Centre for Doctoral Training in Real-Time Digital Water-Based Systems for Environmental Health Protection (RED-ALERT CDT)

The RED-ALERT Centre for Doctoral Training will train a new generation of scientists and engineers to build digital water systems that can detect and respond to contamination in real time. Current water quality monitoring often relies on taking samples and waiting days for lab results—by which time a pollution event may have already passed through a drinking water intake or bathing water site. This leaves water companies, environmental regulators, and public health authorities reacting to problems rather than preventing them. The gap is not just in sensors, but in the people who can integrate sensing, data science, and water engineering into operational systems. If successful, this training programme will produce specialists who can design and deploy networks of sensors, predictive models, and automated control systems that give continuous, minute-by-minute information about water quality. That could transform how utilities protect drinking water supplies, how regulators monitor rivers and coasts for faecal contamination or chemical spills, and how health agencies issue warnings about unsafe bathing waters. The impact falls squarely on infrastructure—the pipes, treatment plants, and monitoring stations that quietly keep water safe—rather than on any single consumer product or medical treatment.