AFAIK, the UCP collects data using Data Collector from other instances. This provides an overview, which seems to indicate that it might supercede DC, but it might just be a (n optional) layer above it.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee210548.aspx
In terms of the email, not sure how this works. The data is potentially old, so real time alerting doesn't seem to be built in. I'll have to look more as I haven't really worked with this much.