Trends in reported flooding in the UK: 1884–2013

A long term dataset of reported flooding based on reports from the UK Meteorological Office and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology is described. This is possibly a unique dataset as the authors are unaware of any other 100+ year records of flood events and their consequences on a national scale. Flood events are classified by severity based upon qualitative descriptions. There is an increase in the number of reported flood events over time associated with an increased exposure to flooding as floodplain areas were developed. The data was de-trended for exposure, using population and dwelling house data. The adjusted record shows no trend in reported flooding over time, but there is significant decade to decade variability. This study opens a new approach considering flood occurrence over a long timescale using reported information (and thus likely effects on society) rather than just considering trends in extreme hydrological conditions.<br/

Beyond ‘just’ flood risk management: the potential for—and limits to—alleviating flood disadvantage

The threat of flooding poses a considerable challenge for justice. Not only are more citizens becoming exposed to risk, but they are expected to play increasingly active roles in flood risk management. However, until recently, few efforts have charted broader understandings of disadvantage relating to flood risk exposure. Drawing upon social science scholarship that has long been sensitive to concerns related to justice, we deploy and develop the notion of flood disadvantage as a means to assess the challenges to more ‘just’ flood risk management. We contend that the concept of flood disadvantage offers a useful lens to appreciate the constraints of technical approaches to flood risk management, in particular, its limited ability to incorporate complex social elements such as how individuals have differing vulnerabilities and sensitivities to flooding and uneven abilities to engage with risk agendas. The notion highlights the compounding interactions between flooding and other social disadvantages across multiple public policy areas and scales. We argue a fuller acknowledgement of the socio-spatial-temporal dimensions of intersecting disadvantages can help sensitise technical risk analyses that tend to see people and communities as homogeneous entities in a given spatiality. In doing so we can better reveal why some individuals or communities are more vulnerable to disasters or are slower to recover than others. Finally, we outline the challenges in turning more ‘just’ flood risk management from an abstract notion into one that could inform future practice

Rhythm and mobility in the Inner and Outer Hebrides: archipelago as art-science research site

This paper explores some of the dimensions of mobility and rhythm emerging from a voyage to the Inner and Outer Hebrides, island collectives on the North West Coast of Scotland. In the summer of 2011, this voyage, combining boat, water and islands, as well as their inhabitants, became a research site for members of Cape Farewell, an organisation that seeks to produce creative responses to climate change. Crew members specifically sought to consider the impact of climate change on island cultures and ecologies, and the sustainability and preservation initiatives deployed here, as well as broader indicators of climate change in the area. Using participant observation of the voyage and interviews, we examine the bodily experienced, rhythmic aspects of the voyage itself; that is, the aesthetics via which the spaces and places of the Inner and Outer Hebrides became known and felt. We consider especially the rhythms of nature and the sea that encompass the motility of materials that are central to a ‘politics of mobility’ that, for Cape Farewell, characterises these islands as frontiers of climate change