Prof Albert S. Chen
Ongoing projects
I am currently leading multiple ongoing research projects with a total grant value exceeding £2m, funded by EU H2020 and Horizon Europe. Through those projects, I am collaborating with international leading academics and industries to develop novel approaches for tackling water management challenges that our human society is facing.
NATALIE: Accelerating and mainstreaming transformative NATure-bAsed solutions to enhance resiLIEence to climate change for diverse bio-geographical European regions
2023-2028, EU Horizon Europe / UKRI Horizon Europe guarantee funding
NATALIE addresses the risks posed by climate change and its impacts and proposes to advance the concepts of “ecosystem-based adaptation” in Europe combined with climate resilient development pathways, as the means for impact driven Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), to accelerate and mainstreaming the adoption of NBS for resilience to climate change, which is also the cornerstone identified in the recent IPCC AR6 WGII Report. NATALIE will deliver innovative and practical innovations in co-creation of solutions and stakeholder engagement, modelling, testing, monitoring and validation mechanisms that will support regions and municipalities to plan and develop adaptation actions bringing along valuable knowledge and experience as actionable knowledge for adaptation and impact-driven NBS.
2023-2027, Defra/EA Flood and coastal resilience innovation programme
DRIP focusses on rapidly responding catchments in a predominantly rural area, whilst also making linkages between rural spaces and urban risks. This is a multi-partners’ project, building on many pre-existing initiatives across the project partnership. The project overall seeks to identify a range of replicable low-cost resilience actions that can be delivered and funded by local authorities or/and local communities of different sizes/settings where traditional flood defences are shown not to be appropriate or cost beneficial. The project seeks to identify what level of protection can be afforded to a community using nature-based interventions, tailored flood warning systems and Property Flood Resilience measures.
ICARIA: Improving climate resilience of critical assets
2023-2025, EU Horizon Europe / UKRI Horizon Europe guarantee funding
ICARIA aims to increase knowledge of the impacts of natural disasters on strategic infrastructures in different sectors such as water, energy and transport, has recently been launched. This initiative also seeks to understand how these events could affect the life-cycle costs of these infrastructures in the coming decades and to ensure that investments are made in adaptation measures to cope with these changes.
WATERLINE: Transforming advanced water skilling through the creation of a network of extended-reality water emulative centres
2022-2025, EU Horizon Europe / UKRI Horizon Europe guarantee funding
WATERLINE aims to create a European Digital Water Higher Education Institution (HEI) Alliance, based on the quadruple helix model of innovation, leading to the development of the Alliance’s research, educational and entrepreneurship capacities. This shall leverage the individual, institutional and regional resources required for a transformative structural and sustainable learning and innovation environment.
WATERVERSE: Water Data Management Ecosystem for Water Data Spaces
2022-2025, EU Horizon Europe / UKRI Horizon Europe guarantee funding
The WATERVERSE mission is to develop a Water Data Management Ecosystem (WDME) for making data management practices and resources in the water sector accessible, affordable, secure, fair, and easy to use, improving usability of data and the interoperability of data-intensive processes, thus lowering the entry barrier to data spaces, enhancing the resilience of water utilities and boosting the perceived value of data and therefore the market opportunities behind it.
ARSINOE: climAte ReSIlient-regioNs thrOugh systEmic solutions and innovations
2021-2025, EU H2020
ARSINOE is financed by the European Commission with a total budget of 15 million euros and is coordinated by the University of Thessaly, Greece. It brings together 41 partners from 15 countries and intends to be a game-changer for shaping pathways to resilience by delivering regional innovation packages that build an ecosystem to develop and implement innovative climate change adaptation measures and solutions across Europe.
Acknowledging that climate change is complex and strongly connected to other global challenges, such as food security, water scarcity, biodiversity depletion and environmental degradation, it is insufficient to use traditional approaches to innovation that focus on one aspect of the problem.
ULTIMATE: indUstry water-utiLiTy symbIosis for a sMarter wATer society
2020-2024, EU H2020
ULTIMATE aims to create economic value and increase sustainability by valorising resources within the water cycle.
RECONECT: Regenerating Ecosystems with nature-based solutions for hydro-meteorological risk reduction
2018-2023, EU H2020
RECONECT develops a holistic ecosystem-based framework enabling cross-sectoral/transdisciplinary analyses and evaluation to advance the knowledge of NBS in the context of hydro-meteorological risk reduction focusing on floods, storm surges, landslides and droughts.