MODELLING THE POTENTIAL FOR SPATIALLY DISTRIBUTED, NATURAL FLOOD-RISK MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES TO MITIGATE FLOOD RISK AT THE CATCHMENT SCALE FOR A UK AGRICULTURAL CATCHMENT

impact of flooding throughout the UK is significant and the financial burden felt by individuals, communities and the government. Many flood alleviation schemes are delivered using hard-engineered approaches that can provide high standards of protection, but do not address the root cause of flooding. Delivering civil engineering schemes cannot always be justified using the current cost-benefit criteria or due to difficulties of in working within a settlement. This justifies the need to investigate sustainable, lower-cost initiatives that can be delivered more holistically and remotely from the receptor settlement. Natural Flood-Risk Management (NFM) is an area of great interest that has had several comprehensive reviews and a Defra release of £15 million in flood and coastal erosion risk management research and development funding. The aim of NFM is to work with natural hydrological processes and restore the natural water holding capacity of catchments. Currently, there is a lack of evidence on the benefits of this approach and whether or not they can be delivered efficiently to the same standard of protection for the same design life. This research thesis used two complementary approaches to assessing NFM potential: (1) rapid connectivity risk mapping assessment (SCIMAP-Flood); and (2) detailed, physically based, fully spatially distributed simulation of catchment hydrology (CRUM3). These methods have been combined to provide a powerful toolkit to effectively target mitigation of flood risk and to simulate potential impact on flood peak through a variety of NFM interventions. These methods were applied to the study area (Tutta Beck), a 7.06km2 agricultural catchment that flooded twice in 2012. A variety of flood mitigation strategies were investigated in the Tutta Beck catchment, including spatially distributed land cover change to intercept and resist overland flow, woody debris dams to slow the flow of water through the channel network and spatially targeted depressions to attenuate overland flow. It was established for this catchment that the most effective technique for reducing peak discharge was the use of in channel large woody debris spatially targeted using SCIMAP-Flood, particularly when combined with spatially distributed attenuation

On Provisionality

Brief essay which discusses the works of four artists shown in the Everything and Nothing exhibition, and places them in an historical, cultural, technological and artistic lineage. Note: At the time of writing, Dave Colangelo was affiliated with N/A, an art and design collective dedicated to project and event‐based cross‐pollination

The Absolute Magnitude Distribution of Kuiper Belt Objects

Here we measure the absolute magnitude distributions (H-distribution) of the dynamically excited and quiescent (hot and cold) Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), and test if they share the same H-distribution as the Jupiter Trojans. From a compilation of all useable ecliptic surveys, we find that the KBO H-distributions are well described by broken power-laws. The cold population has a bright-end slope, $\alpha_{\textrm{1}}=1.5_{-0.2}^{+0.4}$, and break magnitude, $H_{\textrm{B}}=6.9_{-0.2}^{+0.1}$ (r'-band). The hot population has a shallower bright-end slope of, $\alpha_{\textrm{1}}=0.87_{-0.2}^{+0.07}$, and break magnitude $H_{\textrm{B}}=7.7_{-0.5}^{+1.0}$. Both populations share similar faint end slopes of $\alpha_2\sim0.2$. We estimate the masses of the hot and cold populations are $\sim0.01$ and \sim3\times10^{-4} \mbox{ M_{\bigoplus}}. The broken power-law fit to the Trojan H-distribution has $\alpha_\textrm{1}=1.0\pm0.2$, $\alpha_\textrm{2}=0.36\pm0.01$, and $H_{\textrm{B}}=8.3$. The KS test reveals that the probability that the Trojans and cold KBOs share the same parent H-distribution is less than 1 in 1000. When the bimodal albedo distribution of the hot objects is accounted for, there is no evidence that the H-distributions of the Trojans and hot KBOs differ. Our findings are in agreement with the predictions of the Nice model in terms of both mass and H-distribution of the hot and Trojan populations. Wide field survey data suggest that the brightest few hot objects, with $H_{\textrm{r'}}\lesssim3$, do not fall on the steep power-law slope of fainter hot objects. Under the standard hierarchical model of planetesimal formation, it is difficult to account for the similar break diameters of the hot and cold populations given the low mass of the cold belt.Comment: Accepted to the Astrophysical Journa

Pencil-Beam Surveys for Trans-Neptunian Objects: Limits on Distant Populations

Two populations of minor bodies in the outer Solar System remain particularly elusive: Scattered Disk objects and Sedna-like objects. These populations are important dynamical tracers, and understanding the details of their spatial- and size-distributions will enhance our understanding of the formation and on-going evolution of the Solar System. By using newly-derived limits on the maximum heliocentric distances that recent pencil-beam surveys for Trans-Neptunian Objects were sensitive to, we determine new upper limits on the total numbers of distant SDOs and Sedna-like objects. While generally consistent with populations estimated from wide-area surveys, we show that for magnitude-distribution slopes of {\alpha} > 0.7-1.0, these pencil-beam surveys provide stronger upper limits than current estimates in literature.Comment: Submitted to Icaru

A1_6 Do you want to hang out?

This paper addresses the simple question: how much time will it take for wet clothes to dry, if they are hung up on a washing line, based on the current weather conditions? The metric form of the Penman equation is used to calculate the evaporation rate of water from a plane surface, which is dependent on the meteorological conditions of ambient temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, and the various properties of air and water at said ambient temperature. Empirically measuring the surface area of, and the mass of water contained in, a wet piece of clothing enables the time taken t for total evaporation to be determined. This paper concludes with an equation for t, provided the above factors are known, and gives example results for different items of clothing

A1_7 The Neutrino Problem

This report examines the premise from the movie "2012" (2009) that solar neutrinos start interacting with the core of the Earth, causing it to melt. A lower energy limit required for this interaction is found to be 9.55*10^4 GeV  and it is shown that the source of such energetic neutrinos is unlikely to be from within the solar system

A1_1 Tick, tick, tick... GRBoom!

This paper considers the possibility that a gamma ray burst (GRB) will cause a mass extinction on our planet. The distance over which a low energy GRB would expose a human to a lethal amount of radiation is calculated and found to be approximately 73 kiloparsecs. This indicates that we only need to consider GRBs occurring within the Milky Way galaxy. GRBs are also highly directional; the probability of a GRB striking the Earth is calculated to be 0.06%. From these calculations it is found that a lethal GRB is likely to impact on the Earth once every 328 million years

A1_5 Atomising Death Ray

This report examines the weapons commonly found in science fiction movies which are able to completely atomise a human being, leaving nothing visible behind. To atomise a human body, this report uses the approximation that every bond connecting their atoms must be broken simultaneously. The energy required from such a device is found to be ~3.75 GJ and it is found that it would require 11.06 mg of Deuterium-Tritium to undergo fusion to provide this energy. It is also found that targets will glow deep violet in the visible spectrum shot