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Building capacity for climate resilient WASH

Dr Katrina Charles writes about the need to integrate climate within water and sanitation decisions, tools and practices, in order to build long term resilience in the face of climate change.

Read more here.

Managing the risk of surface water flooding

Research by the University of Oxford, in conjunction with the London School of Economics, is playing a key role in combating one of Britain’s most persistent natural hazards.

Photo by northallertonman / Shutterstock

Photo by northallertonman / Shutterstock

Recent years have seen torrential rain cause widespread flooding in the south west, the Thames Valley and Cumbria. Few places, it seems, are safe from one of Britain’s most persistent natural hazards, but effective action can make a difference, managing the extent of flooding and reducing its impact. Dr Katie Jenkins, a researcher at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, has been integrally involved in a novel analysis of the implications of surface water flooding for flood insurance, offering significant new insights for improving flood risk management efforts in the UK.

Working on an EU FP7 project called ENHANCE, in collaboration with the LSE, Dr Jenkins has been investigating the economic effect of surface water flood risk, and the role of climate change, on Greater London. In particular, with LSE senior research fellow Dr Swenja Surminski, Dr Jenkins has focused on the role of insurance in risk management. Their work points to better ways of aligning flood insurance and flood risk management efforts – an aspect that is currently missing from the existing and newly proposed flood insurance scheme.

‘Our research investigates the UK flood insurance scheme, which is based on a partnership between the public and private sector,’ explains Dr Jenkins. ‘We assess the relative merits of household and community risk reduction measures, using an agent-based model to factor in perspectives from a number of different stakeholders. The aim is to foster greater resilience to flooding by utilising flood insurance.’

The methodology used by Dr Jenkins and Dr Surminski can be replicated for nationwide studies – and it informed discussion of Flood Re, an innovative insurance scheme to provide affordable flood insurance for the 350,000 to 500,000 homes in the UK considered to be at significant risk of flooding.

‘Flood Re is a not-for-profit approach to insuring high risk households against flooding,’ says Dr Jenkins. ‘It exemplifies how the UK is transitioning towards a new flood insurance arrangement.’ The research undertaken by Dr Jenkins and Dr Surminski has been cited by the Bank of England in a report on the impact of climate change on the insurance sector, triggering extensive stakeholder debate. Furthermore the researchers are currently engaging with Flood Re to advise on how best to utilise Flood Re in the overarching efforts to address flood risk in the UK.

Giorgis Hadzilacos from Willis Re, one of the key specialist advisors regarding the Flood Re scheme, said:’the research by Dr Jenkins has shed light on some of the Flood Re project’s unanswered questions, meaning that insurers are better placed to understand the impact of the scheme and consequences under future climate change.’

Research funded by: European Funding

Related links

ENHANCE
Dr Katie Jenkins

Water Security: less talk, more action

andrew-hamilton-oxford-university

Professor Andrew Hamilton, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University © REACH

Water security is an increasingly urgent and complex challenge facing society, both rich and poor. Over 200 people from 20 countries met to debate using a risk-based framework to respond to the global and local challenges at the Water Security 2015 conference held at Oxford University on 9-11 December.

The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, Professor Andrew Hamilton, welcomed Ministers from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya who led discussions on the significance and shared challenge of water security for countries in Africa and Asia.

‘Water security is an issue of life or death for Bangladesh’ said Mr MA Mannan MP, State Minister of Finance and Planning. The country’s population, especially the poor, are highly vulnerable to water hazards, including frequent floods, droughts and arsenic-contaminated groundwater.

The World Bank and Oxford University presented new evidence on the global status of water security risks, showing the scale, urgency and cost of the challenge. Findings from the OECD and Global Water Partnership report ‘Securing Water, Sustaining Growth’ provide the economic rationale for investment in infrastructure, institutions and information.

Professor Jim Hall, Director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University said: ‘investment finance needs to have a sense of where the priorities lie. We have developed a common language to look at the scale of the risk, evaluate the benefits of risk reduction, and make proportionate interventions and investments in water security.’

The conference continued with a focus on water security and poverty in Africa and South Asia, marking the first year of REACH: Improving water security for the poor. The programme is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), with a £15 million investment in water research. DFID’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Charlotte Watts, flagged the programme as critical to providing robust evidence needed for designing and implementing water security interventions.

Professor Charlotte Watts, Chief Scientific Adviser, UK Department for International Development © REACH

Professor Charlotte Watts, Chief Scientific Adviser, UK Department for International Development © REACH

Gaining government support will be key for REACH to bring about transformational change beyond its focussed ‘Water Security Observatories’ or study sites. Attendance from three State Ministers from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya – the countries where REACH works – was an important step in building these science-policy partnerships with senior academic, enterprise and policy collaborators.

Ato Motuma Mekassa, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Ethiopia, shared his country’s vision: ‘It is my Government’s ambition and commitment that all Ethiopians especially women and children have a future where they can live, learn and grow without the burden of water insecurity both in terms of water quality and quantity.’

Mr MA Mannan MP, State Minister of Finance and Planning, Bangladesh (left); Ato Motuma Mekassa, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Ethiopia (right) © REACH

Mr MA Mannan MP, State Minister of Finance and Planning, Bangladesh (left); Ato Motuma Mekassa, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Ethiopia (right) © REACH

The Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation in Kenya, Mr Eugene Wamalwa, spoke of unprecedented floods taking place in his country. Referring also to recent floods in Cumbria in the UK, he said that water is a global issue that connects us all. He tweeted with enthusiasm about his support for REACH and willingness to work in partnership to find new solutions to water insecurity.

Dr Rob Hope, REACH Director, Oxford Universityl (left); Eugene Wamalwa, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Kenya (right) © REACH

Dr Rob Hope, REACH Director, Oxford Universityl (left); Eugene Wamalwa, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Kenya (right) © REACH

Mr Sanjay Wijesekera, Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at UNICEF, highlighted the drive towards achieving universal access to water and sanitation, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The need to address inequalities and target the poorest and most vulnerable is a priority across the SDGs, and in UNICEF’s work, he said. UNICEF is a global practitioner partner in the REACH programme with strong collaboration across regions and countries in Africa and Asia.

Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF © REACH

Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF © REACH

Three Country Diagnostic Reports on Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya were launched at the conference. The reports illustrate significant but complex interactions between water security risks and poverty. Each Country Diagnostic Report outlines Water Security Observatories where REACH will focus its work over the next seven years.

Speakers from a session on ‘engendering water security’ showed how gender is a thread that weaves its way through all water security issues, from disasters, to water supply and sanitation, water management and technologies, and climate change resilience. The different values, needs and uses of water by men and women, and boys and girls, must be considered, to ensure that policies are effective. Eight parallel sessions convened panel discussions by senior policy, academic and enterprise leaders on issues of finance, monitoring, climate, poverty, health, data science, political accountability and groundwater.

In final remarks, REACH Director Dr Rob Hope said: ‘REACH will generate outstanding science to support policy and practice to improve water security for millions of poor people. The focus is on research with purpose and not producing academic papers that will gather dust.’

A call for partnerships and action was crystallised with the launch of the REACH Partnership Funding.

Presentations, audio and video will be available on the conference website soon – www.watersecurity205.org.

See the social media summary of the conference on Storify

Conference photos

Unavoidable increase in flood risk with 4°C climate change

A new report finds that significant additional investment and adaptation action will be needed in the UK to counter flood risk projected under a 2°C rise in global mean temperatures. But if temperatures climb by 4°C, a large increase in flood risk will be unavoidable. 

Climate-Change-Risk-Assessment-2017-250x350The research, led by Paul Sayers, a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Environmental Change Institute, warns that even the most ambitious adaptation scenarios will not be able to avoid the effects of 4°C on UK flood risk. Long stretches of current coastal flood defence structures in England will become highly vulnerable to failure as sea levels rise, making it increasingly more difficult and costly to manage the risk of widespread coastal inundation.

The report was commissioned by the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) of the Committee on Climate Change who has been asked by the Government to lead the next UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. An Evidence Report will be published in July 2016, before the final Government report is presented to Parliament in 2017.

Read the report

 

Exploring whether water shortages are due to climate change or local factors

Human-induced climate change plays a clear and significant role in some extreme weather events but understanding the other risks at a local level is also important, say research studies just published. Oxford researchers examined serious droughts in Brazil, East Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.

The Jaguari Reservoir in Brazil. The left side image shows the area on August 3, 2014; the right side image shows the same area on August 16, 2013, before the recent drought began. Credit: NASA.

The Jaguari Reservoir in Brazil. The left side image shows the area on August 3, 2014; the right side image shows the same area on August 16, 2013, before the recent drought began. Credit: NASA.

Oxford researchers found that while there was a clear influence of human-induced climate change being responsible for the failing rains in the Levant region, the fingerprint of human activity was not detected in the other two where causes of water shortages were found to be local factors, such as increased water demand, population growth or methods used for irrigating the crops.

A study of a severe drought in São Paulo, the largest city in South America with a population of about 20 million, found that human-induced climate change was not a major influence. The researchers, led by Dr Friederike Otto of the Environmental Change Institute, examined the drought in terms of lack of rainfall, water availability, and water demand. They found the consequences of the drought – which included temporary water shut-offs, a spike in dengue fever cases, and higher electricity prices – were a result of low water availability combined with the numbers of people involved and damage to the infrastructure system. They also concluded that the lack of rainfall in southeast Brazil in 2014 and 2015 while unusual was not unprecedented, with similar dry periods occurring before, with the most recent being in 2001.

Dr Otto said: ‘It’s clear that a lack of rain and changes in evaporation were not the only players in the Brazilian drought. We therefore looked beyond the weather and found that the increased demand for water caused by a quadrupling of the city’s population since 1960 and rising water use increased risks of water shortages in this area.’

The second Oxford-led study by Dr Toby Marthews focused on the Horn of Africa and showed that droughts are a natural part of the climate in this region; yet, despite this, the population is heavily dependent on rain-fed agricultural methods. This made the population extremely vulnerable when there was no rain – as happened in the 2014 growing season, says the study. It adds though there was no influence of human-induced climate change causing a lack of rain that year, although it had led to higher temperatures and incoming radiation, making the population more vulnerable.

The third study focused on a lack of rainfall in what should have been the raining season in the Levant region in 2014. The researchers found human-induced climate change increased the risk of such a severe and unprecedented drought occurring by around 45%. Co-author Daniel Mitchell, from the Environmental Change Institute, said: ‘We used local station data and the modelling framework provide by the weather@home project to find clear signals for human influence on this uniquely persistent drought. The study suggests those living in the southern Levant region should be considering adaptations and ways of reducing the risks of extreme weather events, particularly if weather is set to become increasingly extreme in the future.’

Researchers from the ECI have led and co-authored five of the published studies that appear in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society’s annual special report, Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 from a Climate Perspective, which investigates the causes of a wide variety of extreme weather and climate events from around the world. All of the five rely on simulations provided by members of the public in the distributed computing framework weather@home. This project uses the combined power of tens of thousands of home computers to simulate the risks of human influence in extreme weather events.

Dr Otto, who leads the weather@home project, said: ‘The field called “extreme event attribution”, which looks for the fingerprints of human-caused warming in extreme weather events, has made considerable advances over the past decade. The goal of extreme event attribution science is to provide this evidence and we are in a unique position to provide the necessary modelling framework to look into the changing statistics of rare and unprecedented events.’

Read the report

Visit the weather@home website

Flood risk: making better infrastructure investments

Researchers at the Environmental Change Institute are helping evaluate and communicate best practice in national-scale flood risk analysis and long-term investment planning for flood management.

Thames barrier © Jack Torcello

Thames barrier © Jack Torcello

The FoRUM project – Flood risk: Building Infrastructure Resilience through better Understanding and Management choices – recently held two workshops to start a dialogue between scientists and stakeholders that make use of flood risk science in their work.

Paul Sayers, leading the project, explained: ‘understanding and assessing risk is a prerequisite to managing it. The ability of alternative investment strategies to reduce risk – at a regional, national or even international scale – presents particular challenges.’

The two workshops helped identify these challenges, compare alternative approaches and distil lessons from across different sectors.

The project has engaged academics and industry partners from the UK and Netherlands (including the Environment Agency, Network Rail, Rijkswaterstaat and Thames Water), as well as leading consultants from the flood and reinsurance sectors.

At the first workshop ‘Broadscale risk models’ stakeholders and researchers took an in-depth look at current methods for modelling national-scale flood risk. A second workshop aimed to get stakeholders up to speed on the most recent advances in planning long-term investment in infrastructure.

There are many different types of infrastructure that help reduce the damage caused by flooding; physical structures such as embankments and floodgates, as well as ‘natural infrastructure’ such as introducing greenspaces or managing beaches. A key challenge for water utilities and government agencies is deciding what investments to make, given uncertainties related to future flood risk.

While there have been significant developments in the last decade in how decision-makers address future uncertainty in investment planning, current practice still lags behind the latest thinking in academia. The FoRUM project is a significant step in bridging this gap.

The findings of these workshops are already influencing the future development of the tools used by the Environment Agency to support its Long Term Investment Scenarios (LTIS). Dr Jon Wicks, CH2M HILL, who is leading an Environment Agency project to scope the next generation LTIS tools, said: ‘the FoRUM workshops have been very helpful in highlighting alternative approaches and how they might be taken forward into practical application.’

The project is led by Paul Sayers and Jim Hall at the Environmental Change Institute, with support from Edmund Penning Rowsell (School of Geography and the Environment) and Rob Nicholls (University of Southampton). It is funded by Natural Environment Research Council’s Environmental Risk to Infrastructure Programme (ERIIP).

Presentations from speakers at the workshops are available to download via the links below.

Visit the FoRUM project webpages
See presentations from FoRUM Workshop 1: Broadscale risk models, Tuesday 17 March 2015
See presentations from FoRUM Workshop 2: Long term investment planning | Tuesday 5 May 2015

African wetlands and climate

Dr Simon Dadson at the School of Geography and the Environment, has led a team of researchers from Oxford University, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the Met Office and the University of Cape Town in a project to investigate the role of African wetlands in the climate system.

Okavango River

Okavango River in Botswana © Simon Dadson

The research, which was funded by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council and comes to an end this year, enables the calculation of river flows and inland flooding in data-sparse regions. The system is now integrated within the UK Met Office’s Unified Model suite of global and regional climate models and is being used worldwide.

The scientific impact of this work is to further understanding of how climate variability and change effects water resources availability, but also to get a better view of how patterns of changing freshwater availability affect local meteorology. The project has generated significant interest among the African environmental science community and enabled several research fellows to undertake exchange visits to Oxford, and vice versa.

Dr Dadson will build upon this work in a new project with the University of Reading which will investigate the influence of wetland-climate feedbacks on African hydroclimate.

Read the impact case study ‘How changes to inland waters impact regional climates’

Visit the project webpage and access the project data

UK Government warned to take urgent action on climate change

A new set of reports by the Committee on Climate Change calls for urgent action by the UK Government to avoid the increasing costs and impacts of climate change.

Climate Change ReportProfessor Jim Hall, Director of the ECI, sits on the Adaptation Sub Committee and was involved in the adaptation report, which comprises the first statutory assessment of the UK’s National Adaptation Programme. The assessment revealed a number of risks which need to be addressed by government, including an increase in the number of homes at risk of flooding, despite extensive spending on flood defences; and the threat posed within the next generation from rising temperature on the UK’s farming.

Lord Deben, Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, commented on the report saying: “This Government has a unique opportunity to shape climate policy through the 2020s. It must act now to set out how it plans to keep the UK on track. Acting early will help to reduce costs to households, business and the Exchequer. It will improve people’s health and wellbeing and create opportunities for business in manufacturing and in the service sector.”

Read the full set of reports on the Committee on Climate Change website

Article from the Environmental Change Institute website

Is the Western US drought caused by climate change?

Climateprediction.net has launched a new experiment to find out if climate change has made the drought in California, Oregon and Washington more likely.

The Western US drought has ranged from troublesome to severe. Californians have just experienced a fourth winter of drought, following three years that have marked some of the most severe drought conditions in the past century.

Oregon is in its second year of drought thanks to very low snowpack because of warm, mild winters. Washington is in its first year of drought – a result almost exclusively tied to warmer winter temperatures.

This past winter, Governor Jerry Brown issued water restrictions for the first time in the history of the state. In 2014 alone, the drought cost $2.2 billion and caused over 17,000 farm workers to lose their jobs.

In the video above, Abby Halperin, Myles Allen and Friederike Otto at the Environmental Change Institute explain how serious the ongoing drought is, and how this Weather@home experiment will help determine what effect, if any, human-induced climate change has had on the likelihood of the drought.

With the help of volunteers all around the world running simulations on their home computers, the experiment will simulate and compare thousands of possible Western US winter seasons in the world as it might have been without climate change, with possible winter weather in the world as we know it. If the chance of a drought in these two worlds is the same, then climate change cannot be blamed for this particular event. However, if the chance of a drought is greater in the world with climate change, this indicates that climate change increased the risk of drought.

Read more about the Weather@home experiment and how you can get involved

Britain leads global water initiative

In May 2015, Professor Paul Whitehead gave a keynote talk at the launch of Britain’s first national water benchmarking scheme. The event took place at world-renowned Pinewood Studios, giving it “00” status!

paul-whitehead

AquaMark is a multi-million pound grant scheme managed by consultants ADSM and is free to join for all UK participating organisations. The national project will fund a range of services so that sophisticated benchmarks can be derived for over 500 different building classifications, allowing commercial users to reduce water usage by an average of 30%. The project is the first of its kind and is set to put Britain at the forefront of global water benchmarking.

Paul Whitehead, Professor of Water Science at the School of Geography and the Environment, delivered a keynote on ‘Security of water supply: managing for the future and minimising risk’. He explained the implications of climate change for water resources in the UK, and introduced modelling tools for predicting future water shortages and environmental risks.

Oxford University research is helping identify and address water security risks, both in the UK and globally. Professor Whitehead highlighted the MaRIUS project on drought and water scarcity in the UK, the Macronutrients Cycles Programme, and the ESPA Deltas project which explores the impact of future climate change and socio-economic change in the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers in India and Bangladesh.

Patrick McCart, ADSM Founder and Director, commented: ‘Right now there exists a real opportunity for UK organisations, both large and small, to participate in this ground-breaking research project. Britain is set to become the global advisor on sustainable water supplies for commercial users. The recent events experienced in California and São Paulo, have highlighted how essential it is that businesses and organisations are supported with all the necessary tools to combat water scarcity.’

The launch took place in Pinewood studios and was supported by over 100 blue chip and public sector organisations.

The project has received backing from the water industry, regulators OFWAT, The Environment Agency, and leading research experts BRE, BSRIA and the University of Oxford.

For further information about joining the scheme, please visit www.adsm.com/AquaMark

See Paul Whitehead’s presentation ‘Security of water supply: managing for the future and minimising risk’

Events

ONE Super-Year for Nature

Monday, 12 October 2020

16:30-18:00 BST

Want to learn more about the Oxford Water Network and the other networks that make up the Oxford Networks for the Environment (ONE)? ONE facilitates connections between all Oxford researchers working on environmental research in biodiversity, climate, energy, food and water. The networks exchange knowledge and expertise, enabling Oxford University to be ‘greater than the sum of its parts’, capable of tackling the most complex environmental challenges. As we prepare for the COP26, and in what is set to be a ‘super-year’ for nature, climate, humans and planet earth, understanding how we make use of our natural resources sustainably is of critical importance.

This event is open to University of Oxford Doctoral Training Students (DTPs), undergraduate students, post-graduate students, researchers and staff to a Super Year for Nature discussion, to raise awareness of the issues, and understand how Oxford is responding. This event is for you if you are interested in broadening your knowledge on the complex and converging challenges of biodiversity, climate, energy, food and water.

Event Details

Presentations from

  • Jim Hall – Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks at the School of Geography and the Environment and Convener of the ONE network
  • Harriet Waters – Head of Environmental Sustainability, Estates Department, University of Oxford
  • Nathan Lawson – President, Oxford Climate Society, (Geography BA), Jesus College
  • Siobhan Dhir – Vice President, Oxford Climate Society, (Materials DPhil), St Catherine’s College
  • ONE Network Coordinators for Water, Food, Biodiversity, Climate and Energy

And closing with Open Mic/Q&A time.