided when needed to avoid serious impact on society.
Among all energy forms, electricity has an increasingly central role.
Electricity security is the power system’s capability to withstand disturbances or contingencies with an acceptable service disruption and represents a crucial concern forpolicy decision-making at all levels.
Usually, service disruption is due to cables insulation damage, often caused by, or accompanied by, a partial discharge (PD) event that is a localized electrical discharge that partially bridges the insulation between conductors. Since PD is one of the best early warning indicators of insulation damage, the on-line PD location is the most suitable method of monitoring network integrity and a desirable network protection method to guarantee electricity security.
The project’s main objective is to develop a new method for online PD location based on the innovative electromagnetic time reversal (EMTR) theoy.
Effects of Partial Discharge
✓ Cable premature failure within 3 years of operation ✓ Localised heating/moisture into the cable ✓ Interruption of power supply ✓ Reduction of power quality and customer satisfaction ✓ Reduction of Electricity Security of Power Networks.
On-Line Partial Discharge Location in Power Networks
On-line PD location is a desired feature in modern protection schemes’ power networks to guarantee:
a fault preventive action, improving reliability
a continuous monitoring condition for grid integrity
an increase of equipment lifetime and network resilience
a reduction of overall operating costs increasing plant productivity
a reduction of outage duration of supply, improving power quality, customer satisfaction and life quality.
Design of EMTR Method to Locat Partial Discharge on Power Networks
EMTR methods, in source-location identification, take advantage of the time reversibility of Maxwell’s equations and the spatial correlation property of the time-reversal theory to refocus the time reversed back-propagated electromagnetic waves into the original disturbance location: when the electromagnetic wave is time reversed and back injected into the original system, it refocuses back to the location of its source.
The new method to on-line locate PD source based on EMTR theory and using the Transmission Line Matrix (TLM) method to model PD signal propagation, under development at DMU.
