Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

• 26 February 2016

Major new EPSRC grant to aid design of future global infrastructure systems

A major grant, to be led by Professor Jim Hall, has been announced by EPSRC, which aims to push the frontiers of systems research to understand how best to plan, design and invest in modern, sustainable and resilient infrastructure services.

The new project – MISTRAL: Multi-scale Infrastructure Systems Analytics - builds on the success of the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium, a £4 million project to develop a new generation of infrastructure models to inform the analysis, planning and design of National Infrastructure.

MISTRAL will build on ITRC’s vision to guide infrastructure decisions through the use of systems analysis, which will equip decision makers with access to, and visualization of, information relating to how infrastructure systems are performing. It will scale up of the ITRC’s network models from households to national and international contexts through multi-scale modeling systems research.

EPSRC’s Chief Executive described the grant as an opportunity to ‘help maintain the UK’s position as a world leader in the field of infrastructure design, and take account of the growing interconnectedness of real and virtual infrastructure at local, national and international scales.

MISTRAL will help maintain the UK’s position as a world leader in the field of infrastructure design, and take account of the growing interconnectedness of real and virtual infrastructure at local, national and international scales.