Outstanding tasks from previous minutes were listed;

SA to look into placing a profile of ACTUI on the EEC website.

SA to obtain information from academics about proposals in the areas of transients, quality in distribution and data, create appropriate website entries and maintain the information. 

An update on collaborative research proposals was given by Universities of Exeter and Liverpool.

University of Exeter

1. Whole Life Costing on sewer systems - joint proposal with University of Sheffield submitted to EPSRC.
2. Transients - proposal in preparation with Imperial College for EPSRC funding.
3. Leakage - joint proposal with Imperial, Exeter and Optimal Solutions for UNESCO funding.
4. Business Modelling -  Exeter and De Montfort.

University of Liverpool

1. Project data uncertainty.
2. Pressure transients in pipelines with Wallingford Software.
3. Real-time control.

'Opportunities for funding collaborative research'

'Linking Research priority to business need'

DF stated that  Wallingford Software's role is between water companies, academic research and end users. The software has a need to be profit driven and the most saleable software is usually original software that has been built upon.  DF stated that the future is in different kinds  of modelling and optimisation software.

AS from Ewan Associates introduced his role as consultancy.  He said that there was a difficulty with access routes into water companies but that the DTI funded schemes provided a beneficial access route.  His role is generally as a partner or part of a framework with water companies, strengthening relationships between academia and consultancy.  

The discussion turned to research funding mechanisms and ways of filtering projects originating from industrial members.

MF spoke of the Global Water Research coalition where UKWIR is one of twelve research funders. He said that water industry problems are similar worldwide, money is not being effectively spent and return needs to be maximised. 

RB said that although Liverpool use EPSRC as a source of funds they increasingly need industrial resources.  If research goes into responsive mode there is less than 20% success in proposal funding.

LB stated that research ideas from industry are more successful because they are bigger, the problem being that industry needs to focus on research areas and does not have the time to wait for funding.

MF said UKWIR's 2002/2003 programme had 160 expressions of interest,  out of which have come 31 new projects starting from April 2002.  RB suggested pulling out some of the projects that were not funded.  MF agreed that recycling the unfunded projects seemed a good idea and would look into it.  Action MF.

The subject of data was discussed. AS said that there is a lack of acknowledgement  in water companies as to how data rich they are.  GAW mentioned that it takes longer than anticipated to obtain data sets and also in the format needed.

LK stated that a lot of data has already been collected and is not being made the most of. DF added that a large amount of data is poor quality.  AC said that until data is applied can poor data be found.

LB said that all types of data were needed for network modelling backgrounds through to data mining techniques. For example network calibration, online measurements, offline measurements, leakage control, risk analysis, discoloration.  We should think about how we can use the data and information to build better models and come to decisions.