Clean water is essential for human health, but also to tackle climate change. In a review of 1,800 climate adaptation strategies, over 80% were water-related. Our waterways are on the frontline of the climate crisis, but could also be some of our greatest defenders. Looking to the future, it is clear that for the health of people and the planet, it is both urgent and essential that we take action to improve water quality. Planet Patrol is a non-profit movement bringing people together to tackle environmental issues. Since 2016, Planet Patrol events and app users have collected 500 tons of litter, and logged over 450,000 pieces of litter across 83 countries, creating a big data set to support our campaigns and research into litter, plastics, the environment and policy. Following the success of this participation-led approach to litter campaigning, water pollution levels have become an increasingly important priority for us. Initial results show that our water-testing kits work well, but there are engagement and accessibility challenges; a number of our trial testers did not complete the full testing commitment set out in the programme. In this project, Planet Patrol will partner with the design team at Ordnance Survey to consider both the metadata requirements that will deliver planet-centred change and the user journey of our volunteer testers to find interventions, incentives and opportunities to engage the public in a scalable, deliverable and highly effective water quality testing movement that could be rolled out nationwide.
The project is informed by Academic Researchers (on behalf of Planet Patrol and as scientific advocates for waterway health) and involves human-centred design techniques that will explore behaviours and motivations with volunteer water testers and Planet Patrol's cohort of Community Guardians as a focus group. This approach will deliver a plan for the future development of a scalable solution that will enable us to gather the data required to build a strong bank of evidence to drive targeted change and deliver significant improvement in the health of the UK's waterways.
Clean water is essential for human health, but also to tackle climate change. In a review of 1,800 climate adaptation strategies, over 80% were water-related. Our waterways are on the frontline of the climate crisis, but could also be some of our greatest defenders. Looking to the future, it is clear that for the health of people and the planet, it is both urgent and essential that we take action to improve water quality. Planet Patrol is a non-profit movement bringing people together to tackle environmental issues. Since 2016, Planet Patrol events and app users have collected 500 tons of litter, and logged over 450,000 pieces of litter across 83 countries, creating a big data set to support our campaigns and research into litter, plastics, the environment and policy. Following the success of this participation-led approach to litter campaigning, water pollution levels have become an increasingly important priority for us. Initial results show that our water-testing kits work well, but there are engagement and accessibility challenges; a number of our trial testers did not complete the full testing commitment set out in the programme. In this project, Planet Patrol will partner with the design team at Ordnance Survey to consider both the metadata requirements that will deliver planet-centred change and the user journey of our volunteer testers to find interventions, incentives and opportunities to engage the public in a scalable, deliverable and highly effective water quality testing movement that could be rolled out nationwide.
The project is informed by Academic Researchers (on behalf of Planet Patrol and as scientific advocates for waterway health) and involves human-centred design techniques that will explore behaviours and motivations with volunteer water testers and Planet Patrol's cohort of Community Guardians as a focus group. This approach will deliver a plan for the future development of a scalable solution that will enable us to gather the data required to build a strong bank of evidence to drive targeted change and deliver significant improvement in the health of the UK's waterways.
Knowledge of precise time and frequency---hence the ability to able to _synchronize_---is vital for a wide range of purposes. For example, it enables mobile networks, computer systems, control systems, among many other types of systems to operate, and it is vital to a wide range of technologies supporting everyday living. Time knowledge is also strongly related to position knowledge. For example, it is extremely precise time knowledge---and time difference calculations---that allows Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) devices to calculate distance to satellites at different locations in the sky, hence to determine precisely derive position on the surface of the planet Earth.
It is therefore vital that the _exact_ time is known in as many different locations as possible across the UK. By _exact time_ in this project, we are referring to knowing the time to an accuracy of a billionth of a second (a nano-second), and potentially even a thousand-billionth of a second (a pico-second).
Any operation of sending the precise time from one location to another leads to a loss of accuracy due to the variation in time that that communication might take. For example, if you know what the exact time was when a message was sent through a timestamp included within it but you don't know precisely how long the message took to get to you, you can no longer calculate the exact time at your location as the sum of the exact sent time and exact communication time. This project aims to address this issue through precisely measuring and stabilising the time taken for such message communications between all pairs of nodes on the Ordnance Survey Net (OS Net)---a communication network of the OS designed to assist positioning in GNSS contexts. The OS Net that offers a widespread and controlled environment through its nodes across Great Britain offering a prime opportunity to extend its range of applications in this way highly pertinently to its objectives.
Through the low and predictable delay of 5G networks, a further aim is to link the OS Net to these networks to allow precise time information to be sent to mobile devices. Numerous applications can result from this information, which the project will study. As one specific application, it will focus on highly accurate positioning through such precise time information in challenging vehicular scenarios for autonomous driving that would otherwise be impossible.
Quantum technology -- mapping and map integration for buried assets (QT-MIBA) seeks to evaluate the feasibility of obtaining and publishing more complete and accurate information on the location of buried assets through enhanced processing of geophysical sensor data. The goal of QT-MIBA is to address the accidental strikes on underground utility pipes and cables that cost the country £1.2bn a year as well as reducing the traffic delays caused by utility streetworks estimated as 6.16 million days of work lost between 2014-2015\. It will also prevent incidents of workers accidentally hitting gas and electric pipes and thereby endangering their lives and interrupting supply of services to customers.
QT-MIBA represents a major collaboration between Great Britain's national mapping agency and world-leading geospatial authority, an asset owner, a survey company, a data processing SME and an academic partner leading the application of quantum technology sensors for civil engineering applications.
The project aligns with quantum technology sensor development, by providing a roadmap and value assessment of the data to end users. It also supports the initiative promoted by the Geospatial Commission to bring together existing data on underground infrastructure currently held by individual organisations (both privatised and non-privatised) to create a National Underground Asset Register (NUAR). OS and NWL currently collaborate on a pilot project in the North East to explore how accurate geospatial data can reduce the likelihood of utility strikes, improve underground infrastructure maintenance and inform new-build development projects. While bringing together existing buried infrastructure data is a significant step forward, there are many questions about the quality of this existing data, including omissions. There is, then, a role for data derived from geophysical surveys to update statutory record data.
QT-MIBA will deliver a feasibility study to assess how data from QT, combined with data from traditional geophysical sensors, can be enhanced using novel processing techniques including Artificial Intelligence, deep learning and quantum machine learning. Moreover, it will develop protocols which will enable survey data collected at disparate locations across the network to be integrated into geospatial maps. This will enable an assessment of the value of enhancing the positional accuracy of buried asset records without the need to wait until they are dug up for maintenance.