UKCRIC - Urban Water Facilities at Cranfield

Water infrastructure is vital to human health, wellbeing and the economy, delivering a clean and secure water supply, reducing the risks of flooding and ensuring sanitary conditions. Water supply and sanitation has done more to enhance and protect human health than all medical advances combined. Over £25B will be invested in the UK's water infrastructure over the next five years, but these systems face significant challenges in the form of climate change, a growing and increasingly demanding population, and an asset base that includes over 800,000 km of sewer and water supply pipes with an estimated average age of 70 years. The UKCRIC facilities at Cranfield provide capabilities to advance the understanding of long term performance and serviceability of water infrastructure, deliver cheaper and more environmentally benign approaches to water treatment as well as enable full scale testing of new technologies for treatment, distribution and collection networks and flood management. The facilities provide experimental and testing capacity in critical areas of science and engineering such as advanced sensors, point-of-use treatment, drinking water treatment, the control of fats, oils, and greases (FOG), and bio-resource recovery. Of value to researchers working across disciplines (chemistry, biology, digital, materials, control systems engineering etc) the facilities will also be used to develop and test new approaches to water infrastructure design and operation.