Using food intake records to estimate compliance with the Eatwell plate dietary guidelines

This work was supported by the Scottish Government's Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services (RESAS) Division. The original studies, from which the current data were taken, were funded by the Food Standards Agency, UK, and the Biscuit, Cake, Chocolate and Confectionery Association, London, UK.Peer reviewedPostprin

Security Analysis, Agency Costs, and UK Firm Characteristics

This paper assesses the monitoring power of security analysts from the manager-shareholder conflict perspective. Using a sample of UK firms tracked by security analysts, our evidence supports the view that security analysis acts as a monitoring mechanism in reducing agency costs. We also find that security analysts are more effective in reducing agency costs for smaller and more focused firms rather than larger and more diversified firms suggesting that for larger and more complex firms security analysis is less effective. The UK findings suggest that the monitoring role of security analysts is not restricted to the U.S. capital market environment.

A decade of monitoring and management of freshwater algae, in particular Cyanobacteria, in England and Wales

Although the toxicity of cyanobacteria has been known for many years, cyanobacteria-related problems in the UK were generally limited in frequency. However, this all changed and became of national concern following the exceptional environmental conditions in the autumn of 1989, when widespread cyanobacterial blooms and scums developed in fresh waters. This paper summarises the Environment Agency's monitoring programme for freshwater algae since 1991 and describes the actions the Environment Agency has taken as a result of the monitoring data

UK hydrological review 2007

This hydrological review, which also provides an overview of water resources status throughout 2007, was undertaken as part of the National Hydrological Monitoring Programme (NHMP). The NHMP was set up in 1988 to document hydrological and water resources variability across the UK. It is a collaborative programme between the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, which maintains the National River Flow Archive and the British Geological Survey which maintains the National Groundwater Level Archive. Both organisations are component bodies of the Natural Environment Research Council. This report has been compiled with the active cooperation of the principal measuring authorities in the UK: the Environment Agencya, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and, in the Northern Ireland, the Rivers Agency. These organisations provided the great majority of the required river and groundwater level data. The Met Office provided almost all of the rainfall and climatological information featured in the report and the reservoir stocks information derive from the Water Service Companies, Scottish Water and Northern Ireland Water. Groundwater level data for Northern Ireland was provided by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency. The provision of the basic data, which provides the foundation both of this report and the wider activities of the NHMP, is gratefully acknowledged. A primary source of information for this review is the series of monthly UK Hydrological Summaries (for further details please visit: http://www.ceh.ac.uk/data/nrfa/water_watch.html. Financial support for the production of the Hydrological Summaries is provided by the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the Rivers Agency (Northern Ireland) and the Office of Water Services (OFWAT)

Reliable, resilient and sustainable urban drainage systems: an analysis of robustness under deep uncertainty (article)

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Chemical Society via the DOI in this record.The dataset associated with this article is available in ORE at: https://doi.org/10.24378/exe.563Reliability, resilience and sustainability are key goals of any urban drainage system. However, only a few studies have recently focused on measuring, operationalizing and comparing such concepts in a world of deep uncertainty. In this study, these key concepts are defined and quantified for a number of gray, green and hybrid strategies, aimed at improving the capacity issues of an existing integrated urban wastewater system. These interventions are investigated by means of a regret-based approach, which evaluates the robustness (that is the ability to perform well under deep uncertainty conditions) of each strategy in terms of the three qualities through integration of multiple objectives (i.e. sewer flooding, river water quality, combined sewer overflows, river flooding, greenhouse gas emissions, cost and acceptability) across four different future scenarios. The results indicate that strategies found to be robust in terms of sustainability were typically also robust for resilience and reliability across future scenarios. However, strategies found to be robust in terms of their resilience and, in particular, for reliability did not guarantee robustness for sustainability. Conventional gray infrastructure strategies were found to lack robustness in terms of sustainability due to their unbalanced economic, environmental and social performance. Such limitations were overcome, however, by implementing hybrid solutions that combine green retrofits and gray rehabilitation solutions.This study was funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council through STREAM (EP/G037094/1) with Northumbrian Water Limited, BRIM (EP/N010329/1) and the final author’s fellowship Safe & SuRe (EP/K006924/1)

Developing the environment agency's capacity for policy advocacy

The overall rationale and aim of the project was to strengthen Environment Agency policy advocacy effectiveness. In addition to this overall aim, the project had two more specific aims: to identify key features to be included in any process for generating and embedding in the organisation broad policy advocacy positions relevant to UK and EU level policy development and to provide an assessment of Environment Agency policy advocacy effectiveness - alongside English Nature in comparative perspective - and to thereby identify options to enhance the Agency's contribution to EU and UK public policy development

24/7 population modelling for enhanced assessment of exposure to natural hazards

There is a growing need for accurate spatio-temporal population estimates free from arbitrary administrative boundaries and temporal divisions to make enhanced assessments of population exposure to natural hazards. The approach proposed here combines the use of a spatio-temporal gridded population model to estimate temporary variations in population with natural hazard exposure estimations. It has been exemplified through a Southampton (UK) centred application using Environment Agency flood map inundation data. Results demonstrate that large fluctuations in the population within flood risk zones occur. Analysis indicates a diurnal shift in exposure to fluvial and tidal flooding, particularly attributed to the working age population. This highlights the improvements achievable to flood risk management as well as potential application to other natural hazard scenarios both within the UK and globally

Field-calibrated model of melt, refreezing, and runoff for polar ice caps : Application to Devon Ice Cap

Acknowledgments R.M.M. was supported by the Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment and Society (SAGES). The field data collection contributed to the validation of the European Space Agency Cryosat mission and was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Canada, the Meteorological Service of Canada (CRYSYS program), the Polar Continental Shelf Project (an agency of Natural Resources Canada), and by UK Natural Environment Research Council consortium grant NER/O/S/2003/00620. Support for D.O.B. was provided by the Canadian Circumpolar Institute and the Climate Change Geoscience Program, Earth Sciences Sector, Natural Resources Canada (ESS contribution 20130371). Thanks are also due to the Nunavut Research Institute and the communities of Resolute Bay and Grise Fjord for permission to conduct fieldwork on Devon Ice Cap. M.J. Sharp, A. Gardner, F. Cawkwell, R. Bingham, S. Williamson, L. Colgan, J. Davis, B. Danielson, J. Sekerka, L. Gray, and J. Zheng are thanked for logistical support and field assistance during the data collection. We thank Ruzica Dadic, two other anonymous reviewers, and the Editor, Bryn Hubbard, for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper and which resulted in significant improvements.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The social impacts of stormwater management techniques

This paper presents the results of research into the social impacts of stormwater management techniques applied within urban environments. The main aim of the study was to compare public and professional attitudes of stormwater management practices such as Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) and river management techniques. Any new and innovative technology used in residential areas, besides being economically and environmentally acceptable, must also be accepted by the residents. There has been considerable interest in the assessment of the public perception of SUDS in the UK by consultants, developers, the Environment Agency of England and Wales as well as by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). This research was undertaken to inform such interest and also to obtain a more holistic view of the perception by professionals of SUDS. A comparative study of the perceptions of river management in three densely populated European cities facing similar storm water management problems was carried out. The selected cities were Glasgow in Scotland – U. K., an area in west London, England - U.K., and part of Athens – Greece. All sites were located within flood-prone suburban areas, and different river management techniques have been proposed or adopted