Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (Open Call): Increasing the impact of geoscience in land redevelopment projects

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This Knowledge Exchange (KE) Fellowship will increase the impact of NERC geoscience in the land redevelopment sector by working directly with individual land owners, developers and geoenvironmental consultancy companies. The geoscience covered by this proposal includes geological and geochemical resources which comprise data, derived data-products, spatial decision-support tools and applied science and technology. The Fellowship will help make land owners, developers and geoenvironmental consultancy companies more competitive and reduce barriers to redevelopment of brownfield sites by minimising uncertainties related to the sub-surface.This Fellowship is needed to support the implementation of UK Government policies on housing and development designed to assist with the recovery of the UK economy. UK Government recognises this link in its Planning and Housing Bill and its reform of England's National Planning Policy Framework, with targets for granting planning permission set at 90% of all suitable brownfield sites by 2020. The Fellowship will help businesses make better use of state-of-the-art NERC geoscience which will help improve their competitiveness at home and enhance the potential to export their expertise. The Fellowship will improve KE between NERC and land owners, developers and geoenvironmental consultancy companies using one-to-many and one-to-one approaches to engage and work with these businesses. Facilitated workshops will equip participants with knowledge of NERC geoscience as well as evaluate the barriers that exist within British Geological Survey (BGS) for its exploitation by the land redevelopment sector. These barriers include price, awareness, licensing, end-user needs, ease of access, electronic format of scientific outputs, software interface and content of 3D/2D sub-surface models. During the one-to-one support the Fellow will shadow a development project manager and identify where in the project life cycle NERC geoscience will impact the most. The Fellow will work intensively with approximately 10 businesses on an individual basis to embed NERC geoscience in the decision making process e.g. use of sub-surface contour maps to cost and design underground car parking at a former chemical plant. The impact to all stakeholders to be quantified and results used to help guide future NERC geoscience.Working with individual businesses will improve the Fellow's understanding of how and at what stage decisions are made in the redevelopment project life cycle. This knowledge will be used to utilise NERC geoscience within approximately 15 live redevelopment projects (e.g. the brownfield sites identified by Positive Homes in their Letter of Support). The fellow will integrate NERC geoscience into projects and quantify the impact. The results will demonstrate good practice for two-way KE and help shape future collaborative funding bids to NERC. The results of the workshops and one-to-one project work will be published as technical case studies on the impact of NERC geoscience to the land redevelopment sector. A design guide will also be produced to help both scientists and business development staff working for NERC utilise exploit the results of the Fellowship, especially in terms of the understanding end-user need. The relationships developed during the Fellowship will present new opportunities for future collaborative projects that will be sustained after the projectThe Fellow will work laterally across NERC and the land redevelopment sector and link with existing Fellows (Steph Bricker and Helen Bonsor), initiatives such as Innovate UK Catapults, NERC funded projects, trade bodies (e.g. Contaminated Land: Application in Real Environments) and regulators (e.g. Plymouth City Council, London Borough of Hackney). This will increase awareness and the impact of the Fellowship by generating new opportunities for collaborations and facilitate new links between businesses and NERC staff where appropriate.