CEP at Flood & Coast 2019 conference

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross (CEP) a panel member at the 2019 Flood and Coast conference.

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross will be presenting, on 18 June 2019, a short paper on community resilience to flooding at the 2019 Conference panel session Climate change - how do we overcome the physical, political & societal barriers to meet the challenge.  The other members of the panel are:  

• Andrew Eden, National lead - climate adaptation & resilience, Environment Agency

• Craig Jones, Director, Circular Ecology

• Janet Taylor, Chair, Lune Valley Flood Forum

• Andrew Russell, Committee for Climate Change

• Jonathan Farr, Policy, Water Aid

Convened by the Environment Agency, the Flood & Coast conference 2019 is a unique event that advances the debate about flood and coast erosion risk, resilience and response between government bodies and local authorities with business, major infrastructure and asset managers, as well as affected communities. 

For more information please contact Dr Clare Twigger-Ross (Technical Director).

CEP participating in Austria climate change adaptation workshop

CEP participating in workshop on climate change adaptation and natural hazards for the Austrian Climate Research Programme

On 5th July Dr Clare Twigger-Ross will be participating in a project workshop for Climate Change Adaptation and Protection from Natural Hazards: capacity building for people with a migration background in Austria.  The project is part of the 8th Call Austrian Climate Research Programme and runs from 2016 for 34 months.  It is led by the University of Natural Resource and Life Sciences, Vienna. 

The project aims to explore the potential vulnerability and capacity of migrant groups in the context of Climate Change using a cross-analysis of several embedded case studies in Austria.  Clare has been invited to share her experience in the area of flooding and climate change resilience, with a specific focus on approaches to researching groups who may be more vulnerable to negative impacts because of social factors.

Clare Twigger-Ross at Flood Management Conference

CEP's Dr Clare Twigger-Ross presented at the 7th International Conference on Flood Management in Leeds

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross presented a paper at the 7th International Conference on Flood Management, Leeds on 6th September: Catalysts for transformative resilience to flooding? The role of community volunteers.

The paper was part of a special session on Local Scale Approaches to community flood resilience chaired by Dr. Jessica Lamond (University of the West of England) and co-authored with Paula Orr, Katya Brooks and Rolands Sadauskis, and drew on data collected for the Defra Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder (FRCP) evaluation (report can be found here).  The slides from the session can be found here.

CEP's evaluation of low cost resilience to flooding project published by Defra

Photo credit: michael kooiman on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

CEP's evaluation of a small-scale project trialing low cost resilience to flooding was published by Defra

CEP carried out an independent evaluation of a small-scale demonstration project designed to test an innovative approach to flood repairable systems in a flood-prone area. The demonstration was carried out in Tewkesbury as part of the project 'Supporting the uptake of low cost resilience for properties at risk of flooding'. The project, led by by the University of the West of England,  involved a number of partners and worked with the local Property Support Network – builders, retailers, loss adjusters, local authorities, and insurers – to support take-up of these approaches.  

The project identifies barriers and proposes solutions to promote low cost approaches that would make properties at risk of flooding more resilient to damage from flood waters. The project's final report, technical annex and CEP's evaluation report (appendix to the final report) are available here.

CEP's Dr Clare Twigger-Ross awarded CECAN Fellowship

Photo credit: 'jigsaw puzzle pieces' by Electric-Eye on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

CEP's Dr Clare Twigger-Ross awarded CECAN Fellowship

CEP's Dr Clare Twigger-Ross has been awarded a Fellowship by the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN) Investigating the value of qualitative comparative analysis in relation to the Defra Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder (FRCP) evaluation. Building on the Defra FRCP evaluation undertaken by CEP (2013 - 2015), this study aims to identify key factors that predict improved community resilience.

The key evaluation challenge for this study will be the attribution of causality in the context of community resilience to flooding. A key methodological development will be testing qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) in a novel (flooding) complex evaluation situation to examine its feasibility for similar situations, and to assess the aspects of QCA of most use to this type of evaluation.

This is expected to raise key complexity issues in evaluation, which have been recently explored in CEP's project for CECAN Learning lessons for evaluating complexity at the nexus: a meta-evaluation of CEP projects. The findings of this project will become available on the CECAN website in the coming months.

CEP to evaluate Big Lottery Fund's Our Bright Future Programme

Photo credit: 'Blazin Sun' by Stephen Bowler on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

CEP and partners ERS to evaluate Big Lottery Fund's Our Bright Future Programme

CEP, with partners Economic Research Services (ERS), are undertaking the evaluation of the Our Bright Future Programme. The Our Bright Future Programme aims to empower young people to lead progressive change in their communities and local environment, through a portfolio of 31 projects across the UK, each with a duration of three to five years. The Programme is supported by £33 million of funding from the Big Lottery Fund, and is managed by a consortium of eight organisations led by The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. 

The supported projects range in scale from those with a local focus to national level delivering in multiple areas. All the projects are based around key themes including: environmental action, environmental campaigning, leadership and influencing, and sustainable enterprises and vocational training.

CEP and ERS have been commissioned by the Royal Society of  Wildlife Trusts to undertake the Programme level evaluation. The evaluation aims to:

• Test whether the Our Bright Future Programme has achieved its long term ambitions
• Provide better evidence on how young people can improve their local environment
• Test and evidence whether a partnership way of working that invests in human, social and natural capital, is an effective means by which to deliver greater impact
• Identify good practice and ongoing improvements

Owen White is CEP’s lead for this project.

CEP at FloodRISK Conference 2016

Photo credit: Flooded River Severn by muffinn on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

CEP at European Conference on Flood Risk Management

CEP has contributed two papers to FloodRisk 2016, the 3rd European Conference on Flood Risk Management, which will be shown in Lyon on 19 and 20 October.  The papers are co-authored by Clare Twigger-Ross, Paula Orr, Katya Brooks and Rolands Sadauskis and draw on evidence from CEP’s evaluation of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Flood resilience Community Pathfinders (2013-15).

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross’s presentation on ‘Citizen Involvement in Flood Risk Government: Flood groups and networks’ will be shown on Wednesday 19 October, as part of the session on Disaster Management and Recovery.  A presentation by Paula Orr entitled ‘Pieces of kit are not enough: Flood infrastructure and community resilience’ will be shown on Thursday 20 October, in the session on Vulnerability and Societal Resilience.

After the conference, the presentations will be available on CEP’s website.

CEP'S CLARE TWIGGER-ROSS PRESENTING AT IAPS CONFERENCE ON PEOPLE-ENVIRONMENT STUDIES

Photo credit: 'Wheat' by Dag Terje Filip Endresen on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

CEP'S CLARE TWIGGER-ROSS PRESENTING AT IAPS CONFERENCE on People-Environment STUDIEs

CEP's Dr Clare Twigger-Ross will be presenting at the 24th IAPS conference (International Association for People-Environment Studies). It is hosted by the Environmental Psychology Research Groups at Lund University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in southern Sweden and takes place from 27th June - 1st July in Lund and Alnarp.   

The conference will address the study of the interrelations between the social, the built and the natural environment, and the impacts on them. The conference theme turns the spotlight on to what is at the core of the bigger issues related to global sustainability – the actions and everyday lives of humans. 

Clare will be presenting at the following sessions, on Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29, drawing from the findings of two of CEP's recent projects to discuss:

• Unpacking the relationships between green spaces and social cohesion: a brief overview of evidence and practice across the EU (Project insights: The health and social benefits of nature and biodiversity protection)
• Developing frameworks for understanding and evaluating community resilience to flood risk: evidence from the UK (Project insights: Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder evaluation)

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross at Winter Flood Project findings launch event

Image 'The Somerset Levels' by Nick (CC BY 2.0)

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross to participate in panel discussion on floods, adaptation and community

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross will take part in a panel discussion in an event launching the findings for the Winter Floods Project, undertaken at the Exeter University.

The Winter Floods Project examined how perceptions of the problems and solutions evolved during the year following the floods that occurred over the winter of 2013/14, in order to better understand how longer term policy responses occurs at local and national scales.  The project also investigated individual and community resilience after flood events to identify how flood events impact well-being and quality of life.

The event will present the project’s key findings, followed by a panel discussion on the theme of 'floods, adaptation, and community' with academic and policy contributors. 

The event will take place on 8th June 2016 at the Royal Geographical Society, London between 13:30 and 17:30.

If you would like to attend please use this link to register for a place.   

CEP at Flood and Coast 2016 conference

FLOOD AND COAST 2016

CEP is participating in Flood and Coast 2016: Risk, Resilience and Response in a Changing Climate, a conference which is being held in Telford between 23 – 25 February.

Clare Twigger-Ross is presenting on Developing community resilience to flood risk - the role of flood groups in the session on Working with people and communities at 4 pm on 23rd February.

Paula Or is presenting on How to measure success in building community resilience to flooding - developing frameworks for understanding and evaluating community resilience to flood risk in a UK context in the session on Working with people and communities at 4 pm on 24th February

CEP report on community flood resilience published

Image:'Water over river rocks' by Rob Barber on Flickr (CC by 2.00)

Defra publishes CEP’s report on Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder

CEP’s Final Report of the evaluation of Defra’s Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder (FRCP) scheme in England has now been published.  The report and further information about both the Pathfinder Scheme and the evaluation can be found here.

The FRCP scheme consisted of thirteen partnership projects across England, involving local governments and other organisations such as voluntary sector groups, Environment Agency etc.   The pathfinder scheme was designed to enable and stimulate communities at significant or greater risk[1] of flooding to work in partnership with these kinds of organisation to develop innovative local solutions that:

• Enhanced flood risk management and awareness in ways which quantifiably improved the community’s overall resilience to flooding.
• Demonstrably improved the community’s financial resilience in relation to flooding.
• Delivered sustained improvements with the potential to be applied in other areas.

The evaluation was carried out over the entire pathfinder period and reported on the progress made by the individual projects and on the results and impacts of the scheme, identifying lessons for building community resilience in the future.

The evaluation built on Cutter et al.’s (2010) model for categorising community resilience capacities/resources and discussed the pathfinder project interventions in terms of the five resilience categories: social, institutional, infrastructure, economic and community capital.

[1] Based on flood risk categories used in the UK National Flood Risk Assessment, significant risk equates to a one in 75 chance of flooding from rivers or the sea in any given year.

CEP awarded community resilience project evaluation

Image: East Looe River, Cornwall  by Graham Hogg. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

CEP awarded evaluation of project aiming to help communities become resilient

CEP has been awarded the evaluation of the Communities Prepared project that aims to support and train people in local communities and encourage them to volunteer and respond to flooding and other emergencies.

The project is undertaken by Groundwork South who has successfully unlocked a £496,562 Reaching Communities Grant, funded by the National Lottery through the Big Lottery Fund. 

Key to this new programme will be a toolkit with training to help all communities become more resilient to challenges that they may face. In the first phase of the project eight communities in the South West and two in the North will be supported. Once this pilot has been completed the Communities Prepared Partnership would look to support communities across the country to become more resilient and better prepared.

The Communities Prepared Partnership has representatives from; Groundwork South, Cornwall Community Flood Forum, Cornwall College Business and is supported by the Environment Agency and other organisations and authorities. This partnership has been set up to build on the success of Cornwall’s DEFRA Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Project and the work done through the Cornwall Community Flood Forum to help communities become better prepared and more resilient to flooding and other emergencies. CEP has also undertaken the evaluation of the Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Scheme.

More information on this project can be found here.

CEP's report on Community resilience to climate change published

JRF publisheS CEP's report on Community resilience to climate change

The findings of CEP's study on community resilience, undertaken for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, have been published on 17 November with the title ‘Community resilience to climate change: An evidence review’. The report and a summary of findings are available on the JRF website.

CEP's Clare Twigger-Ross at Resilience to Climate Change seminar

Image: Flooding at the head of Loch Tay, by nz_willowherb

CEP's Clare Twigger-Ross presenting at RGS SEMINAR: Resilience to Climate Change: Who pays (and who benefits)? 

This knowledge-exchange event, taking place at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) in London on Tuesday 17th November, will explore the question of ‘who pays?’ to deliver adaptation to climate change in the UK, and with this, community resilience. Coming a week before the Spending Review, this event will consider not only who should pay in financial terms to deliver climate change adaptation, in an age of austerity, but also who will pay socially through a failure to adapt – or even through measures deemed necessary to adapt.

CEP's Clare Twigger-Ross will be presenting the results of a study undertaken by a team led by CEP for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation: ‘Community resilience to climate change: An evidence review’. The seminar coincides with the publication of the report by JRF which should be available on their website from the 17th November.

The seminar will be followed by a panel discussion and the opportunity to stay to dinner to explore community resilience and adaptation to climate change.

Find out more and register to attend.