Goal 14: Life Below Water

Our university

Cranfield Living Laboratory is a testbed for transformative technologies and new approaches to deliver enhanced social, economic and environmental outcomes in urban, transport and infrastructure systems. Cranfield Urban Observatory, with its campus-wide sensor network, is a key component of the Living Lab, generating data used in teaching and learning. Real-time data, including water quality of the Chicheley Brook can be accessed from the web site.

Research

The Connected Waters Leverhulme Doctoral Programme, awarded in 2023, will fund up to 18 PhD studentships to conduct multidisciplinary research on freshwater ecosystems, across two universities, Cranfield and Roehampton.

The following research projects related to this SDG continued throughout 2023:

• Intelligent Dynamic Flood Response and Recovery Strategy (iD-FRe2S) will develop the combined use of unmanned aerial vehicles and artificial intelligence to better identify the impacts of flooding (fluvial, pluvial and sewer) and facilitate clean up and recovery.
• Improving Irrigation Water Management for Sugarcane Production in Sub-Saharan Africa (a PhD funded by the Sue White Fund for Africa) seeks to evaluate current irrigation management practices, including water resources and abstraction management and development of irrigation benchmarking to assess performance across the different sugarcane businesses in Malawi, Zambia and Swaziland.
• The NexGen project, which aimed to demonstrate circular water solutions for water reuse and resource recovery (energy and nutrients), reported its final outputs including several policy briefings.
• Improved prediction of cohesive sediment erosion based on inter-particle forces reported its findings.

Outreach

The River Restoration Centre staff are based on Cranfield campus and are employees of Cranfield University. Their outreach/community work includes providing training courses, videos and factsheets to support conservation projects. The River Champion recognition award acknowledges the voluntary efforts of individuals improving rivers in their local catchment.

In 2023, our student Green Team organised the first ever trip to the Grand Union canal in Cosgrove, Milton Keynes, to support Buckingham Canal Society as part of a wider project to restore the canal for people and wildlife.

Research

The following paragraphs summarise some of the diverse research projects addressing this SDG undertaken in 2021/22.

• The final report of our NextGen project was issued. The project aimed to demonstrate circular water solutions for water reuse and resource recovery (energy and nutrients) in ten high-profile European case studies, developing the tools to transfer knowledge and upscale the processes.
• A new project with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute looked at blue carbon stored in the world’s coastal and marine ecosystems.
• A HEIF-funded project aims to develop a systems engineering approach to assess the recovery of areas impacted by oil spillage.
• Project iD-FRe2S aims to develop the combined use of unmanned aerial vehicles and artificial intelligence to better identify the impacts of flooding (fluvial, pluvial and sewer) and facilitate clean up and recovery.
• Improving Irrigation Water Management for Sugarcane Production in Sub-Saharan Africa (a PhD funded by the Sue White Fund for Africa) seeks to evaluate current irrigation management practices, including water resources and abstraction management and development of irrigation benchmarking to assess performance across the different sugar cane businesses in Malawi, Zambia and Swaziland.

Outreach

The River Restoration Centre staff are based on Cranfield campus and are employees of Cranfield University. Their outreach/community work includes providing training courses, videos and factsheets to support conservation projects. The River Champion recognition award acknowledges the voluntary efforts of individuals improving rivers in their local catchment.

We operate our own sewage works at the Cranfield campus which processes most of our wastewater on site. This unique facility is also used by us and partner organisations for teaching and research purposes. Ongoing upgrades to the monitoring, alarm and metering equipment at the sewage works ensure it remains within consent levels for all effluent discharges. More information can be found on our water and discharges web page.

The Water Theme at Cranfield University is home to two centres of excellence: Cranfield Water Science Institute and the Centre for Water, Environment and Development. We offer postgraduate taught and research degrees as well as short courses on campus or in-company.

An ongoing PhD funded by the Sue White Fund for Africa seeks to evaluate current irrigation management practices, including water resources and abstraction management and development of irrigation benchmarking to assess performance across the different sugar cane businesses in Malawi, Zambia and Swaziland.

Cranfield University is collaborating with Warden Biomedia through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) to embed cutting-edge wastewater treatment knowledge and capabilities to enable the development of novel biofilm technologies. This technology will deliver sustainable solutions for the wastewater industry.

Our ongoing NextGen project aims to demonstrate circular water solutions for water reuse and resource recovery (energy and nutrients) in ten high-profile European case studies, developing the tools to transfer the knowledge and upscale the processes.