Exeter scientist appointed as NERC Constructing a Digital Environment Senior Expert

NERC – the Natural Environment Research Council – is the UK’s leading public funder of environmental science. NERC leads a Strategic Priorities Fund programme named Digital Environment, with multiple objectives among which that of building a network of environmental and informatics experts working to identify research ideas and gaps. A partner of the Fiware4water project just became member of this network.

Prof Albert Chen at the Centre for Water Systems (CWS) has been appointed as a UK Senior Expert in the NERC Digital Environment Expert Network, as a part of NERC/UKRI Constructing a Digital Environment (CDE) Programme. The CDE Programme aims to develop thinking and practice around a ‘digitally enabled environment’, providing benefits for policy makers, businesses, communities and individuals.

Prof Chen is specialised in Water, Human and Environments studies. His research career started with computer modelling of urban floods and he is always enthusiastic in building digital solutions to improve the understanding and management of water environment. He has created a series of modelling tools to advance scientific knowledge on the interrelationships between different phenomena, services, and consequences related to water, human, and environment. The outputs have helped risk communications among stakeholders and citizens to reach consensus on flood mitigation measure and decision making.

 “My vision is unleashing the power of hydroinformatics that enables efficient and effective interventions systematically strengthening the resilience of human and environment to the impacts of water-related hazards, for both the present and the future climate scenarios.”, Prof Chen says.

He is currently co-leading the Policy Action Group in the European Commission’s ICT4Water Cluster to review existing challenges and to identify the advantages and opportunities of integrated ICT applications within water sector. The outcomes will contribute to shaping policy recommendations at super-national, national, and local levels to facilitate the uptake of digital solutions.

Prof Albert Chen - Centre for Water Systems (CWS)

The University of Exeter takes part in the Fiware4water project in the Great Torrington case studies, where it has worked on the implementation of a Local Water Forum in order to build a participative local water governance. It also works along with South West Water in order to utilise the information gathered from smart metering for raising public awareness in water consumption within the local community. The University of Exeter is also developing the technology to connect real-time monitoring data via FIWARE platform for water networking modelling and management.