Enhanced Surface Water Flood Forecasting at the Royal Society
Dr Ben Rabb, Impact Translation Fellow for our ESWFF project, presented a poster at a recent meeting on Intensification of short-duration rainfall extremes and implications for flash flood risks at the Royal Society in London in early February.
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Ben also presented the project at 'Flooding 2019: Ensuring Effective Resilience, Management and Response' - you can can download Ben's (and other speakers) presentations to learn more about the project.
iCASP at the Trent Rivers Trust conference
Dr Janet Richardson, Impact Translation Fellow on several iCASP projects, gave a talk at the Trent Rivers Trust conference in mid-February. As well as outlining how partnership working is a core aspect of iCASP work, she gave an overview of some of the projects she is working on.
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Home truths on housing and climate change
Impact Translation Fellows Dr Jenny Armstrong and Dr Ben Rabb worked with the Priestley International Centre for Climate to contribute several chapters to a report by the Climate Coalition about the UK's housing and how it is contributing to, and will be impacted by, climate change. The report pays specific attention to flood risk and sets out the climate science and highlights actions we can take to reduce emissions and increase the resilience of our homes. Download the report Home Truths: How climate change is impacting UK homes.
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iCASP projects are co-developed between people with an interest in working together to tackle a problem or opportunity. If you have an idea for a project you can find more information about the process of their development and how to submit at concept note towards the bottom of the iCASP project webpage.
iCASP is now more than halfway through the programme; to have enough time for project proposals to be approved by Governance Group and allow time for effective delivery and impact achievement, new project submissions need to be made this year. Please contact icasp@leeds.ac.uk for deadlines for submission of concept notes and full proposals.
iCASP is now collaborating with the Leeds Social Sciences Institute who administer the ESRC Impact Acceleration Awards. The IAA uses existing social science research to build capacity and maximise impact through knowledge exchange and public and policy engagement. iCASP and LSSI have agreed that suitable projects, fitting the remit of both funding programmes, can be co-funded by the Impact Acceleration Account and iCASP should they be approved by both programmes. This collaboration will be useful in helping us achieve greater impacts, particularly where the end goal is behaviour change and improved ways of working. More information about this joint funding model between iCASP and LSSI.
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New projects
Communicating Flood Risk
This recently started project will look across multiple disciplines including psychology, sociology and business to produce resources, guidance and tools for Risk Management Authorities to better engage with their communities. The aim is to increase resilient behaviours that protect communities from the risks of flood and coastal change through better preparation. More about this project and its aims on the iCASP website.
Environmental science to promote public health and wellbeing
This project will use the Strategic Health Asset Planning and Evaluation (SHAPE) GIS tool to support Leeds City Council's Health Protection Team. Integrating environmental data into the SHAPE tool will help coordinate resources between different sectors who have common goals, and support climate resilient decision-making. More information about the project, its aims and the project team is available
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Mini projects
Several new mini projects have started in the past few weeks; one is providing support and evidence for a National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) bid for work to be completed on the River Skell, another is supporting the NLHF-funded Ryevitalise Scheme to ensure the most up to date research informs management decisions. The third is providing additional support to the Defra / Natural England Peat Pilots to ensure their data collection and outcome monitoring is appropriate to the different sites. (This is in addition to support to the North York Moors Peat Pilot). More about all the mini projects is available on the iCASP website
CIRIA Natural Flood Management guidance
iCASP is part of a consortium, led by Mott Macdonald and including our partners Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust, appointed by the Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA) to develop UK guidance on Natural Flood Management measures. The guidance will improve confidence in using NFM measures and reduce poor performance through drawing upon evidence and practical examples. iCASP's contribution will be based upon our experience from the NFM Community of Practice and our work with the DEFRA NFM Community Demonstration fund projects. Press release about the appointment of the consortium to write the guidance.
Existing projects
Natural Flood Management (NFM)
The fourth Community of Practice (CoP) meeting in Bradford City Hall kickstarted iCASP's 2020. The theme of the event was the funding of NFM in the future and we heard from a range of experts about the many different funding models available. All presentations are available on the iCASP website on a dedicated NFM CoP page so any NFM practitioner can make use of them.
Payment for Outcomes
iCASP held a meeting with the National Trust in mid-March to discuss the next steps for the Payment for Outcomes (PfO) project which is helping the National Trust to integrate Natural Flood Management into their Payment for Outcomes trial. This meeting followed the initial mapping and farm visits during summer 2019, and an autumn workshop with the farmers involved with the trial. Participants used the Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust guidance on NFM to structure thinking around the different interventions and what measurements could be made for each one, and how these could be integrated into the Trust's PfO trial.
Living with Water Catchment Telemetry Integration
The first series of maps bringing together the different monitoring data gathered across Hull and East Riding have now been produced. They show how frequently measurements are made, where and how long measurements have been taken - in some cases for 40 years.
Don catchment
The Final Report from the Don Catchment project is being signed off and will be on the iCASP website shortly. Outputs include a report that details the approach and outcomes of the project, including a technical report that details the step by step tasks taken to produce hotspot and opportunity maps. Additionally case studies have been produced for each aim (slowing the flow, reducing diffuse pollution and increasing landscape connectivity) which detail how the hotspot maps were created, how they can be interpreted and what opportunities could be used and why.
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Systems approach to urban infrastructure management (SUIM)
The project team held the kick-off meeting recently to go over data already gathered and agree the plan of action for this project which will be using Leeds City Council's Wyke Beck phase 1 work as a case study. More about the SUIM project on the iCASP website
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CONSOLE
On February 25th we welcomed farmers from the Yorkshire Countryside Stewardship Facilitation Fund networks to the University for the first meeting of our Community of Practice as part of the Horizon 2020 CONSOLE project. A key part of the morning was to carry out soil analysis in the labs, this was followed by a session looking at individual preferences for future agri-environmental schemes. Opinions on future payment schemes were quite varied; biodiversity protection, generation of farm income and types of monitoring of scheme results generated the most discussion; this can be attributed to pre-existing preferences of participants or existing beliefs on how future schemes will look. These findings will inform CONSOLE’s research that includes farmer and stakeholder surveys to further clarify these preliminary findings.
Yorkshire Property Flood Resilience Pathfinder project
A baseline survey for the Pathfinder project was launched at the National Flood Forum in early March. The survey has been designed to run at the beginning and then again at the end of the project to measure the impact the pathfinder has had in changing awareness and uptake of property flood resilience (PFR) measures across Yorkshire. We are keen to hear from anyone who lives or works in Yorkshire, completing the survey should take you no more than 15 minutes. You can find out more about the Pathfinder project on the iCASP website project pages.
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Optimal Peatland Restoration
Yorkshire Peat Partnership (YPP) and Moors for the Future Partnership (MFFP) are continuing to integrate the new user friendly interface of the Digibog_Hydro model into their work. YPP is applying the tool to supply part of the work of the England Peatland Strategy Defra tender that they won for the North York Moor National Park. The User Guide will also be used as part of this work to value the benefits of water drinking quality. The conversation with peatland restoration practitioners is ongoing and focused on taking the User Guide to the next level by applying one of the valuation methods to restoration sites in a way that supports practitioners to undertake valuation of benefits of peatland restoration independently in the future.
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Wortley Beck Workshop
Following a successful workshop in April 2019 for Leeds City Council (LCC) and the Environment Agency focused around future flood risk, iCASP was asked to design another workshop for LCC. This time focused around the strategic options identified by consultants WSP for the Wortley Beck area which suffers from flooding. The workshop in December 2019 brought together stakeholders from across the city to look at future options to tackle flooding issues. LCC will consider the options prioritised during the workshop and begin work later this year.
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Consultations and inquiries
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Upcoming consultations:
We will be providing a written submission to the Environment Agency's Challenges and Choices consultation which closes on 24 April 2020.
Defra is currently carrying out a policy consultation on the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) which we will be feeding in to, closing date 5 May 2020.
Following a winter with unprecedented levels of rain, the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has launched an inquiry to scrutinise the Government's plans for flood risk management in England. We will be drawing on several of our projects to contribute to this inquiry. Closing date 17 April 2020.
As with our other consultation and inquiry responses, we will make these available in the resources section of the iCASP website in due course.
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iCASP surveys - we'd like to hear from you:
iCASP is currently running two surveys to gather information from organisations, members of the public and indeed anyone with an interest in the subject area
As part of our contribution to the Yorkshire Property Flood Resilience Pathfinder Project we are gathering information about people's views of property flood resilience and preparedness. We want to hear from anyone living or working in Yorkshire, please help us by letting us know what you think
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We are very keen to hear from you what you feel you should be included in our annual meeting - Confluence 2020 - agenda. Please share your thoughts with us and suggest topics that we should focus upon.
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Confluence 2020
The date for Confluence 2020 has been set as Friday 26th June. We are currently assessing the options in light of the situation with COVID-19; these include postponing the meeting until later in the year or going ahead with a virtual online meeting on the same date. Please hold the date in your diaries and watch this space.
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