Past Events

Webinar: Data Sharing in Infrastructure and Urban Systems, Dr Joanne Leach

Date: 30th October 2024, 12 noon

Dr Joanne Leach presented the outcomes from two workshops: one held with infrastructure and urban systems practitioners and related industries, and the other with academics working within urban observatories. Each group faces particular pressures that influence their ability to share data (such as commercial sensitivities and the ability to handle near-live data streaming), but they also recognise the opportunities afforded by sharing data and see the potential in taking a ‘data-sharing first’ approach to their work.

DAFNI Roadshow Queen's University Belfast 28-29 October 2024

DAFNI Roadshow, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland

Date: 28 – 29 October 2024

We were delighted to have Professor Helen McCarthy, Chief Scientific and Technology Adviser, Northern Ireland Executive, give a fantastic talk on day one of the roadshow event!

This event involved a DAFNI introduction and platform demonstration, followed by lightning talks from the host area on their current research, which allowed all parties to explore opportunities to collaborate.

There were lightning talks from universities on aspects of infrastructure research from energy, water, transport, flooding, cyber security resilience and net zero.

DAFNI Roadshow, University of Glasgow, Scotland

Date: 22nd – 23rd October 2024

We were delighted to have Professor Mathew Williams, Chief Scientific Adviser, Environmental, Natural Resources and Agriculture, at the Scottish Government, open day one of the roadshow event!

This event involved a DAFNI introduction and platform demonstration, followed by lightning talks from the host area on their current research, which allowed all parties to explore opportunities to collaborate.

There were lightning talks from universities on aspects of infrastructure research from energy, water, transport, flooding, cyber security resilience and net zero.

DAFNI Roadshow, Swansea University, Wales

Date: 16th – 17th September 2024

We were delighted to have Glyn Jones, Chief Digital Officer for Welsh Government open day one of the roadshow event.

This event involved a DAFNI introduction and platform demonstration, followed by lightning talks from the host area on their current research, which allowed all parties to explore opportunities to collaborate. 

There were lightning talks from universities on aspects of infrastructure research from energy, water, transport, flooding, cyber security resilience and net zero.

Webinar: Energy Sandpit Projects

Date: 10th July 2024, 12 noon

D-RES (Provision of distributed grid resilience using EVs during extreme weather events) is a collaborative project led by Dr Desen Kırlı from University of Edinburgh along with Dr Laiz Souto from University of Bristol.

ForNet (FORecasting Services for Energy NETworks) is a collaborative project led by Professor Kostas Nikolopoulos from Durham University. The team is made up of Dr Yang Lu, York St. John University and Dr Haoran Zhang, Imperial College London.

Webinar: Uncertainty in infrastructure systems modelling

Date: 12th June 2024, 12 noon

Dr Francesca Pianosi and Saskia Salwey, University of Bristol

Dr Francesca Pianosi is Senior Lecturer in Water and Environmental Engineering based in the School of Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on advancing the way mathematical modelling is used to inform decision-making under uncertainty, particularly for water resource and natural risk management. She is an international expert on uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis and the lead author of the open-source SAFE toolbox, which is used by thousands of scientists and practitioners worldwide to analyse the propagation of uncertainty in mathematical models (https://safetoolbox.github.io/).

Webinar: Transport Sandpit Projects Update

Date: 22nd May 2024, 12 noon

Ji-Eun Byun, ClimaTracks

ClimaTracks is a collaboration project led by Giuliano Punzo from the University of Sheffield. The team is made up of Ji-Eun Byun, University of Glasgow, Qian Fu, University of Birmingham, Tohid Erfani, University College London, Iryna Yevseyeva, De Montfort University and Konstantinos Nikolopoulos, Durham University. This project is looking into forecasting the resilience of railway networks through propagating uncertainty.

Qiuchen Lu, IMPACT

IMPACT is a collaboration project led by Qiuchen Lu and Tao Cheng from University College London. The team is made up of Tohid Erfani, University College London, Trung Hieu Tran, Cranfield University, Mr Xuhui Lin, University College London and Mr Xianghui Zhang, University College London. This project is looking into IMproving flood disruPted road networks with a dynAmic people-Centric digital Twins (IMPACT).

Fabian Steinmann, MARS

MARS (Modelling Aviation Resilience Scenarios) is a project led by Dr Fabian Steinmann from Cranfield University along with Dr Irene Moulitsas and Dr Desmond Bisandu from Cranfield University. The project seeks to explore the resilience of the UK aviation system during mass diversion events.

Webinar: Dr Jens Jensen – The Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo)

Date: 27th March 2024, 12 noon

The Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo) is a pioneering climate change adaptation digital twin project that provided a practical example of how connected data can improve climate adaptation and resilience across a system of systems.

 The aim is to study the interdependency between networks when failures arise from climate events made worse by the climate emergency, but without revealing sensitive information about assets that users are not allowed to see. Current work in the CReDo projects focuses on failure model “elicitation,” how to get an expert to describe how an asset might fail or degrade under certain conditions.

DAFNI had a pivotal role to play in building the CReDo digital twin by identifying and integrating data, and enabling collaboration between the three partners, BT, Anglian Water, and UK Power Networks.  The expertise from the DAFNI side was delivered by Dr Jen Jensen who is a Data Security expert within Scientific Computing.

 In this webinar you will learn more about CreDo, DAFNI’s role, project outputs and impact, failure models and computation with sensitive data!

Webinar: Professor Robert Nicholls – ‘OpenCLIM: Open Climate Impacts Modelling Framework’

Date: 28th February 2024, 12 noon

Robert Nicholls is based at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. He has a long experience of analysing long-term coastal problems and finding solutions. Much of his work has focused on sea-level rise and climate change. A distinctive dimension has been consideration of the coastal zone as a series of interacting systems which facilitates policy analysis. He also has extensive international and global experience, especially in coastal cities, deltas and small islands. He has advised national governments (e.g., UK, Netherlands, Bangladesh, Singapore) and intergovernmental organisations (e.g., OECD) on climate change and coastal issues. He was a lead author to five reports of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) assessment process. He leads the OpenCLIM Project which is developing methods for integrated assessment to support national and sub-national policy analysis on climate change risks and adaptation using the DAFNI platform.

Webinar: DAFNI Sandpit Funding Opportunity

Date: 10th January 2024, 12 noon

Thank you to everyone who attended our first in the series on webinars, on the sandpit funding opportunity. We hope you found the information useful. Please see the video for a reminder of all information. 

DAFNI logo

DAFNI (Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure)  Annual Conference

At this year’s DAFNI Conference on 12th September 2023, we welcomed over 100 in-person delegates to Imperial College, London for the day.

The conference theme of ‘Building a Secure and Resilient World’ highlighted the importance of the new Centre of Excellence for Resilient Infrastructure Analysis, as well as the pivotal role of the Data & Analytics for National Infrastructure (DAFNI) platform in climate-related and infrastructure projects.

The Centre of Excellence fosters research in resilience in the natural and built environment as part of the overarching UKRI programme ‘Building a Secure and Resilient World’ (BSRW), a 5-year programme which seeks to tap the UK’s research and innovation system to tackle large-scale, complex challenges for the UK.

Bookings open 2023

DAFNI Annual Conference 2023 – Building a Secure & Resilient World

Date: 12th September 2023
Time: 09:00 – 17:00 GMT
Location: Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Imperial College London

Bookings close 8th September 2023. 

Come and join us for our annual conference – Building a Secure & Resilient World.

Our conference this year includes exciting keynotes, along with announcing the projects funded through the BSRW project. 

Click below to find out more and register. 

city skyline

UKCRIC Event: Discover DAFNI: High-performance computing for national infrastructure

Date: 27 March 2023
Time: 10:30- 16:00 GMT
Location: Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus, Didcot OX11 0QX

Find out how to increase your research impact, collaborate with other modellers, and secure the legacy of your work by using DAFNI, a hybrid high-performance computing platform.

Hear about the Building a Secure and Resilient World Grant Theme and learn how you can apply for grant funding through DAFNI. Meet the team behind DAFNI’s development and have a tour of the Data Centre where DAFNI is situated.

Click on Find out more and register to book your place.

people looking at city

DAFNI Centre of Excellence for Resilient Societies Funding call Info Event

Date: 16 March 2023
Time: 14:00- 15:30 GMT
Location: Online Event

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) hosted a virtual town hall meeting to introduce the funding opportunity, to support a new Centre of Excellence for Resilient Infrastructure Analysis on DAFNI. This is part of the UKRI Building a Secure and Resilient World programme.

Manchester

DAFNI Conference 2022 – Environmental Impacts

Date: 5 July 2022
Time: 9:30- 17:00 GMT
Location: Hybrid Event

We shared all the research that our community is involved in, particularly looking at climate adaptation and developing a greater understanding of how we might influence the path of climate change.

Click on Find out more to view the outputs of the conference. 

Dafni Roadshow UCL urban models

DAFNI Roadshow UCL – Urban model OpenMOLE now on DAFNI

Date: 22 Noviembre 2021
Time: 14:00- 17:00 GMT
Location: Virtual Event

At this event attendees learnt more about DAFNI, OpenMOLE and the importance of model integration; workflow engines to construct complex models by coupling modular components. 

motorway

Digital Twins – How can they help the South West to decarbonise?

Virtual Event, 12 July 2021 – organised by the Institution of Civil Engineers

Could the use of Digital Twins aid and accelerate the net zero transition in South West England?

During this exciting workshop participants had the opportunity to discuss how digital representations of the physical world might unlock new opportunities for the decarbonisation of infrastructure in the region.

 

London connected city

DAFNI Conference 2021 – Official launch event

Virtual Event, 5 July 2021

Following 4 years of intense development effort, we were delighted to unveil to the wider community the exciting advancements within the facility and how it will relate to and revolutionise infrastructure business and research nationwide.

Scotland DAFNI Roadshow

Scotland DAFNI Roadshow 

Date: 18 May 2021
Time: 14:00- 17:00 GMT
Location: Virtual Event

Join this event to see live demos of the DAFNI platform and how it could support research.

 

Roadshow Transport Research

DAFNI Roadshow – Focus on Transport Research

Date: 24 March 2021
Time: 09:00- 11:30 GMT
Location: Virtual Event

This event showed examples of how members of the Universities Transport Studies and other transport researchers can make use of DAFNI.

 

Digital Twin Roadshow @ Sheffield

DAFNI Digital Twin Roadshow at University of Sheffield

Date: 26 February 2021
Time: 10:00- 13:00 GMT
Location: Virtual Event

This event showed an overview of the digital twin research at the University of Sheffield and DAFNI plans for accommodating and connecting full-scale digital twins.

Cristian Genes, University of Sheffield and DAFNI champion, talked about his Transport Digital Twin on DAFNI 

UKCRIC @ DAFNI Roadshow @ Southampton

UKCRIC & DAFNI Roadshow at Southampton University

Date: 8 February 2021
Time: 14:00- 17:00 GMT
Location: Virtual Event

Atttendees leanr about UKCRIC’s vision to deliver world-class infrastructure, and saw live demos of the DAFNI platform, discovering tools and capabilities to support your research.

 

Cranfield University Roadshow

DAFNI Roadshow at Cranfield University

Date: 4 February 2021
Time: 09:30- 12:30 GMT
Location: Virtual Event

This event showed live demos of the DAFNI platform and how it could support research at Cranfield University.

 

NISMOD meets DAFNI

NISMOD meets DAFNI

Date: 21 January 2020
Time: 10:00 – 13:00 GMT
Location: Virtual Event

This event showed how to use the National Infrastructure Systems Model (NISMOD) on DAFNI.

Participants had the opportunity to see demos of NISMOD workflows on DAFNI.

DAFNI Roadshow @ Imperial College London

DAFNI Roadshow at Imperial College London

Date: 15 December 2020
Time: 14:30 – 17:30 GMT
Location: Virtual Event

At this event we had the opportunity to see presentations on Imperial’s Infrastructure schools and live demos of the DAFNI platform tools: data discovery and model upload.

City skyline and letters

Digital Twins and Data Ontologies

Date: 2 December 2020
Time: 09:30 – 12:30 GMT
Location: Virtual Event

This event shared exciting work on Digital Twins and Ontologies as well as enabling facilities and ways of thinking. It covered the ontology work from CDBB Information Management Framework, and the findings of the DAFNI champions team working on Infrastructures Research Ontologies.

The event counted with the participation of ARUP, Costain, CDBB, UCL and DAFNI.

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DAFNI Roadshow at Oxford University

Date: 30 September 2020
Time: 12:00 – 14:00 GMT
Location: Virtual Event

This event showed live demos of the DAFNI platform and how it could support research at Oxford University. 

DAFNI Virtual Roadshow – University of Bristol

Date: 24th July 2020
Location: Zoom Webinar

Demonstrating DAFNI’s tools and capabilities for supporting research.

Click on the image for the event outputs.

 

DAFNI Virtual Roadshow – UCL Researchers

Date: 26th June 2020
Location: Zoom Webinar

Demonstrating DAFNI’s tools and capabilities to researchers across UCL’s departments.

Click on the image for the event outputs.

 

DAFNI and Sheffield Urban Observatory Hackathon

Date: 11 – 13 February 2020
Location: Venue TBC, Sheffield

We will be taking data from the Sheffield Urban Observatory and running analytics on it as part of a collaboration between DAFNI and the researchers in Sheffield.

UKCRIC Observatory and DAFNI integration workshop

Date: 3 December 2019
Location: Friends House, London

The workshop will identify opportunities for collaboration between infrastructure observatories and the modelling capabilities in DAFNI.

DAFNI Conference 2019

Date: 10 – 11 June 2019
Location: The Royal Society, London

Two day event

Day One – showcase event comprising of a series of keynote talks from representatives who are influencers and policy makers within the UK’s National Infrastructure sector. The afternoon will see a series of workshops demonstrating results from DAFNI pilot projects and showcasing DAFNI’s capability.

Day Two – will be a ‘Hackathon’ aimed at academics and developers to get involved in using DAFNI to understand how to visualise data and models.

If you would be interested in sponsoring this event, please contact Marion Samler, DAFNI Partnerships Manager, Email: marion.samler@stfc.ac.uk or call Marion directly on (01235) 567217.

DAFNI Seminar Edinburgh: Real Time Flood Modelling on DAFNI

Date: 22 March 2019
Location: Royal Observatory, Edinburgh

A seminar to provide an opportunity to interact with a new flood resilience capability developed during a recent collaboration between DAFNI (Data Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure) and the Newcastle University Urban Observatory and Spatial Analytics and Modelling Lab. DAFNI is funded by EPSRC as part of the UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities.

This is an important milestone for both DAFNI and Newcastle University and will demonstrate for the first time integration of the UKCRIC Observatory programme with DAFNI to support infrastructure resilience modelling.

DAFNI Seminar London: Real Time Flood Modelling on DAFNI

Date: 11 March 2019
Location: Geovation Centre, London

A seminar to provide an opportunity to interact with a new flood resilience capability developed during a recent collaboration between DAFNI (Data Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure) and the Newcastle University Urban Observatory and Spatial Analytics and Modelling Lab. DAFNI is funded by EPSRC as part of the UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities.

This is an important milestone for both DAFNI and Newcastle University and will demonstrate for the first time integration of the UKCRIC Observatory programme with DAFNI to support infrastructure resilience modelling.