Page 10 - The Keble Review 2016

10
The Keble Review 2016
How academic engagement with the community can help prevent flooding
“While the sodden, submerged North of Britain was, literally, wringing out the old year last week, one notorious Yorkshire flood blackspot was celebrating staying dry – despite having been refused a multimillion pound defence scheme. Pickering, North Yorkshire, pulled off protection by embracing the very opposite of what passes for conventional wisdom. On its citizens’ own initiative, it ended repeated inundation by working with nature, not against it.”
(The Independent 2/1/16)
The article explains how academics from Oxford, Newcastle and Durham Universities worked with local residents in 2007/8 to examine the local flood management options. The best option turned out to be ‘upstream storage’. Seven years later a scheme comprising woody debris dams and an earth bund was opened by then Environment Secretary Liz Truss, who is quoted as saying that “we can use the results we get here much more widely”.
Much of the media attention on the scheme has focused on its successful demonstration of so-called Natural Flood Management techniques. However, the greater novelty lies in the collaboration between university scientists and local residents that first proposed upstream storage using an experimental methodology designed and trialled as part of a project led by Professor Sarah Whatmore and her colleagues Stuart Lane and Neil Ward at the Departments of Geography at Durham and Newcastle Universities respectively. This Environmental Competency Group (ECG) methodology enables communities affected by flooding and hydrological modellers to combine their knowledge and skills in better understanding and managing local flood risk. Sarah explains that “it is immensely rewarding to see such research impact not
as a planned ‘output’ from the research project but a result of its commitment to public engagement with research and the idea that people living with the environmental problems we study are well placed to help us understand them better and, thereby, make more effective interventions.”
It was the failure of conventional flood protection measures to win funding and the ensuing public controversy that made Pickering an interesting case for trialling the ECG methodology in a project funded by two UK Research Councils. This social science-led, interdisciplinary project used the conceptual insights of Science and Technology Studies to understand how flood risk is framed differently by environmental modellers (academic and commercial) and communities with direct experience of living with flooding. The Pickering ECG created an opportunity for volunteer residents and university scientists to try out different ideas for mitigation measures using a variety of simulation techniques.
As Sarah describes the methodology, activities centred on bi- monthly meetings of university scientists and local residents.
The shared aim was to ‘slow down’ reasoning and pay particular attention to the many ways in which ‘facts’ about flooding actually get made. Inevitably, the group’s interest centred on the various
Public Engagement
models used to predict and manage flooding. Group members learned hands-on modelling to which was added the ingredients of data (official rainfall and flow records and topographic readings) and theory (Newtonian physics), and their own vernacular knowledge. Members also undertook field visits, made maps, video recording and photographic analysis. Audio transcripts and video recordings were made of Group meetings. The Group was supported by a password-restricted website hosting a resource depository for materials generated by its members and a Group blog. At various points the findings were shared in public exhibitions.
On the back of this innovative approach Pickering was chosen by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as one of three national ‘demonstration projects’, acknowledging that the university-led research had pioneered new ways of incorporating local knowledge into strategic flood risk management. The
project has gained national acclaim and international attention. Sarah, together with one of her collaborators on the Pickering project and a Research Associate at Keble, Catharina Landström,
is now developing the approach in a further project on drought and water scarcity. They are also developing an ‘off-the-peg’ application of the methodology in the form of a web-based ‘Community Modelling’ tool in collaboration with local NGOs acting as Catchment Partnership hosts in the Lea (east London) and
have secured funding to extend this toolkit development through collaboration with Otley Town Council, Yorkshire.
Sarah’s work on public engagement informed her appointment as a member of Defra’s Science Advisory Council (2015-2018) and as Chair of its Social Science Expert Group (2016-2018), as well as her participation in the Science Advisory Group established by Sir Mark Wolpert (The Government Chief Scientific Advisor) to advise the National Flood Resilience Review (2016). Given the public profile of the Pickering project, Sarah was an obvious candidate for the position of the University’s Academic Champion for Public Engagement with Research. Oxford, along with some other British universities and with the support of Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust, aims to enhance institutional support in public engagement (www.ox.ac.uk/ research/public-engagement). The idea is to regard engagement not as an afterthought but as central to the University’s mission. Sarah explains that “we want to create a climate in which we can embed public engagement with research even more deeply into our habits and practices”. The initiative also recognizes that there is not just
one public, but many different public constituencies, some (such
as Pickering) defined by place but others connected with various media communities, eg social media. In July the Vice Chancellor officiated at a ceremony to award public engagement with research. Among the recipients were researchers in child vaccination, museum ethnography, and assisted living technologies for older people; the Ashmolean Museum was recognized for its innovative late-night opening combining its exhibits with workshops and creative activities. Given the mounting scepticism that seems to be directed at experts and expertise across the country, initiatives to build bridges between researchers and diverse communities around such controversies as flooding can only be welcomed.
good news, especially about the environment, is rarely found in the media. But in the wake of widespread flooding in northern England last winter, one such story stood out: