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Securing sustainable supplies of water, energy and food is a key global issue. Increasing demands on these commodities, together with pressures on land use and the need to manage the exploitation of natural resources in the transition to a sustainable economy will present challenges on local, national and international scales.

Our water, energy and food systems are interconnected. The nexus seeks to define the interdependencies between the different systems and improve our understanding and hence ability to effectively forecast and manage them. This complex area presents multidimensional research challenges that require multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches.

In response to these challenges the EPSRC is leading a sandpit in the water-energy-food nexus with the aim of enabling UK researchers to perform transformative work, potentially adopting revolutionary approaches to the complex challenges in this area. The Sandpit has the support of three RCUK cross-council programmes (Living with Environmental Change, The Energy Programme and the Global Food Security Programme) and the UK Water Research and Innovation Partnership, which is a collaboration between the water industry, policy and research communities.

An intense, five-day residential 'sandpit' workshop lies at the heart of the process. The group explore and deconstruct the issues before refocusing on emerging solutions.

It is expected that £4 – 5 million of Research Council funding will be made available to fund research projects arising from this sandpit. The STFC is offering support to enable sandpit projects to benefit from expertise in high-performance scientific computing originating from their community.

Full details of the sandpit are available in the EPSRC call for participants.

STFC high performance computing expertise

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) are providing optional funding to enable sandpit projects to benefit from high performance computing (HPC) and computational modelling expertise within the STFC community, which includes:

1. Sandpit participants from university groups that are currently in receipt or have in the past received funding from the STFC.
    
2. The Scientific Computing Department (SCD) within the STFC’s own National Laboratories.

The STFC contribution is in addition to the support that can be sought from the EPSRC. The total amount of additional support provided by the STFC to successful sandpit projects will be up to £450k.

STFC-funded researchers with expertise in computational modelling within the university community have an opportunity to participate through the normal sandpit application process. Successful sandpit participants from university groups will be funded at 80% fEC.

Detailed information about the expertise residing within STFC’s SCD will be presented during the sandpit. Contributions of SCD staff will be funded at 100% fEC.

Additional support from the STFC may not be appropriate in all cases, and participants will need to explain clearly the added value of the STFC contribution. STFC-funded researchers from the university community participating in the sandpit must also demonstrate a direct link between the expertise they are offering and their previous STFC funding in order to be eligible for this additional funding. All projects bidding for STFC funds will be assessed on their individual merits following the EPSRC’s normal sandpit assessment processes and criteria.

Potential STFC Involvement

The STFC funds research in astronomy, space science, particle physics and nuclear physics. The STFC also operates large experimental facilities that serve the whole of the UK scientific research base. In support of these and other activities a wide range of expertise has been developed in HPC modelling and data services. This expertise resides within the university community that STFC funds and SCD at the STFC’s National Laboratories.

With around 190 staff SCD provides large-scale HPC facilities, computing data services and infrastructure at STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The Department develops application codes in atomic and molecular physics, band theory, computational biology, computational chemistry, computational engineering, environmental modelling and materials science. These applications are supported by R&D activities in HPC, novel architectures, numerical analysis, software engineering, data services and petascale storage and through HPC service provision. Key projects bring together academic, government and industry communities and focus on multi-disciplinary, multi-scale, efficient and effective computation. The goal is to provide a step-change in modelling capabilities for strategic themes including energy, life sciences, the environment, security and materials.

SCD has expertise in the development of large-scale application codes for high-performance systems, developments in high-performance data services, and application of novel and emerging software and hardware technologies. Specific topics include:

• new scientific methods for large-scale simulations e.g. multi-scale modelling;
   
• new scalable and power efficient numerical algorithms;
   
• exploitation of emerging hardware and software technologies e.g. many-core accelerators;
   
• integration of HPC applications with data intensive techniques;
   
• exploitation of solid state memory to benefit data intensive workloads;
   
• developments in software supporting HPC and data-intensive needs e.g. programming languages, tools and middleware;
   
• research data management and policy;
   
• integration of visualisation with HPC applications and experimental data.

STFC financial contribution

The maximum amount of funding available from STFC to the sandpit will be £450k. The STFC contribution may include:

• direct and indirect staff costs,
   
• travel and subsistence costs incurred during work with STFC investigators.

The normal research council fEC rules for grants apply.

Application Procedure

University-based researchers should apply to participate in the sandpit through the normal EPSRC procedure described in the call for participants. There will be an opportunity during the sandpit process to build SCD capabilities into project proposals. The closing date for applicants to the Sandpit is 4 November 2014.

Review

All proposals will be reviewed by the sandpit panel appointed by the EPSRC. The primary criteria for assessment will be scientific excellence and fit to the programme requirements. As fully integrated components of any proposal, STFC-funded investigators will be treated as any other partner on a project application and will be bound by the peer review process.

Contact

Further information about the sandpit is available in the EPSRC call for participants. Enquiries regarding STFC involvement should be directed in the first instance to the STFC Global Challenge Programme Manager,Katharine Hollinshead.