Recommendations for changes in UK National Recovery Guidance (NRG) and associated guidance from the perspective of Lancaster University's Hull Flood Studies

This report was commissioned by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) following the publication of Lancaster University‟s Hull Flood Project and Hull Children‟s Flood Project. Its principal purpose is to identify how findings made as a result of the two research projects could be integrated into the Cabinet Office‟s National Recovery Guidance (NRG), as a means to improve affected communities‟ ability to recover from emergency events. The report, in effect, details a desktop analysis of UK Civil Protection (CP) guidance, from a bottom-up perspective (i.e. using as its critical lens, the lived experiences of members of the public who were tested by the Hull flooding of 2007 and its aftermath)

Baby on board:the impact of sling use on experiences of family mobility with babies and young children

Today many parents in the UK are choosing to carry their children in slings. Despite this, there has been no research on how babywearing might change families’ experiences of journey-making. Based on interviews with parents in the North of England, this paper uses literatures on affects and mobilities design to contribute to a growing range of studies on infant mobilities. In doing so, it extends our understanding of the importance of relationality in family mobility practices and highlights the importance of understanding the dynamism of mobility during early family life

Guilt and elation in the workplace:emotion and the governance of the environment at work

This paper explores the integration of environmental concern into the workplace by combining insights from the literature on governmentality with work that focuses on the role of emotion in organisational contexts. I build on work by Hargreaves (2008) and Butler (2010) to show that environmental concern is an emerging form of workplace governance which acts by and through the emotions and which intersects with pre-existing forms of power in surprising and complex ways. I conclude by reflecting on some additional theoretical approaches which may offer some tools for developing forms of workplace governance that are more socially and environmentally sustainable

Towards Interdependence:Using slings to inspire a new understanding of parental care

Based on empirical research with parents who carry their children in slings, I propose what I hope will be a new and more progressive way of understanding of parental care relationships, where ideas of dependence/independence are replaced by those of interdependence. Through engagement with feminist literatures which stress relationality between humans and non-humans, I suggest that it may be helpful to broaden our understanding of parental care from an exclusive focus on the mother–child relationship in order to recognise a wider range of actors as participating in this process – including children themselves and the more than human world. Crucially, I also consider the potential for care to flow in multiple directions within these relationships

Linking social capacities and risk communication in Europe: a gap between theory and practice?

Although both improved risk communication and the building of social capacities have been advocated as vital ways to increase societies' resilience towards natural hazards across the world, the literature has rarely examined the ways in which these two concepts may integrate in theory and practice. This paper is an attempt to address this gap in a European context. It begins with a conceptual discussion that unites the literature on risk communication with the literature on social capacity building. We then use the insights from this discussion as a basis to conduct a review of 60 risk communication practices from across Europe. This review indicates a gap between theory and practice because, whilst the literature highlights the importance of integrated and coordinated communication campaigns featuring both a one-way transfer and a two-way dialogue between the public, stakeholders and decision-makers, the majority of the communication practices reviewed here appear to be relatively disparate initiatives that rely on one-way forms of communication. On the basis of these findings, we conclude by making some recommendations for the way in which such practices could be improved in order to be more supportive of social capacities across Europ

Statistical methods for prognostic factor and risk prediction research

Prognosis research is an important part of medical research as it seeks to understand, predict, and improve future outcomes in people with a given disease or health condition. This thesis focuses on the application and development of statistical methods for prognosis research, with a particular focus on the identification of prognostic factors and the performance of risk prediction models. The first part of the thesis considers the use of a single study for prognostic factor and prediction model research. Prognostic factors of adverse outcome in monochorionic diamniotic twin pregnancies are investigated and difference in nuchal translucency and crown-rump length were found to have prognostic value. The instability of developing a prediction model in small sample sizes is also illustrated. Then, a review of published prediction models is conducted which reveals potential concerns that measurement error may affect the predictors included in many models, and a lack of clarity about the timing of predictor measurements and the intended moment of using the proposed models. Recommendations for improved reporting are provided. A real example is then used to illustrate how displacing the collection of a time-varying predictor from the intended moment of model use leads to substantial differences in the predictor-outcome association, and the subsequent performance of the prediction model. The second part of the thesis focuses on the synthesis of IPD from multiple studies. An IPD meta-analysis is used to validate existing stillbirth prediction models and demonstrates that the models should not be recommended for clinical practice due to poor predictive performance and insufficient clinical utility. Finally, a novel analytic method is developed to calculate the power of an IPD meta-analysis to examine prognostic factor effects with binary outcomes, based on published study aggregate data, to help researchers decide on the benefit of the IPD approach in advance of collecting IPD

After the Rain – learning the lessons from flood recovery in Hull

The report shows that it is often not so much the floods themselves, but what comes afterwards, that people find so difficult to deal with. The research on which this report is based aimed to undertake a real-time longitudinal study to document and understand the everyday experiences of individuals following the floods of June 2007 in interaction with networks of actors and organisations, strategies of institutional support and investment in the built environment and infrastructure. It had the following objectives: - To identify and document key dimensions of the longer term experience of flood impact and flood recovery, including health, economic and social aspects. - To examine how resilience and vulnerability were manifest in the interaction between everyday strategies of adaptation during the flood recovery process, and modes of institutional support and the management of infrastructure and the built environment. -To explore to what extent the recovery process entailed the development of new forms of resilience and to identify the implications for developing local level resilience for flood recovery in the future. To develop an archive that will be accessible for future research into other aspects of flood recovery. The flooding which affected the city of Kingston-upon-Hull took place in June 2007. Over 110mm of rain fell during the biggest event, overwhelming the city‟s drainage system and resulting in widespread pluvial flooding. The floods affected over 8,600 households and one person was killed. Our research used in-depth, qualitative methods where 44 people kept weekly diaries and participated in interviews and group discussions over an 18-month period

The digital brain switch: managing rapid transitions between role identities in a digital world

In this paper, we present initial findings from an EPSRC-sponsored multi-disciplinary research project investigating how digital technologies and social media affect role transitions across work-life domains. The research uses an innovative combination of visual diaries and narrative interviews to capture micro-transitions (‘switches’) and explore these with participants in the context of their overall lives. Findings from a pilot study with academics are reported here in terms of: emergent digital boundary management strategies; triggers for rapid switching and the effects of this; and the function of meta roles and multi-role cognitions. The research contributes to current thinking in work-life literature in terms of devising innovative methods, focusing on the micro- transitional and in considering the role of the digital and social media in boundary management