Welcome to the DAFNI July newsletter. 

We are delighted to announce our keynote speakers for the DAFNI Conference 2024. Our first keynote slot will be presented by Martine Wauben, Head of Data for London, and Helen Huemer-Markides, Infrastructure Data and Innovation Lead, both work for the Greater London Authority (GLA). GLA is keen to work with the DAFNI research community and understand how GLA can work with academics and industry to inform policy. 

Our second keynote speech will be given by Professor Asaad Faramarzi, Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at University of Birmingham. In line with our conference themes, Asaad will be discussing the University of Birmingham’s campus digital twin, the benefits, and how they are using this to inform key decisions linked to decarbonisation of heat and transport.

We are pleased to announce that we are welcoming back speakers from our eight Building a Secure and Resilient World projects, to give an update on progress and results. We are delighted to confirm that speakers from our six new transport and energy sandpit projects will be presenting too!

In addition to our fantastic keynote speakers and project speakers, we have an industry-led panel including data sharing experts from Atkins Realis, Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, Water Resources East, and UK Power Networks, with one more panel member yet to be announced.

Book your place now. 

With many academics, government and industry partners attending the conference, we value the importance of networking and collaboration. In this year’s agenda we have extended our networking session to include a longer networking lunch and exhibition. If you are interested in having a presence in the exhibition space, please contact us on info@dafni.ac.uk, it is first come first served! 

This month, the DAFNI programme has been making progress on many fronts, including the conference agenda, the upcoming roadshows, working collaboratively with our Centre of Excellence and other funded projects, building new partnerships and working on our strategic roadmap. We look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events and look forward to August successes. 

Dr Brian Matthews, DAFNI Programme Lead

DAFNI is running a monthly lunchtime webinar series throughout 2024. Each month a different speaker is discussing their work using the DAFNI platform. The sessions run for 60 minutes: 40 minutes for the presentations and 20 minutes for questions.

With the holiday season upon us, we are having a webinar break across the summer. We will be back October onwards with a fantastic line up including Joanne Leach from UKCRIC, the Environment Agency, and DAFNI’s Dr Brian Matthews. 

• October 2nd – Dr Brian Matthews: Challenges and Opportunities to Data Sharing 
• October 30th – UK Collaboratorium for Research in Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC) 
• November 20th – David Pritchard – Environment Agency

Please use the links above or view the whole series and listen to recordings of previous sessions here

Coming to Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland! 

Our UK regional roadshows run from September through to October 2024.  We will be visiting Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. We are happy to confirm the booking pages have been created and we are now able to share these with you, please see the links below and come join us, the events are free! 

The roadshows involve a DAFNI introduction and platform demonstration, followed by lightning talks from the host area on their current research, which allows all parties to explore opportunities of how we can collaborate. The second day is a workshop focusing on the barriers and opportunities to data sharing, our funders Department of Science, Innovation and Technology will be joining us.

Ymunwch â ni yn Abertawe. 

Please note, the DAFNI programme team are in the planning stages for additional roadshow events around the UK, if this is something of interest to you, please contact info@dafni.ac.uk 

Book now for our 2024 DAFNI conference on the 10th of September 2024! 

We are holding early bird prices up until end of August 2024! From September our standard prices will rise from £45 to £60, student prices will rise from £20 to £30 

Read the latest DAFNI blog where you’ll hear about bringing uncertainty analysis into the DAFNI platform thanks to work being carried out by Francesca Pianosi, Senior Lecturer in Water and Environmental Engineering, and Saskia Salwey, Research Associate, both in the School of Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering at the University of Bristol.

The USARIS project (Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis for Resilient Infrastructure Systems) will bring methodologies for Uncertainty and Sensitivity analysis of model outputs into DAFNI and deliver recommendations for best practice in their application. It will also investigate scalability and provide recommendations for future developments of the DAFNI platform to support the uptake of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis by the DAFNI users’ community.

Click to read the blog

DAFNI moves to a new Kubernetes cluster

If you’re going to the #KCDUK Kubernetes Community Days UK – London this year, be sure to check out Lewis Sampson‘s talk on DAFNI’s move from the old to the new Kubernetes cluster!  

KCD UK London is an in-person event running from 22-23 October 2024 and is hosted by CodeNode in the City of London. Tickets are available at: https://ti.to/open-source-events/kcduk2024

New

• When searching the data catalogue, if a search term is used, the results are now ordered by relevance, rather than date.
• When searching the data catalogue using the search term ‘openclim’, the OpenCLIM_public_assets dataset will be pinned to the top of the search results. This dataset contains details of all the publicly available OpenCLIM assets on DAFNI.

Improvements

• Added the ability to delete steps in the Workflow builder using the backspace key.
• When viewing a Workflow details page, the Parameter Set table now displays the Workflow Version ID with which the Parameter Set was last updated.
• Improved the layout of the Dataset details page.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where users could see Dataset Versions they did not have permission to view in the Version drop-down list.
• Fixed an issue where users could sometimes not run Sequential Looping Workflows with up to 50 iterations.

We run monthly drop-in sessions in which we will be available on an open Zoom call for 2 hours to give you 1-to-1 support with any problems that you may be having on the DAFNI platform. 

No technical question is too big or small. The next two dates for these drop-ins are: 2-4pm 14th August 2024 and 2-4pm 11th September 2024. The link for the Zoom call is here.

A great opportunity to get up to speed quickly on DAFNI and to ask our technical experts your burning questions. Highly recommended for those developing a research proposal and are thinking of including DAFNI as the platform of choice for the research.  

Our regular technical training events (Wednesdays, 1:30pm) on DAFNI are available to book via Eventbrite. Next training dates: 

• 4 September 2024
• 30 October 2024
• 15 January 2025

To attend the event you will need experience of entering code through a command line interface, for more information and to book, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/dafni-31793198351

OpenCLIM datasets released

OpenCLIM, an open integrated climate impacts modelling framework implemented on DAFNI, has now released a range of datasets for public use. Although these have available for a few months already, in the latest DAFNI release the datasets have been made much easier to find – simply search for ‘openclim’ in a dataset search and the first result will be meta-file listing all public OpenCLIM datasets on DAFNI. These open datasets include results on the impact of climate change through to 2080 on hazards such as urban flooding and drought and the impact on agriculture for example, though take a look to see the broader set of data available. In future updates to DAFNI, a new page highlighting the collection of results from OpenCLIM will also be released, making finding these new resources much easier.

The Water Systems Leakage (WSL) Project

Leaks from water distribution systems are significant. Around 20% of treated, potable water is lost after entry into the distribution network https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/reducing-leakage/. Data (well-defined, accessible, usable, etc.) is needed to provide accurate water demand predictions, early warnings for possible system failures and of potential supply shortages. Data is also critical for effective AI tools that are the future of proactive leakage management in water distribution networks. 

Real-time sensor data on water flow and pressure is a priority whilst data on the weather, soil characteristics, demographics, pipe conditions, repair logs, etc. can improve accuracy of AI insights.

Methods for AI are already emerging but water authorities must overcome barriers to data collection, data quality, data definition, and data sharing before insights from AI and computational models can contribute to decision making and operations.

The Water Systems Leakage (WSL) project will contribute to Data Infrastructure for National Infrastructure (DINI) by highlighting the data barriers and opportunities, providing potential data descriptions (covering quality, semantics, and logic of data), and showing the potential for data infrastructure to support water infrastructure by reducing water leakage.

WSL are keen to hear from water authorities regarding barriers to data collection, data quality, data definition, and data sharing. Please contact l.varga@ucl.ac.uk if this project is of interest to you.

Speakers included Professor Jim Hall, Professor of Climate and Environmental Risk, University of Oxford, who spoke in a panel on Science for a Greener Financial System. 

Jim is also Chair of the DAFNI Strategy Board.

The DAFNI platform supports research that aims to provide the UK with a world-leading infrastructure system that is more integrated, efficient, powerful, reliable, resilient and affordable. It is enabling the community to conduct research that is able to generate new insights at a higher level of detail and accuracy than ever before.

DAFNI was originally funded by an £8 million EPSRC investment in the UK Collaboratorium for Research in Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC) and a £1.2m grant under EPSRC’s Resource Only Strategic Equipment. Its aim has been to become the national platform to satisfy the computational needs in support of data analysis, infrastructure modelling and visualisation, and encourage whole-system thinking for the UK’s infrastructure research needs.
 
In March 2023 UKRI awarded £4m to STFC Scientific Computing to establish a national Centre of Excellence for Resilient Infrastructure Analysis, and move the Data & Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI) into its new phase.

To find out more about DAFNI, visit: www.dafni.ac.uk​