Tag: risk

1-in-200 year events

Posted on by janet.crompton

You often read or hear references to the ‘1-in-200 year event’, or ‘200-year event’, or ‘event with a return period of 200 years’. Other popular horizons are 1-in-30 years and 1-in-10,000 years. This term applies to hazards which can occur over a range of magnitudes, like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, space weather, and various hydro-meteorological hazards like floods, storms, hot or cold spells, and droughts.

‘1-in-200 years’ refers to a particular magnitude. In floods this might be represented as a contour on a map, showing an area that is inundated. If this contour is labelled as ‘1-in-200 years’ this means that the current rate of floods at least as large as this is 1/200 /yr, or 0.005 /yr. So if your house is inside the contour, there is currently a 0.005 (0.5%) chance of being flooded in the next year, and a 0.025 (2.5%) chance of being flooded in the next five years. The general definition is this:

‘1-in-200 year magnitude is x’ = ‘the current rate for events with magnitude at least x is 1/200 /yr’.

Statisticians and risk communicators strongly deprecate the use of ‘1-in-200’ and its ilk.First, it gives the impression, wrongly, that the forecast is expected to hold for the next 200 years, but it is not: 0.005 /yr is our assessment of the current rate, and this could change next year, in response to more observations or modelling, or a change in the environment.

Second, even if the rate is unchanged for several hundred years, 200 yr is the not the average waiting time until the next large-magnitude event. It is the mathematical expectation of the waiting time, which is a different thing. The average is better represented by the median, which is 30% lower, i.e. about 140 yr. This difference between the expectation and the median arises because the waiting-time distribution has a strong positive skew, so that lots of short waiting-times are balanced out a few long ones. In 25% of all outcomes, the waiting time is less than 60 yr, and in 10% of outcomes it is less than 20 yr.

So to use ‘1-in-200 year’ in public discourse is very misleading. It gives people the impression that the event will not happen even to their children’s children, but in fact it could easily happen to them. If it does happen to them, people will understandably feel that they have been very misled, and science and policy will suffer reputational loss, which degrades its future effectiveness.

So what to use instead? ‘Annual rate of 0.005 /yr’ is much less graspable than its reciprocal, ‘200 yr’. But ‘1-in-200 year’ gives people the misleading impression that they have understood something. As Mark Twain said “It ain’t what you don’t know
that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” To demystify ‘annual rate of 0.005 /yr’, it can be associated with a much larger probability, such as 0.1 (or 10%). So I suggest ‘event with a 10% chance of happening in the next 20 yr’.

Blog post by Prof. Jonathan Rougier, Professor of Statistical Science.


First blog in series here.


Third blog in series here.

Converting probabilities between time-intervals

Posted on by janet.crompton

This is the first in an irregular sequence of snippets about some of the slightly more technical aspects of uncertainty and risk assessment.  If you have a slightly more technical question, then please email me and I will try to answer it with a snippet.

Suppose that an event has a probability of 0.015 (or 1.5%) of happening at least once in the next five years. Then the probability of the event happening at least once in the next year is 0.015 / 5 = 0.003 (or 0.3%), and the probability of it happening at least once in the next 20 years is 0.015 * 4 = 0.06 (or 6%).

Here is the rule for scaling probabilities to different time intervals: if both probabilities (the original one and the new one) are no larger than 0.1 (or 10%), then simply multiply the original probability by the ratio of the new time-interval to the original time-interval, to find the new probability.

This rule is an approximation which breaks down if either of the probabilities is greater than 0.1. For example, to scale a probability of 0.04 in the next 5 years up to 20 years we cannot simply multiply by 4, because the result, 0.16 (or 16%), is larger than 0.1. In this case we have to use the proper rule, which is

p_new = 1 – (1 – p_orig)^(int_new / int_orig)

where ‘^’ reads ‘to the power of’. The example above becomes

p_new = 1 – (1 – 0.04)^(20 / 5) = 0.15 (or 15%).

So the approximation would have been 1 percentage point out in this case. The highlighted text in yellow can be pasted directly into a spreadsheet cell (the answer is 0.1507).

Of course it is unlikely to matter in practice whether the probability is 0.15 or 0.16.  But the difference gets bigger as the probabilities get bigger.  For example, it would definitely be a mistake to multiply a 0.25 one-year probability by 5 to find the five-year probability, because the result would be greater than 1.  Using the formula, the correct answer is a five-year probability of 0.76.

Blog post by Prof. Jonathan Rougier, Professor of Statistical Science.

Second blog in series here.
Third blog in series here.

Image: By Hovik Avetisyan [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Deploying and Servicing a Seismic Network in Central Italy

Posted on by janet.crompton
From a scientific point of view, the seismicity that is hitting Central Italy presents itself as an unmissable opportunity for seismologists to analyse the triggering and the evolution of an earthquake sequence. From the tens of instruments installed in the affected area, a huge amount of data is being collected. Such a well-recorded sequence will allow us to produce a comprehensive seismic catalogue of events. On this big quantity of data, new algorithms will be developed and tested for the characterisation of even the smallest earthquakes. Moreover, they will enable the validation of more accurate and testable statistical and physics-based forecast models, which is the core objective of my Ph.D. project.
Seismicity map of the Amatrice-Norcia sequence updated 5 November 2016.
The Central Apennines are one of the most seismically hazardous areas in Italy and in Europe. Many destructive earthquakes have occurred throughout this region in the past, most recently the 2009 MW = 6.4 L’Aquila event. On August 24th, just 43 km North of the 2009 epicentre, an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 occurred and devastated the villages of Amatrice and Accumuli, leading to 298 fatalities, hundreds of injured and tens of thousands people affected. The mainshock was followed, in under an hour, by a MW = 5.4 aftershock. Two months later, on October 26th, the northern sector of the affected area was struck by two earthquakes of magnitude 5.4 and 5.9, respectively, with epicentres near the village of Visso. To make things even worse, on October 30th the city of Norcia was hit by a magnitude 6.5 mainshock, which has been the biggest event of the sequence to date and the strongest earthquake in Italy in the last 36 years. Building collapses and damages were very heavy for many villages and many historical heritage buildings have reported irreparable damages, such as the 14th century St. Benedict cathedral. Luckily, the has been no further fatalities since the very first event of August 24.
St. Benedict cathedral (Norcia), erected in the late 14th century and completely destroyed after the Mw 6.5 earthquake of October 30th.
Immediately after the first big event, an emergency scientific response team was formed by the British Geological Survey (BGS) and the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh, to support the rapid deployment of high-accuracy seismometers in collaboration with the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). The high detection capabilities, made possible by such a dense network, will let us derive a seismic catalogue with a great regional coverage and improved magnitude sensitivity. This new, accurate, catalogue will be crucial in developing operational forecast models. The ultimate aim is to understand the potential migration of seismic activity to neighbouring faults as well as the anatomy of the seismogenic structure and to shed light into the underlying physical processes that produce the hazard.
Thanks to the quick response of the National Environmental Research Council (NERC) and SEIS-UK, 30 broadband stations have been promptly dispatched from Leicester and arrived in less than 48 hours in Rome. There, a group of 9 people composed by INGV and BGS seismologists, technicians and Ph.D. students (including myself) from University of Bristol, Dublin Institute for Advanced Study (DIAS) and University of Ulster were ready to travel across the Apennines to deploy this equipment. The first days in Rome were all about planning; the location of each station was carefully decided so as to integrate the existing Italian permanent and temporary networks in the most appropriate way. After having performed the ‘huddle test’ in the INGV, which involves parallel checking of all the field instrumentation in order to ensure its correct functioning, we packed all the equipment and headed to the village of Leonessa, a location considered safe enough to be used as our base camp (despite the village being damaged and evacuated after the 30th October event).
Preparing instrumentation for the huddle test in one of INGV’s storage rooms.
In order to optimise time and resources, and to start recording data as soon as possible, we decided to split in 3 groups so that we could finish our work between the end of August and the first week of September. Each seismic station is composed of a buried sensor, a GPS antenna, a car battery, a regulator and two solar panels. The current deployment will stay for 1 year and will be collecting data continually. Each sensor had to be carefully buried and levelled to guarantee the highest quality of recording, which was a strenuous challenge when the ground was quite rocky!
Typical setting of our deployed stations. On the left, the buried sensor. Its cables, buried as well, connect it to the instrumentation inside the black box (a car battery, and a regulator). On the right, the solar panel (a second one was added in October service) and the white GPS antenna.
Aside from the scientific value of the expedition, the deployment week was a great opportunity to get to know each other, share opinions, ideas and, of course, get some training in seismology! At the end, we managed to install 24 stations around an area of approximately 2700 km2.
As this type of seismic station didn’t have telemetry, each needed to be revisited to retrieve data. For this purpose, from October 17th, David Hawthorn (BGS) and I flew to Italy again and stayed there for the following ten days to service the seismometers and to do the first data dump. Our goals were also  to check the quality of the first month of recordings, to add a second solar panel where needed, and to prepare the stations for the forthcoming winter. To do that, a lot of hammering and woodworking was needed. We serviced all the sites, raising the solar panels and GPS antennas on posts, which were securely anchored to the ground, to prevent snow from covering them. The stations were all in good conditions, with just minor damages due to some very snoopy cows.
David Hawthorn (BGS) servicing the stations – A second solar panel was added. Panels and GPS antennas were raised on posts anchored to the ground through timbers.
Dumping data from the stations using a netbook and specific hard drive.
On October 26, just the night before leaving for Rome, we experienced first-hand the frightening feeling of a mainshock just below our feet. Both the quakes of that evening surprised us while we were inside a building; the rumble just few seconds before the quake was shocking and the shaking was very strong. Fortunately, there were no severe damages in Leonessa but many people in the village refused to spend the night in their own houses. Also, it was impressive to see the local emergency services response: only a few minutes after the first quake, policemen were already out to patrol the inner village checking for any people experiencing difficulties.
The small village of Pescara del Tronto suffered many collapses and severe damages after the 24 August earthquakes. View from the motorway above.
Throughout our car transfers from one site to another we frequently found roads interrupted by a building collapse or by a landslide, but we could also admire the mountains with a mantle of beautiful autumnal colours and the spectacular landscapes offered by the Apennines, like the Monte Vettore, the Gran Sasso (the highest peak in the Apennines) and the breath-taking Castelluccio plain near Norcia.
View of the Norcia plain, near to the 24th August magnitude 5.4 and the 30th October magnitude 6.5 epicentres.
View of the Castelluccio plain. This picture was taken from the village of Castelluccio, just 5 days before it was totally destroyed by the magnitude 6.5 mainshock.
From my point of view, I learned a lot and really enjoyed this experience. I feel privileged to have started my Ph.D. in leading institutions like the University of Bristol and the BGS and, at the same time, to be able to spend time in my home country (yes, I am Italian…) with such interesting scientific questions. What I know for sure is that we will be back there again.

Blog written by Simone Mancini, 1st year Ph.D. student, University of Bristol and British Geological Survey.

Exploring legal approaches to climate justice: Reflections from the South Pacific

Posted on by janet.crompton
A traditional canoe painted with world flags on Port Olry beach on the island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu

The South Pacific is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate change impacts. The images conjured up of sinking small islands surrounded by miles of rising oceans however do little justice to the vibrant cultures, diverse landscapes and close-knit communities I recently encountered there. As part of my PhD project exploring the legal protection available to climate vulnerable states and communities I was fortunate enough, with the support of the South West Doctoral Training Centre, to be awarded a three month visiting researcher position at the University of the South Pacific in Port Vila, Vanuatu. I spent my time there gathering data, primarily through a series of interviews with key stakeholders from national government, local law firms and NGOs, as well as with a number of regional organisations during a short trip to Fiji.

While being hosted by USP undoubtedly opened doors with participants and made the fieldwork far simpler to organise remotely, I still encountered the inevitable challenges associated with conducting research in a developing country context, thousands of miles from the familiarity of home. The techniques I had prepared for setting up interviews through methodically emailing, calling and making appointments ahead of time proved to be ineffective in a cultural context in which face to face conversations and storying are the norm. After two fruitless weeks of desk-based attempts to contact participants, I abandoned my USP office to wander Port Vila’s streets, notebook and dictaphone in hand, searching out the relevant office buildings. Luckily, as detailed maps and road signs were also hard to come by, government buildings marked with flags were relatively easy to spot. Once I had met with a handful of very helpful people I was armed with a list of relevant organisations and some directions, my study finally began to take off.

Market house in the capital, Port Vila on Efate island

The experience was eye-opening and rewarding, both personally and academically. Vanuatu, as a least developed country, the world’s most at risk to natural disasters according to the UN’s 2015 World Risk Index[1], and extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts, faces numerous challenges. Cyclone Pam, which struck the islands in March 2015, caused an estimated $449 million in loss and damage amounting to a staggering 64% of the country’s GDP[2]. The devastating power of climate related impacts in the region is clear, not only in terms of immediate damage but also, more indirectly, through the economic hardship caused by reduced crop yields among many remote subsistence farming communities, or the impacts of oceanic acidification and warming upon marine ecosystems that many coastal villages depend on for both food and tourism. Talking to those who work closely with these communities at the grassroots level revealed many anticipated issues, from geographic remoteness to a lack of access to institutional support. However, it also revealed the inherent resilience, strong sense of community and traditional knowledge which has enabled devastated communities to recover and should play a central role in the development of climate change responses going forward. 

Through the case study, I set out to examine the existing climate policy responses at the regional and national levels, the availability of legal mechanisms and the challenges associated with access to justice faced by communities in practice. In the wake of the adoption of the Paris Agreement at COP21 in December, climate change and debates surrounding the follow-up action needed is at the top of the Pacific policy agenda. While the Agreement has been hailed as a significant step forward for the international community with many states making voluntary commitments to cut their greenhouse gas emissions through Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), many aspects of the Agreement leave much to be desired, particularly from the point of view of the most climate vulnerable. There has been no clear mapping out of the financial support pledged by developed countries to assist in the adaptation and mitigation efforts of developing countries.

The Agreement itself contains no enforcement mechanism or legally binding GHG reduction targets and, particularly concerning for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) such as Vanuatu, loss and damage has been consigned to a vaguely worded clause with an express exclusion of any right to compensation. These inadequacies are already being reflected in the reservations declared upon ratification by a number of Pacific nations including the Cook Islands, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands providing that they view the progress so far to be insufficient to prevent a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees and that they do not renounce any existing rights under international law. In light of the vast potential for resulting damage in Pacific SIDS, securing more direct access to climate finance and seeing loss & damage addressed more effectively at the international level have emerged as core priorities for both governments and regional bodies. 

The question of whether alternative legal avenues can be of assistance in securing access to such funding however has yet to be answered. My own assumptions that human rights mechanisms would offer the greatest enforceability and therefore represented the best available avenue in terms of climate litigation have been fundamentally challenged. Limited institutional capacity and funding can be seen to restrict the ability of governments in the region to effectively engage with international human rights conventions along with their corresponding reporting requirements, leading to very limited numbers of ratifications and, in turn, a lack of access to the complaints mechanisms those conventions provide for. In addition to this, Pacific states are without any regional human rights mechanism which could have provided for both greater enforceability and greater engagement with international human rights standards. Despite efforts by regional bodies such as the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) to provide a blueprint for the development of such a mechanism, this is currently not on the political agenda.  
 
Bottom of Mele Cascades, on Efate island, Vanuatu. 

A great deal more research is needed to fully explore the legal options of climate vulnerable states in the region with respect to the loss and damage that they will continue to suffer. While it is clear that Pacific SIDS are keeping their options open with respect to international legal obligations and state responsibility, at present the hope appears to be that the momentum generated in the run up to the adoption of the Paris Agreement will carry through the stronger commitments needed, both in terms of emissions reductions and financial support. I have learned that climate justice has many facets, not merely the more obvious distributive injustice of the manner in which the impacts of climate change manifest themselves by hitting the poorest and those who have contributed the least to global emissions the hardest, but also more procedural aspects of access to justice and the efficacy and availability of institutional support.

 Climate justice demands a focus on the challenges faced in practice by vulnerable communities, affording them the opportunity to exercise fundamental rights and to make their voices heard. The inter-linkages between the national, regional and international levels of governance and policy making should be strengthened, carving out a definitive role for civil society in the process. Civil society organisations are crucial, not only in terms of responding to immediate disasters, but also to raise awareness of climate change and its human rights implications, to assist governments in the implementation of climate policies where institutional capacity may be lacking, and to amplify the needs of communities. One approach encompassing all of these many facets will be difficult to construct and may seem near impossible politically to implement, but we as climate change researchers should take heed of the example set by Pacific SIDS who, in the face of incredible adversity, have rallied to lead by example in the international community with ambitious climate policy proposals, along with close and effective collaboration.
 
A ni-Vanuatu family paddling a traditional canoe off Mele beach, Efate

[1] United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security UNU-EHS, World Risk Report 2015, available online at: http://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:3303/WRR_2015_engl_online.pdf (accessed 08/06/16) at 46.

[2] Simone Esler, Vanuatu Post Disaster Needs Assessment Tropical Cyclone Pam March 2015, Government of Vanuatu, available online at: https://www.gfdrr.org/sites/default/files/publication/PDNA_Cyclone_Pam_Vanuatu_Report.pdf (accessed 9/6/16) at ix. development of climate change responses going forward.


This blog has been written by University of Bristol Cabot Institute member Alice Venn from the School of Law. Alice’s research examines the protection of climate vulnerable states and peoples under international law from an environmental justice perspective.

Why we need a new science of safety

Posted on by janet.crompton

It is often said that our approach to health and safety has gone mad. But the truth is that it needs to go scientific. Managing risk is ultimately linked to questions of engineering and economics. Can something be made safer? How much will that safety cost? Is it worth that cost?

Decisions under uncertainty can be explained using utility, a concept introduced by Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli 300 years ago, to measure the amount of reward received by an individual. But the element of risk will still be there. And where there is risk, there is risk aversion.
Risk aversion itself is a complex phenomenon, as illustrated by psychologist John W. Atkinson’s 1950s experiment, in which five-year-old children played a game of throwing wooden hoops around pegs, with rewards based on successful throws and the varying distances the children chose to stand from the pegs.

The risk-confident stood a challenging but realistic distance away, but the risk averse children fell into two camps. Either they stood so close to the peg that success was almost guaranteed or, more perplexingly, positioned themselves so far away that failure was almost certain. Thus some risk averse children were choosing to increase, not decrease, their chance of failure.

So clearly high aversion to risk can induce some strange effects. These might be unsafe in the real world, as testified by author Robert Kelsey, who said that during his time as a City trader, “bad fear” in the financial world led to either “paralysis… or nonsensical leaps”. Utility theory predicts a similar effect, akin to panic, in a large organisation if the decision maker’s aversion to risk gets too high. At some point it is not possible to distinguish the benefits of implementing a protection system from those of doing nothing at all.

So when it comes to human lives, how much money should we spend on making them safe? Some people prefer not to think about the question, but those responsible for industrial safety or health services do not have that luxury. They have to ask themselves the question: what benefit is conferred when a safety measure “saves” a person’s life?

The answer is that the saved person is simply left to pursue their life as normal, so the actual benefit is the restoration of that person’s future existence. Since we cannot know how long any particular person is going to live, we do the next best thing and use measured historical averages, as published annually by the Office of National Statistics. The gain in life expectancy that the safety measure brings about can be weighed against the cost of that safety measure using the Judgement value, which mediates the balance using risk-aversion.

The Judgement (J) value is the ratio of the actual expenditure to the maximum reasonable expenditure. A J-value of two suggests that twice as much is being spent as is reasonably justified, while a J-value of 0.5 implies that safety spend could be doubled and still be acceptable. It is a ratio that throws some past safety decisions into sharp relief.

For example, a few years ago energy firm BNFL authorised a nuclear clean-up plant with a J-value of over 100, while at roughly the same time the medical quango NICE was asked to review the economic case for three breast cancer drugs found to have J-values of less than 0.05.

Risky business. shutterstock

The Government of the time seemed happy to sanction spending on a plant that might just prevent a cancer, but wanted to think long and hard about helping many women actually suffering from the disease. A new and objective science of safety is clearly needed to provide the level playing field that has so far proved elusive.

Putting a price on life

Current safety methods are based on the “value of a prevented fatality” or VPF. It is the maximum amount of money considered reasonable to pay for a safety measure that will reduce by one the expected number of preventable premature deaths in a large population. In 2010, that value was calculated at £1.65m.

This figure simplistically applies equally to a 20-year-old and a 90-year-old, and is in widespread use in the road, rail, nuclear and chemical industries. Some (myself included) argue that the method used to reach this figure is fundamentally flawed.

In the modern industrial world, however, we are all exposed to dangers at work and at home, on the move and at rest. We need to feel safe, and this comes at a cost. The problems and confusions associated with current methods reinforce the urgent need to develop a new science of safety. Not to do so would be too much of a risk.

———————————————————
The ConversationThis blog is written by Cabot Institute member Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management, University of Bristol.  This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Philip Thomas

Why do flood defences fail?

Posted on by janet.crompton

More than 40,000 people were forced to leave their homes after Storm Desmond caused devastating floods and wreaked havoc in north-west England. Initial indications were that the storm may have caused the heaviest local daily rainfall on record in the UK. As much as £45m has been spent on flood defences in the region in the previous ten years and yet the rainfall still proved overwhelming. So what should we actually expect from flood defence measures in this kind of situation? And why do they sometimes fail?

We know that floods can and will happen. Yet we live and work and put our crucial societal infrastructure in places that could get flooded. Instead of keeping our entire society away from rivers and their floodplains, we accept flood risks because living in lowlands has benefits for society that outweigh the costs of flood damage. But knowing how much risk to take is a tricky business. And even when there is an overall benefit for society, the consequences for individuals can be devastating.

We also need to calculate risks when we build flood defences. We usually protect ourselves from some flood damage by building structures like flood walls and river or tidal barriers to keep rising waters away from populated areas, and storage reservoirs and canals to capture excess water and channel it away. But these structures are only designed to keep out waters from typical-sized floods. Bigger defences that could protect us from the largest possible floods, which may only happen once every 100 years, would be much more expensive to build and so we choose to accept this risk as less than the costs.

Balancing the costs and benefits

In the UK, the Environment Agency works with local communities to assess the trade off between the costs of flood protection measures, and the benefits of avoiding flood damage. We can estimate the lifetime benefits of different proposed flood protection structures in the face of typical-sized floods, as well as the results of doing nothing. On the other side of the ledger, we can also estimate the structures’ construction and maintenance costs.

In some cases, flood protection measures can be designed so that if they fail, they do the least damage possible, or at least avoid catastrophic damage. For example, a flood protection wall can be built so that if flood waters run over it they run into a park rather than residential streets or commercial premises. And secondary flood walls outside the main wall can redirect some of the overflow back towards the river channel.

 

Thames Barrier: big costs but bigger benefits.
Ross Angus/Flickr, CC BY-SA

The Environment Agency puts the highest priority on the projects with the largest benefits for the smallest costs. Deciding where that threshold should be set is a very important social decision, because it provides protection to some but not all parts of our communities. Communities and businesses need to be well-informed about the reasons for those thresholds, and their likely consequences.

We also protect ourselves from flood damage in other ways. Zoning rules prevent valuable assets such as houses and businesses being built where there is an exceptionally high flood risk. Through land management, we can choose to increase the amount of wooded land, which can reduce the impact of smaller floods. And flood forecasting alerts emergency services and helps communities rapidly move people and their portable valuables out of the way.

Always some risk

It’s important to realise that since flood protection measures never eliminate all the risks, there are always extra costs on some in society from exceptional events such as Storm Desmond, which produce very large floods that overwhelm protection measures. The costs of damage from these exceptional floods are difficult to estimate. Since these large floods have been rare in the past, our records of them are very limited, and we are not sure how often they will occur in the future or how much damage will they cause. We also know that the climate is changing, as are the risks of severe floods, and we are still quite uncertain about how this will affect extreme rainfall.

 

At the same time we know that it’s very hard to judge the risk from catastrophic events. For example, we are more likely to be afraid of catastrophic events such as nuclear radiation accidents or terrorist attacks, but do not worry so much about much larger total losses from smaller events that occur more often, such as floods.

Although the process of balancing costs against benefits seems clear and rational, choosing the best flood protection structure is not straightforward. Social attitudes to risk are complicated, and it’s difficult not to be emotionally involved if your home or livelihood are at risk.
The Conversation

————————————–
This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Ross Woods, a Senior Lecturer in Water and Environmental Engineering, University of Bristol.  This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Ross Woods

Resilience is inside every one of you – you just have to know where to find it…

Posted on by janet.crompton
Bizarre objects covering the workshop tables. Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy

Fourthland came to the Cabot Institute from London to give a workshop which would help us look into how resilience forms an important part of our research across all disciplines. Walking into the room with weird objects laid out and the sound of an Irish choir repeating a hypnotic chant, I instantly knew this would be a very different kind of exploration of our academic research.

A resilient performanceFourthland started their artistic performance by holding a rope and folding it up…cue lots of confused looks around the room and people shifting uneasily in their seats.  I couldn’t help thinking what on earth have I signed myself up to?!  Asking everyone to close their eyes, Fourthland continue to set up the room with props.

 

Folding of rope. Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy

Upon opening of eyes, everyone was asked to communicate through gestures and not use their voice. A volunteer was plucked from the room to randomly play a piano whilst participants took hay, eggshells, string and a big dish of what looked like the biggest poppadum I had ever seen – it was actually a flat bowl made from wax.  Manipulating all these ‘ingredients’ separately in small groups by making straw bundles, ‘moving mountains’ with eggshells, and weaving string in and out and around the room, binding the room together, there was a sense that this had meaning in a way that could not be explained verbally.  This is where writing about the experience is tough.  What on earth was happening, what did it all mean and where was the relevance to resilience?  I couldn’t quite see it at that point…

Fourthland continued and read from a scroll rolled up in a rolling pin.  The scroll contained all the thoughts of the researchers that had contributed to our resilience programme over the last few weeks.  Contributions came from social science, engineering, arts, and the sciences.  After all the noise and manipulating of simple materials subsided, a group of volunteers sat at the front of the room (named the ‘keepers of culture’) reflected on what they thought had just happened.

 

The Resilience Workshop at Cabot Institute. Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy

Digesting the workshop

Taking the time to digest what had just happened was critically important at this point.  We had spent 20 minutes inside this weird bubble of wax and string and sound and eggshells and straw and a whole load of visual and aural bombardments.  How was the room making sense of it all? I was intrigued.

First reactions were that lots had happened without actually seeing it.  Everyone was so engrossed in their little task with their simple material that they didn’t feel like they saw everything that was going on but everyone seemed to sense most stuff that was happening around them, regardless of whether they saw it or not. It wasn’t until everyone stopped and looked around at the transformation of the room that we all realised just how much we had changed our simple materials and our presence in the room.

Cycling and circles were prominent, connecting everyone – whether it was a circular straw wreath, circles in the eggshells or circles of string around the room.
The creation of a circular straw wreath by Cabot Institute academic during
Resilience Workshop. Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy
The  people sat around the large wax dish, were told to deconstruct it but ended up remoulding it and building something up instead which demonstrated how resilient we can be. Even if we destroy something, we can still make something out of what remains.  The group reflecting on the deconstruction of the wax bowl felt destructive to change it but then this feeling reversed once they realised that the wax warmed in their hands and became quite malleable. The wax group described resilience through beeswax in that it can be remoulded if you hold it in your hand long enough but you can also snap it causing a shock. The snapping led to a remoulding of the wax which seemed like a natural process.
 
Workshop participants breaking up a wax bowl.
Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy
The group who had the straw (four male academics) weren’t quite sure why they were creating bundles of straw or where they were going with it but they quickly and quietly started a production line to build a big nest. It felt meaningless to them whilst making the straw bundles but reflecting on it afterwards, they felt that they were creating something new, creating new life, and undertaking the basic processes of being human.
Making straw bundles and a nest. Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy

The string group, with a bundle of string and no scissors started by miming cats cradles to each other but then realised that not having scissors meant they had to think more creatively about what they were doing with the string…so they connected everyone in the room up. Once everyone in the room was connected they then turned to making the string look more attractive, embellishing it with knots and some borrowed straw.  The string group felt that this process made them question permission e.g. who they could tie up with string, were they allowed to go around the room with the string in the first place? They noticed that there was a bit of risk-taking involved in tying around people and creating trip hazards. In the space of boredom they associated their permissions. No one had said they couldn’t do what they were doing, so they just assumed that they could. Thinking about resilience it was interesting to see what permission allows you to do but also where it restricts your resilience.
Tying the room up with string and embellishing with straw.
Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy
The eggshell groups were told to ‘move mountains’. They got into a rhythm of piling up the eggshells to be ‘something’ and moving them around in a collective action without collective words. One eggshell group found that they had both been working on the same creation but that once they spoke to each other – one was working on creating an ‘island’ and the other a ‘sun’.  They had the same collective result even though they weren’t working with the same idea.  An important lesson – collaboration with people whose ideas or beliefs we don’t hold or understand is vitally important for being resilient to whatever life throws at us. It seemed that order was created out of the chaos of those eggshells.
Two people worked on this pile of eggshells in silence. One thought he was
creating an island, the other the sun. Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy

Artistic interpretations of resilience

After hearing peoples general reactions to the performance, Fourthland started to explain the artistic meaning behind the performance.  Each of the resources on the table (straw, eggshells, wax, string) were ‘scarce’ and Fourthland wanted to see how people would be creative whilst the items on the table were running out. The room worked across their academic disciplines by not speaking but creating new things.  
 
Fourthland asked how people would describe the process if we were to tell it again. A silence ensued whilst participants gathered their thoughts.  Someone said it was ‘child-like’, others said it was ‘different’ and there was audible pleasure in the room emanating from ‘giggles’.  There was uncertainty about what was being created and people wondered what the story was and what their part was in it.
 
Fourthland discussed how long the process should have taken. Usually they go for forty minutes and interrupt half way through. This time they went for twenty minutes to see what happened when people knew they had limited time.  Reflecting back, knowing that we had limited time to create something from nothing seemed to really kickstart the academics.  Knowing that the Cabot Institute academics have it within themselves to work together on issues of resilience around future cities and societies, climate change and sustainable engineering, it made me realise how important this whole process had been.  In a way it was life affirming because the work they do now has much more meaning and importance, and allowing creativity of ideas through a collective consciousness is invaluable to the future of humanity.
 

Academic interpretations

Below are some of the academic interpretations of the resilience workshop, all meaningful and thought provoking:
  • One scientist thought the workshop was about the individual stories and that life was precious. 
  • “It was less about looking for someone else in the room who knew what was happening and more about what I knew”.
  • “We took away our human stuff e.g. language and knowledge, and sought an older part of ourselves, like making eye contact in order to make and do and continue”. 
  • A social scientist asked about cooperation and what happens if something happens that is malign like external shocks? What happens to that group cooperation?  If the shock came you would need to know that you can all come together to get over that shock. 
  • Another point well-made was that there was a whole load of people who weren’t in the room. “Every time we try to be resilient we are excluding certain groups”.

 

Future thoughts on resilience

Fourthland said that the process was all about stories and myths in stories. However one academic counteracted this and said that these myths already exist, for example, in cultures such as Native American Indians and Aborigines. These cultures have passed down ‘myths’ and ‘stories’ generation to generation that will get us through our important global situation. The academic said we shouldn’t necessarily create new stories but “listen to the stories that already exist”.
 
I don’t know about anyone else in the room but Fourthland totally blew my mind and I feel rather differently about life and the future of life. It is looking increasingly likely that ours and future generations will have to cope with a more uncertain world as global governments are not pulling their weight with regards to environmental policies and regulations around emissions, climate change, environmental degradation and more. But the resilience that lies inside every one of us and the innate capacity that we have to work together even when we have nothing in common gives me much hope for the future.
 
————————————-

This blog has been written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Coordinator at the Cabot Institute.  Follow @Enviro_Mand.

Amanda Woodman-Hardy
To find out more about Fourthland visit http://fourthland.co.uk/
 
Fourthland will be holding a resilience exhibition at the Arnolfini in Bristol 26-29 November 2015. More details, all welcome.
 
If you fancy experiencing what we experienced, they are also holding a conference on 28 November 2015 to explore resilience further. Please contact fourthlandinfo@gmail.com for more information.
 
For another perspective on this resilience workshop, read Cabot Institute Manager Hayley Shaw’s blog Resilience: The power of being bored and mindless  
 

Fourthland conference and workshops 26 November – 29 November 2015, bookings open:

 

Uncertain World: Reflections

Posted on by janet.crompton

This last week we have been focussing on our Uncertain World, with a host of events and interactions to meet with new communities, think around new ideas and establish new solutions for what’s in store for us in the future.  You can read the other blogs covered in ‘Our Uncertain World’ at the bottom of this blog. Join the conversation with us on Twitter using the hashtag #UncertainWorld and contribute your thoughts and concerns to our (virtual) graffiti wall.

——————————————————————–
Over the past year, the Cabot Institute have been exploring this Uncertain World. I have been lucky enough to have attended, and written about, two events that have occurred this week – a public dialogue event and a Question Time event. This last blog is a way for me to reflect on the event and my thoughts on moving forward in a time of uncertainty.
At the events, I was particularly struck by how differently we perceive this uncertainty: both in our lived experience and our understandings of climate change. From concerns surrounding health to the criticism of how climate change is taught at school – every person I encountered or listened to saw something different and added new concerns. Particularly notable was the wide divergence in understandings of climate change, resilience and uncertainty between two of the generations present at these events. It is these perceptions that have guided my thoughts.
Out of fear of insulting you readers – I will refrain from labelling these generational conclusions in terms of ‘elderly’ and  ‘young’, or ‘mature’ and ‘naïve’. Instead, I will simplify them slightly – naming them after two people in my life: Maggie (my Nan); and Mary (my goddaughter). Maggie is 77 and enjoying retirement; Mary is four months old and doing a good job at avoiding colic.

Maggie

Many lack concern for climate change because they feel that they will remain unaffected. There is a greater concern in episodes of more-traditional conflict. Aside from Atlantis, there is no historical reference for the fate of Tuvalu in a world of rising sea levels. We fear armed conflict because of popular memory but how can we conceptualise climate change when we have no reference point to refer to?
Generation Maggie remembers the Second World War and much of their understandings were guided by their memories of the uncertainty generated by the conflict and the communal responses to this danger. This provides an important window into understanding uncertainty – the traditional perception of an existential threat, and how climate change often exists outside of this framing.
The uncertainty generated by the conflict of World War II led to
communal responses to this danger. Image credit: Wikipedia.
With age often painted as a contributory factor in scepticism towards climate change, it is important to understand that this may not be borne out of a lack of belief. Instead, it is driven by the conflict between the uncertain nature of climate change and the tangible, real threat that traditional conflict has posed in the past.
This problem is very different from the Blitzkrieg that transformed our cities into rubble during World War II; and, rather than labelling these sceptics “idiots” (George Ferguson’s words, not mine), we need to seek to engage with those who perceive climate change as uncertain and empower them to understand its role as a greater risk than we have ever experienced. World War Two may be a scar on this nation, but climactic shocks provide a threat that will be even harder to resist.
This experience also points to an important case of pooling of risk. Risks and resources were shared, community spirit was emphasised and everybody played their part. Food insecurity created rationing which, in turn, led to personal innovation and better diets than today. This may be rose tinted glasses but, as discussions uncovered, it is this form of community engagement, support and joint-adaptation that might provide the most effective routes to tacking climate-induced uncertainty in the future. Some still hark back for a return to these times; perhaps we should also look back and look to this community-resilience for inspiration.

Mary 

As Bristol Youth Mayor, Neha Mehta said at the Question Time panel, young people care. They have enthusiasm and empathy and, importantly, the desire for change. At the Question Time event, I found myself lucky enough to be sat behind Bristol’s Youth Council. For the hour and a half, their heads did not drop. In fact, it was one of their numbers that asked the most challenging, and perhaps most pressing question of the evening: just how compatible are meaningful steps towards climate mitigation and a capitalist system based in corporate profit? A question that many have tried to find the answer to and I will not dare not elaborate on.
 
Neha Mehta, Youth Mayor (left) at the Cabot Institute Uncertain World Question
Time event in October 2015.
This generation will suffer from a greater degree of uncertainty in employment, finance and fulfilment of fundamental needs than the generation that has come before. Significantly, this increased instability will occur at a time when climate change will become more evident and the need for adaptation more extreme. This is not a cry of defeat, perhaps this increased uncertainty in all parts of life shall result in an increased innovation, creativity and passion in meeting these challenges and fulfilling the necessary transformations. Evidence of this can be found in the fossil fuel divestment movements that are sweeping across the education institutions of the globe.
According to even medium projections, future generations will inherit a very different world to the one that you and I inhabit. This raises an important need to expand these discussions to younger generations. The solution to these problems cannot just come from the leaders of today, but also the stewards of tomorrow. The young must be inspired to see that change and strive for it.  For Neha, the answer must lie in education. Climate change can no longer be simplified and taught as just one aspect of a wider syllabus. Lessons must seek to inspire and advocate the individual and social change necessary to combat climate change. It is only through this engagement that today’s young people can become the future leaders that the climate change regime really needs. 
At the Question Time event, Leo Hickman posed a thought-experiment: 

“Has one generation ever done anything selflessly for the next?” 

But, why must the need to act lie in one generation? Successful mitigation and adaptation cannot only involve the empowerment of the young. There is no monopoly on change. It must occur at every level and embrace every member of the community – empowering them to make the behavioural changes that are necessary for resilience. 
The framing of climate change as an issue of the selflessness of one (future) generation transfers the need to act from one generation to the next, whilst neglecting the role that the past may play in the present. The climate change regime cannot only look forward; it must also look back to older and previous generations for inspiration. It is not a question of one generation sacrificing all for the future – it is a necessity for generations to work together to ensure the future is empowered and a better world is left.  

 

This must not be selfless sacrifice by a saviour generation, this needs to be a communal pooling to ensure resilience – and the precedents for this are there. 
 
————————————————————–

This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Ed Atkins, a PhD student at the University of Bristol who studies water scarcity and environmental conflict.

Ed Atkins

Other blogs in the Uncertain World series:

The Uncertain World: A public dialogue
The Uncertain World: Question Time

Bringing science and art together – part 2

Posted on by janet.crompton

The Somerset Levels and Moors are a low lying region prone to frequent flooding due to a range of environmental and human factors. The history of drainage and flooding in the Levels is rich and unique, yet its present condition is unstable and its future uncertain. Winter 2013-14 for example saw extensive floods in the Levels that attracted significant media attention and triggered debate on how such events can be mitigated in the future. The Land of the Summer People Science & Art project brings together engineering PhD students with local artists to increase public awareness and understanding of the Somerset floods. Scientific understanding and traditional engineering tools are combined with the artists’ creativity to prompt discussions about the area’s relationship with floods in a medium designed to be accessible and enjoyable.

Having worked on the early stages of this project researching the history and hydrology of flooding and drainage in the Somerset Levels I thought I was well prepared for the art stages to follow. I was decidedly wrong! The first workshop involved making a standard engineering-style poster containing information in the area our group had chosen to focus on; in my case the future of flooding in the region. This was a pretty standard summary of climate change impacts, land use change and a critique on the present policy which will shape the region over the next 5-20 years.

The next workshop saw us transform this information into a more ‘arty’ format. We chose a newspaper style article from 5 years in the future. In civil engineering (my undergraduate background) there’s a strong perception that the public don’t know anything about engineering and that they demand only bottom-up management towards their own interests; and this was definitely present in my article. Regardless of the truth or fallacy in this assumption, taking this attitude will not gain you public support for your project and, importantly, you will very likely miss out on important information that stakeholders could provide you with.

Each group began work with a Somerset artist to create art out of their topics and ideas. Our group is currently putting together a ‘flood survival kit’ containing items which aim to bring together ideas about the impacts and mechanisms behind flooding. Putting this together has been constant interplay between engineers looking to add purpose to items and our artist looking to reduce purpose with a much heavier use of metaphors/symbolism. Items include purpose-heavy hand-made water filters (from drinking bottles and sand!) and metaphor-heavy sponges and boats (made from Somerset clay).

Additionally our group will be inscribing rocks around Somerset with a text-number which will provide flood relevant proverbs or information when a message is sent to them. This was inspired by tsunami warning rocks in Japan!

An original tsunami warning rock in Japan
courtesy of the Huffington Post, 4th June 2011.

On 25th March, all the groups presented their projects in an exhibition in the Exeter Community Centre.

Our most valuable return on these projects are the skills in working with the public we will gain. After all, even capital projects designed with a stakeholder’s desires and demands in mind won’t work if the stakeholder rejects them. The pre-industrial history of the Somerset Levels illustrates this perfectly as drainage works in the region have typically been vandalised and prevented from working due to public opposition (an interesting contrast to the present dredging-heavy mentality!).

————————-
This blog has been reproduced with kind permission from the Bristol Doctoral College blog. It is written by Barney Dobson and Wouter Knoben who are currently studying engineering PhDs at the University of Bristol.

Read part one of this blog.

More about Land of the Summer People

This event was organised by Cabot Institute members Seila Fernández Arconada and Thorsten Wagener.  Read more.

Bringing science and art together – part 1

Posted on by janet.crompton

The Somerset Levels and Moors are a low lying region prone to frequent flooding due to a range of environmental and human factors. The history of drainage and flooding in the Levels is rich and unique, its present condition is unstable and its future uncertain. Winter 2013-14 for example saw extensive floods in the Levels that attracted a great deal of media attention and conflicting opinions on what to do how to prevent this from happening again. The Science & Art project brings engineering PhD students together with local artists, to increase public awareness and understanding of the Somerset floods. Scientific understanding and traditional engineering tools are combined with the artists’ creativity, in an effort to make discussions about the area’s history, present and future more accessible and enjoyable.

Coming from an engineering background, the prospect outlined above slightly scared me at first. As an engineer, you rarely use art as a tool in your work and, funnily enough, doesn’t appear during your university courses either. The few interactions with artists (as colleagues in a bar) and art (sporadic museum visits) left me very sceptic as to the success of this cooperation. Sure, art can be nice to look at, but what is the point of it when you’re trying to convey the results of your studies on flood risk?

This project is divided into a couple of workshops, and the differences between engineers and artists was apparent right from the start. We (the engineers) tried to convey as much knowledge about the Somerset Levels as we could cram onto our posters. Dates, history, water safety plans, references, whatever information was available. The artists then showed us some of their work. We saw sketches of landscapes reflecting in water, paintings of local soldiers in shoe polish and visual representations of sound waves to name a few things.

For the next workshop we were asked to change our original posters in any way we saw fit, based on the things we picked up from our first art workshop. This turned out to be not as easy as we’d hoped. After years of being trained to present information in a thorough and accurate way, making the necessary switch to create something that could be called artistic is difficult. We mostly managed to present the, admittedly dry, material on the posters into a somewhat more appealing way. The idea to do something else than conveying information was still difficult to bring into practice.

As the artists kept reminding us, it is not always necessary to convey knowledge to the viewer of our work. Sometimes it is enough to make someone think about a certain topic you think is important, or to simply present some specific theme in an intriguing, appealing or interesting way. In the third workshop we began to form ideas based on this line of thinking. Transferring information and creating knowledge for the viewer are still important parts of the work, but they have become secondary rather than primary objectives. Now we’re hard at the work to make our ideas become reality!

These workshops have been good to show some perspective. As a specialist, you would normally want to present as much of your gathered information and knowledge as you possibly can, but this quickly becomes overwhelming for someone unfamiliar to the topic. Collaborating with artists can be a good way to introduce a specialised topic to a wider audience in an entertaining and accessible way, while at the same time teaching us how laypeople might think about our subjects.
———————————
This blog has been reproduced with kind permission from the Bristol Doctoral College blog. It is written by Barney Dobson and Wouter Knoben who are currently studying engineering PhDs at the University of Bristol.

Read part two of this blog.

More about Land of the Summer People

This event was organised by Cabot Institute members Seila Fernández Arconada and Thorsten Wagener.  Read more.

Sign up to our weekly newsletter for all the latest news, events and opportunities at https://bristol.ac.uk/cabot/news/subscribe. Find out more about our unique Master's by Research in Global Environmental Challenges at https://bristol.ac.uk/cabot-masters.