All Research Grants

Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today, for Tomorrow

Summary: Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today, for Tomorrow is a Columbia World Project. CATS is collaborating on the ability of climate models to inform risk reduction, through forecasts and preparedness in the areas of heat waves and hydrometeorological disasters, both of which impact many facets of local and national food systems.
Funded by: Columbia University
Principal Investigator at LSE: Professor Leonard Smith
Project duration: 3 December 2018 - 2 December 2020
CRUISSE - Challenging Radical Uncertainty in Science, Society and the Environment

Summary: The goal of the CRUISSE network is to develop and build widespread linkages between disciplines related to decision-making under uncertainty to lay the groundwork to form a potential RCUK Decision-Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU) Research and Evidence Hub (the 'Hub') whose function will be to co-ordinate expertise and to offer and further develop tools to facilitate resilient and effective decision-making across a full range of real world uncertainty and practice contexts.
Funded by: RCUK 'Decision-making Under Uncertainty' Network call
Grant value (to LSE): £127,561
Principal Investigator: Professor David Tuckett (UCL)
Principal Investigator at LSE: Professor Leonard Smith
Project duration: January 2017 - July 2019
BUG - Better Uncertainty Guidance

Summary: This small project is aimed at improving how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) quantify and communicate uncertainty. It will aim to summarise current (and existing alternative) guidance and formulate improved guidance. CATS is co-sponsoring a meeting in the Netherlands in November 2017 which will draw on international experts both to discuss challenges to the old guidance and to criticise our new guidance.
Funded by: LSE KEI fund
Grant value (to LSE): £23,861
Principal Investigator: Professor Leonard Smith
Project duration: 1 January 2017 - 31 May 2019
EPSIS - Evaluating Probability Scores for the Insurance Sector

Summary: EPSIS aims to help provide clear methodology relating to the evaluation of probability forecasts in insurance. The outcomes will include both original research into the viability of various skill scores and the transfer of existing knowledge and expertise to practitioners in the insurance industry.
Funded by: LSE KEI fund & Lighthill Risk Network
Grant value: £65,600
Principal Investigator: Professor Leonard Smith
Project duration: 1 February 2017 - 31 July 2019
WIDA - Weather Information for Disaster Anticipation

Summary: As part of this fellowship Dr Erica Thompson will be working with the Start Network, a group of charities working on rapid response to humanitarian emergencies. She will assist the Start Network in their efforts to improve their use of weather forecast information in order to anticipate crises before they occur, so that resources can be allocated in advance, potentially saving both costs and lives.
Funded by: NERC (Innovation Placement)
Grant reference: NE/R006873/1
Grant value: £35,866
Principal Investigator: Dr Erica Thompson
Project duration: 1 November 2017 - 30 June 2020
IRIS - Improving the role of information systems in anticipatory disaster risk reduction

Summary: The project aims to develop and demonstrate a general method of measuring and displaying the information content of forecasts, using a novel idea which is based on existing research and freely available data. This will allow humanitarian agencies to act confidently in anticipation of humanitarian crises when there is sufficient information in the forecast, and to implement forecast-based financing schemes such as insurance or anticipatory funding allocation only when there is known to be confidence that the scheme will be effective.
Funded by: NERC (Building resilience with financial instruments call)
Grant reference: NE/R01423X/1
Grant value: £255,418
Principal Investigator: Professor Leonard Smith
Project duration: 1 January 2018 - 31 December 2020
The risk dynamics of insurance claims disputes

Summary: The project aims to create advances in relation to both volume litigation and to high value complex claims. This will include exploring AI and statistical predictive models for valuing disputes and predicting outcomes, predicting cost overruns and case length and managing litigation at a portfolio level.
Funded by: Berrymans Lace Mawer LLP (BLM) & LSE KEI fund
Principal Investigator: Professor Henry Wynn
Project duration: 1 July 2018 - 30 June 2020
ECOPOTENTIAL - Improving Future Ecosystem Benefits Through Earth Observations

Summary: This multi-partner project, led by Professor Antonello Provenzale at CNR, Italy, aims to improve terrestrial and marine ecosystem benefits in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures. ECOPOTENTIAL will create a new unified framework for ecosystem studies and management of protected areas. The project will make best use of Earth Observation (EO) and monitoring data, and new modelling approaches will be developed able to include information from EO data; ecosystem services in current and future conditions will be assessed, and the requirements of future protected areas will be defined.
Funded by: EU H2020
Grant reference: 641762
Grant value (to LSE): £207,749
Lead Research Organisation: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
Principal Investigator at LSE: Professor Leonard Smith
Project duration: June 2015 - October 2019
IOOS - Integrated Ocean Observing System

Summary: Dr Ralph Rayner is the industry liaison for the US Interagency Ocean Observation Committee (IOOC) and the US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) that it coordinates. Dr Rayner acts as the information point for a broad range of relevant industries; implements and manages a network for the exchange of information; and organises outreach workshops which promote the socioeconomic benefits of ocean observations. He also supports the interface between US IOOS and regional initiatives in other countries as well as the interface with the United Nations coordinated Global Ocean Observing System.
Funded by: US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Principal Investigator: Dr Ralph Rayner
Project duration: 2007 - ongoing
SHANE - Strategic Hurdles in the Attribution of Natural Extremes

Workshop: 17 November 2016
Funded by: EPSRC SECURE Network
Grant value (to LSE): £3,000
Project duration: 24 May 2016 - 31 January 2017
Methodologies for planning complex infrastructure under uncertainty

Funded by: Centre for Digital Built Britain
Principal Investigator: Dr Chris Dent (Edinburgh)
Principal Investigator at LSE: Professor Henry Wynn
Project duration: 1 July 2018 - 31 December 2018
ReUseHeat - Recovery of Urban Excess Heat

Summary: There is enough waste energy produced in the EU to heat the EU’s entire building stock; however, despite this huge potential only a restricted number of small scale examples of urban waste heat recovery are present across the EU. The objective of REUSEHEAT is to demonstrate, at TRL8 first of their kind advanced, modular and replicable systems enabling the recovery and reuse of waste heat available at the urban level. REUSEHEAT explicitly builds on previous knowledge and EU funded projects (notably CELSIUS, Stratego and HRE4) and aims to overcome both technical and non technical barriers to the unlocking of urban waste heat recovery investments across Europe.
Funded by: EU H2020
Principal Investigator at LSE: Professor Henry Wynn
Project duration: 1 October 2017 - 30 September 2021
Climate Science into the Boardroom (CIBR)

Summary: A follow-on to an earlier NERC-funded 'PURE Associate' project, during which a methodology was developed for interactively visualising the climate impacts of different energy system choices for 2050. The results of the original project can now be viewed on the Global Calculator web tool. The aims of the current project are to: develop the climate science representation in the Global Calculator in a scientifically rigorous and easily understandable format; facilitate relationships and information-sharing between 'science' and 'boardroom', in particular helping climate science to focus more on making scientific outputs genuinely actionable and relevant, and helping users/decision-makers to understand where the limits of actionable and relevant information lie; ensure that insight, confidence and uncertainty are each fairly represented; transparent, open-source materials and documentation at all levels.
Funded by: NERC
Principal Investigator: Professor Leonard Smith
Grant reference: NE/M008304/1
Project duration: October 2014 - December 2016
Engaging with the Future: Using the Global Carbon Calculator

Summary: Two workshops will be hosted, one with industry, 'Evidence-based decision making in a new climate', and the other with academics, 'Shaping the research agenda: how can science provide the most useful information for climate decision making?'
Funded by: LSE IAA Impact Fund
Project duration: 1 January 2016 - 30 September 2016
GLIMPSE - Gauging Limitations of Imperfect Model Prediction with Sculpted Ensembles

Summary: Novel, potentially deployable approaches to operational adaptation of infrastructure and transport for the future climate would prove of great value, given the very limited insight current climate model simulations are able to provide at the high spatial/temporal resolutions previously considered by design engineers and regulators. GLIMPSE will explore a game-changing approach to extreme events in the unknown climate of the future.
Funded by: EPSRC ReCoVER Network
Principal Investigator: Professor Leonard Smith
Project duration: 1 January 2016 - ongoing
CELSIUS - Combined Efficient Large Scale Integrated Urban Systems

Summary: This project involves a number of leading utilities organizations as well as academic partners. It aims to maximize carbon savings in cities by maximizing the unused energy saving potential through tackling ways to effectively and efficiently recover energy losses.
Funded by: European Commission FP7 (Smart Cities & Communities 2011 call)
Lead Research Organisation: City of Gothenburg
Principal Investigator at LSE: Professor Henry Wynn
Project duration: April 2013 - December 2017
Analysis of Weather Data

Summary: The identification of potential local data streams, for example, pilot weather stations, non-public data and internet data and then to undertake analysis of weather data to identify factors which drive safety. Areas of focus are: identifying ways of collecting hyper local weather data including using RNLI premises to do so; identifying ways of collating and analysing data to predict hyper local weather conditions; considering ways of using predicted hyper local weather conditions to produce safety information, in useable formats, for the RNLI, the Coastguard and the general public.
Funded by: Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI)
Principal Investigator: Professor Leonard Smith
Project duration: 17 September 2015 - 30 November 2016
Engaging with the Future: Using the Global Carbon Calculator

Summary: Two workshops will be hosted, one with industry, 'Evidence-based decision making in a new climate', and the other with academics, 'Shaping the research agenda: how can science provide the most useful information for climate decision making?'
Funded by: LSE IAA Impact Fund
Project duration: 1 January 2016 - 30 September 2016
RAPID-RAPIT - Risk Assessment, Probability and Impace Team

Summary: A collaborative project that is attempting to quantify the likelihood of a shut down in the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) in the North Atlantic.
Funded by: NERC Lead Research Organisation: National Oceanography Centre, Southampton Grant reference: NE/G015392/1
Grant value: £67,116
Grant holder: Dr David Stainforth
Projection duration: 1 October 2009 - 30 September 2013
Communicating the Character of Climate Change Uncertainty

Summary: The project aims to encourage a wider and more informed public discourse around the challenges of understanding and responding to the problems of climate change. It will build on the exhibition materials produced for the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2011.
Funded by: LSE HEIF5
Grant holder: Dr David Stainforth
Project duration: January 2013 - December 2015
Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, phase II (AVOID 2)

Summary: CATS is providing knowledge integration for the AVOID 2 programme, by collating AVOID 2 and other research into policy relevant material for use by government stakeholders.
Project duration: August 2014 - March 2016
Blue-Green Cities - Delivering and Evaluating Multiple Flood Risk Benefits

Summary: New strategies for managing urban flood risk are required, necessitating radical changes in the ways cities are managed, planned and developed. Previous research has identified multiple options and measures for future urban flood risk management that align with more general targets for water centric, sustainable communities. However, it remains unclear how these options and measures can be: (1) delivered in practice, and (2) comprehensively evaluated in terms of their benefits and costs. This project aims to develop novel ways of driving new, resilient urban forms and fabrics through delivering measures to manage flood events sustainably while enhancing urban life; providing scope for radical solutions under new build; and, realising possibilities for improving existing performance through retrofit and urban renewal. Wikipedia entry.
Funded by: EPSRC
Lead Research Organisation: University of Nottingham
Grant reference: EP/K013661/1
Principal Investigator at LSE: Professor Leonard Smith
Project duration: January 2013 - January 2016
Visualisation of Climate Model Output and Uncertainties for the DECC 2050 Global Calculator

Summary: Dr Erica Thompson and Professor Leonard Smith are working on visualisation and communication of the IPCC's climate projections, in partnership with the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). This is part of the 2050 Global Calculator project which aims to inform the debate about energy and climate systems in the run up to the UNFCCC Paris COP in 2015.
Funded by: NERC PURE Associates
Project duration: November 2013 - January 2015
Improving the Safety of RNLI Operations through a better use of Probabilistic Weather Information

Summary: Research student Edward Wheatcroft and Professor Leonard Smith worked with the RNLI to provide support for lifeboat operators with respect to both current and potential meteorological conditions. By providing guidance to develop tools that give real time information on the weather outlook, the target was to help provide decision makers with better support to make the right choices with regards to the safety of both the lifeboat crew and the general public.
Funded by: NERC PURE Associates
Project duration: November 2013 - May 2014
The Munich Re Programme - Evaluating the Economics of Climate Risks and Opportunities in the Insurance Sector

Summary: The programme, part of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP), focused on informing the insurance sector on the impacts of alternative approaches to carbon finance and emission trading; aiding the design of trading schemes and suggesting new financial service products to be developed; informing decision-makers, at the company level and the country level, on how better to balance investment between mitigation and adaptation, survivability and sustainability.
Funded by: Munich Re
Project duration: October 2008 - September 2013
EQUIP - End-to-End Quantification of Uncertainty for Impacts Prediction

Summary: EQUIP brought together the UK climate modelling, statistical modelling and impacts communities to work closely together for the first time on developing risk-based prediction for decision making in the face of climate variability and change. EQUIP was a collaborative project involving eleven UK universities and research institutions. In CATS our focus was to contrast information from statistical models of observational time series with the output of complicated dynamical models of the atmosphere/ocean system. Our aim was to quantify the spatial and temporal scales on which these different methods could provide quantitative input to policy decisions.
Funded by: NERC
Principal Investigator at LSE: Professor Leonard Smith and Dr David Stainforth
Grant reference: NE/H003479/1
Project duration: January 2010 - June 2013
Can a Citation Database give a Fair View of Research Quality?

Summary: Developing multi-faceted statistics for the insightful comparison of researchers, departments, and universities. This project aimed to develop, illustrate and evaluate new measures of research quality based on quantitative analysis of the quantity, quality and diversity of citations to an individual's published research papers; to illustrate the need for multi-variate measures; to demonstrate variations between fields of study, and develop methods to account for these variations; and to evaluate the strengths and weakness of proposed statistics, in particular how transparent they are and how easily it might be manipulated.
Funded by: STICERD
Project duration: June 2009 - November 2009
Blue Gene Project

Summary: To examine the ability of state of the art general circulation models to shadow the observations; starting with EC Earth (the models considered will vary with the permissions granted the Bluegene team. We will aim to consider both seasonal time scales and beyond, investigating the durations over which models can shadow temperature in Nino3.4 and the Atlantic Main Development region, and establish a methodology of lasting value in evaluating the relevance of large models to the insurance sector, as well as evaluating the current state of the art. This will also set the baseline for designing "climate shadowing experiments over decadal periods. In addition, we would hope to assist in climate@home the (US version of climateprediction.net) and to use the climate@home model(s) in parallel shadowing experiments, investigating experimental design incorporating the synergistic use of distributed computing informed by focused Bluegene runs.
Funded by: Lloyd's of London, utilising Hartree Centre computational resources
Climate Change and the Insurance Industry (CCII)

Summary: To develop methods to assess uncertainty in large scale mathematical models in a variety of scientific areas, particularly those models in computer simulators.
Funded by: EC FP7 - People - Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways scheme
Grant holder: Professor Henry Wynn
Project duration: August 2008 - July 2012
MUCM - Managing Uncertainty in Complex Models

Summary: The project was held by a consortium of five universities - Sheffield (the lead partner), Durham, Aston, Southampton and LSE. MUCM was a multidisciplinary project concerned with quantifying and reducing uncertainty in the predictions of complex models across a wide range of application areas, including basic science, environmental science, engineering, technology, biosciences, and economics. The first phase of MUCM drew to a close in September 2010 and was followed by a second two-year phase (MUCM2). There was special emphasis on a number of areas of interest to the wider CATS programme, including stochastic simulation and modelling for decision making.
Funded by: Research Councils UK
Grant reference: EP/D048893/1
Principal investigator at LSE: Professor Henry Wynn
Project duration: June 2006 - December 2012
ENSEMBLES - Ensemble-based Predictions of Climate Changes and their Impacts

Summary: To develop an ensemble prediction system of climate changes and their impacts.
Funded by: EU 6th Framework Programme / Integrated project
Grant reference: GOCE-CT-2003-505539-ENSEMBLES
Grant holder: Professor Leonard Smith
Grant value (to LSE): £108,306
Project duration: 1 September 2004 - 31 December 2009

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NAPSTER - Nonlinear Analysis & Prediction Statistics from Timeseries & Ensemble-forecast Realizations

Summary: To set a basis for an innovative knowledge transfer mechanism between science base and users of the environmental predictions.
Funded by: NERC
Grant reference: NE/D00120X/1
Grant holder: Professor Leonard Smith
Grant value: £152,481
Project duration: 1 November 2005 - 30 April 2008
DIME - Direct & Inverse Modelling in End-to-End Environmental Estimation

Summary: To track uncertainty, both from model inadequacy and from the unknown initial state of the atmosphere, all the way through the modelling process, to yield estimates of the uncertainty in quantities of industrial interest.
Funded by: EPSRC-DTI Smith Institute Faraday Partnership
Grant reference: GR/R92363/01
Grant holder: Professor Leonard Smith
Grant value: £94,360 (plus industrial in-kind support from EDF Energy and Risk Management Solutions)
Project duration: 1 March 2003 - 31 August 2005
REMIND - Real-time Modelling of Nonlinear Datastreams

Summary: The analysis of time series of frequency of the national grid, extracting information on the state of the grid from very long, high resolution data sets, and on detecting imminent failure in rotating machinery from observations in the way they vibrated.
Funded by: EPSRC-DTI Smith Institute Faraday Partnership Grant reference: GR/R92271/01
Grant holder: Professor Leonard Smith
Grant value: £85,827 (plus industrial in-kind support from National Grid Company and Intertec)
Project duration: 1 March 2003 - 28 February 2005
climateprediction.net: a practical platform for ensemble Earth System Modelling

Summary: A distributed computing project that aimed to produce predictions of the Earth's climate up to 2100 and to test the accuracy of climate models. To do this, it utilised computers of people from around the world - making use of time when they had their computers switched on, but were not using them to full capacity.
Funded by: NERC
Grant reference: NE/C515747/
Grant holder: Myles Allen, Oxford University
Principal Investigator at LSE: Professor Leonard Smith
Grant value: £283,627.93
Project duration: November 2003 - October 2006
Climate Variability

Summary: Ensemble simulations of observed climate variability.
Funded by: University of California, San Diego
Grant reference: 10255373
Grant holder: Professor Leonard Smith
Grant value: £16,026
Project duration: 1 November 2005 - 30 June 2006
Weather Risk Management

Summary: Improving operational weather risk management, demand forecasts and the use of joint distributions.
Funded by: University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
Grant reference: S05-54803
Grant holder: Professor Leonard Smith
Grant value: £10,526
Project duration: 16 May 2005 - 15 April 2006
Towards Identifying and Increasing the Socio-Economic Value of High-Impact Weather Forecasts

Summary: To support a Pembroke research fellowship in applied probabilistic meteorology.
Funded by: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Grant reference: Lenny Smith - NOAA
Grant holder: Professor Leonard Smith
Grant value: £94,538
Project duration: 1 October 2003 - 30 September 2004
Improved Risk Management via Probabilistic Weather Forecasts

Summary: Interpreting ensemble forecasts for risk analysis.
Funded by: Royal Dutch Shell
Grant holder: Professor Leonard Smith
Grant value: £21,873
Project duration: 1 June 2002 - 1 January 2004
2002 EC Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship

Held by Dr Antje Weisheimer, to work with Professor Leonard Smith within CATS on the predictability in large climate models and the uncertainty ranges for evaluation of ensemble climate forecasts.
Project duration: 2002 - 3003