Analysis of historic drought and water scarcity in the UK: a systems-based study of drivers, impacts and their interactions

Lead Research Organisation: NERC CEH (Up to 30.11.2019)
Department Name: Water Resources (Wallingford)

Abstract

Drought and water scarcity (D&WS) are significant threats to livelihoods and wellbeing in many countries, including the United Kingdom (UK). Parts of the UK are already water-stressed and are facing a wide range of pressures, including an expanding population and intensifying exploitation of increasingly limited water resources. In addition, many regions may become significantly drier in future due to environmental changes, all of which implies major challenges to water resource management. However, D&WS are not simply natural hazards. There are also a range of socio-economic and regulatory factors that may influence the course of droughts, such as water consumption practices and abstraction licensing regimes. Consequently, if drought and water scarcity are to be better managed, there is a need for a more detailed understanding of the links between hydrometeorological and social systems during droughts.
Based on an analysis of information from a wide range of sectors (hydrometeorological, environmental, agricultural, regulatory, social and cultural), the project will characterise and quantify the history of drought and water scarcity (D&WS) since the late 19th century and will produce the first systematic account (UK Drought Inventory) of droughts in the UK. The Inventory forms the basis of a novel joint hydro-meteorological and socio-economic analysis of the drivers of drought and their impacts, with a focus on a search for characteristic systems interactions. The enhanced systems-based understanding is expected to improve decision-making for future drought management and planning, including more informed and thus effective public discourse related to D&WS.
Currently there are no conceptual models of D&WS that describe interactions between hydrometerological and socio-economic drivers and environmental and societal impacts of droughts. The first task will therefore develop a new systems-based conceptualisation of D&WS. This will be used to investigate drought drivers, impacts and their interdependencies. The second task will produce the knowledge base for use within the project and the wider NERC UK Drought and Water Scarcity Programme. It involves the compilation of datasets and metadata, including data and information for selected case study episodes of D&WS. Information on the social and cultural aspects of D&WS will be compiled from oral histories and collation of reports in the historic and recent print and broadcast media, and the first analysis of social media from the 2010-12 drought will be carried out. The third task will develop the Drought Inventory by a novel combination of drought timelines, sector-specific narrative chronologies highlighting key events, and the production of new cross-sectoral drought indicators. To understand the interactions between social and environmental systems during D&WS episodes, the fourth task will: identify significant systems interactions across a range of droughts; identify key triggers and thresholds for droughts; and, describe the reasons behind any changes in systems interactions in droughts over the historic record. The final and fifth task examines how socio-economic context and water resource management practices contributed to resilience to episodes of D&WS in the historic record and considers the implications for changes in planning for the management of future droughts. It also provides an assessment of what are the most effective forms of dialogue and information exchange between the public and those responsible for water resource management that may contribute to beneficial outcomes during future episodes of D&WS.
The key research outcomes will be: a systems-based understanding of D&WS in the context of multiple environmental and societal drivers; an accessible, integrated cross-sector UK Drought Inventory; improved advice and methods to support decision making related to drought management; and, new strategies to re-frame public discourse related to D&WS.

Planned Impact

Due to the nature of the project, there will be multiple beneficiaries from the findings of the project. The following identifies who will benefit from the research and how they will benefit from different aspects of the proposed research.
The principal beneficiaries of the project will be: 1.) policy makers and environmental regulators in the UK; 2.) decision makers and water resource managers in water utilities; 3.) decision makers and managers in UK businesses where decisions related to water use and management are business-critical, including the agricultural sector; 4.) NGOs and Third Sector organisations with an interest in water resources issues and environmental management; 5.) the general public; 6.) communications professionals; 7.) academics and researchers with an interest in drought and water scarcity (D&WS); and 8.) the teaching profession, specifically those delivering key stage 3 and above related to environmental science.
The project will develop a systems-based understanding of D&WS. This will provide a framework for policymakers and environmental regulators, and those with responsibility for long-term water resource management to include and take account of broader socio-economic factors in decision making. Benefits will include improved, more integrated regulatory, planning and decision making processes related to D&WS in the UK.
The UK Drought Inventory, a cross-sector evidence base of historic episodes of D&WS produced by the project, will provide a common reference for policy makers and regulators, water supply companies, and UK business to make decisions in the context of D&WS and key reference droughts. This will enable the development of better drought mitigation plans, leading to improved long-term management of water resources and a reduction in the cost of droughts to UK business. Because it is a common evidence base, it will enable more consistent, transparent planning against standard benchmarks across multiple agencies.
The project will produce improved advice and methods to support decision making related to drought management during episodes of D&WS. Regulators, water resources managers, UK industry, particularly the agricultural sector, with responsibilities for strategic and operational decision making during episodes of D&WS will benefit from the advice, guidance and new methods developed to support decision making. Benefits will include more effective and timely management interventions as droughts develop and as they end; interventions based on commonly agreed principles and evidence; and, more certainty in management and co-ordination of response to droughts.
The development of new strategies to re-frame public discourse related to D&WS is a specific goal for the project. Beneficiaries of these new strategies include: policy makers and regulators; water supply companies; the public; and, NGOs and community groups, particularly those who are responsible for providing information for and engaging in dialogue with the public on issues related to water resources. The benefits include a more informed public debate around issues associated with D&WS; greater clarity regarding decision making process during droughts; wider consensus regarding the positive contribution the public can make to best water resource outcomes during episodes of D&WS.
The project will deliver a series of significant new resources for academics and researchers working in the field of drought research, that when combined with outputs from the other UK Drought Programme projects will have a significant international impact and will lead to major advances in research in this field.
The resources proposed to be developed for teachers as part of the follow-on knowledge exchange activities will provide teachers with appropriate, authoritative materials that will make their teaching of issues related to water resources more effective and will contribute to a more informed generation of young people.
 
Description Historic Droughts aimed to develop a cross- disciplinary understanding of past drought episodes that have affected the UK, with a view to developing improved tools for managing droughts in future.

Drought and water scarcity are significant threats to livelihoods and wellbeing in many countries, including the UK. Parts of the country are already water-stressed and are facing a wide range of pressures, including an expanding population and intensifying exploitation of increasingly limited water resources. In addition, many regions may become significantly drier in future due to environmental changes, all of which implies major challenges to water resource management. However, droughts are not simply natural hazards. There are also a range of socio-economic and regulatory factors that may influence the course of droughts, such as water consumption practices and abstraction licensing regimes. Consequently, if drought and water scarcity are to be better managed, there is a need for a more detailed understanding of the links between physical (i.e. meteorological, hydrological) and social and economic systems during droughts.

With this research gap in mind, the Historic Droughts project has been developing an interdisciplinary understanding of drought from a range of perspectives. Based on an analysis of information from a wide range of sectors (hydrometeorological, environmental, agricultural, regulatory, social and cultural), the project has characterised and quantified the history of drought and water scarcity since the late 19th century.

The project has developed the first systematic account (the UK Drought Inventory) of past droughts in the UK, incorporating new datasets on past drought characteristics, impacts and human responses. The Inventory is the basis of a novel joint hydrometeorological and socio-economic analysis that is leading to a 'systems- based' understanding of drought. The project has been applying these new datasets and methodologies to enhance drought management, principally through interfacing with the ENDOWS work with decision-makers. Below we discuss some of the Historic Droughts outputs and activities in more detail.

Systems-based analysis and conceptual framework
We have advocated a 'systems-based' view of drought, i.e. an understanding of the multiple and inter-connected drivers of drought, the impacts of drought and the feedbacks between them. A key part of this has been the development of a Conceptual Framework for the joint hydro-meteorological-social understanding of drought. We published this framework in 2017 and illustrated its application to two past drought episodes (1976 and 2003 - 2006). We expect this systems-based understanding to improve decision-making for future drought management and planning, and to facilitate more informed and effective public discourse related to drought.

Sectoral datasets and analyses
Historic Droughts set out to improve our understanding of past droughts from a range of 'sectoral' perspectives, before bringing these together in the Drought Inventory. This has led to a wealth of new datasets on drought, which are mentioned briefly below but which are listed in detail in the About Drought Handbook.(https://aboutdrought.info/)

A key foundation of Historic Droughts is hydrometeorological reconstruction, aiming to improve our understanding of past drought occurrence and severity across the UK. Underlying this was a major data rescue and recovery exercise undertaken by the Met Office, who digitized hundreds of past weather records to improve the national network of raingauge and temperature observations in the late 19th and early 20th century. This effort has led to a major strengthening of our national climate archives, and in particular extension of the datasets back to 1862. Not only is this beneficial for Historic Droughts, however - the rescued data features in the Met Office's recently released 'HadUK' archive of national climate data, available to all. The temperature dataset has then been used by the CEH team to reconstruct a national, gridded daily evaporation dataset. The new historical rainfall and evaporation datasets were run through hydrological and hydrogeological models to reconstruct river flows and groundwater back to 1891, for over 300 river catchments and 50 boreholes. This is a big advance in national hydrological datasets, as a majority of observed river and groundwater datasets start in the 1960s. The CEH and BGS teams have published these datasets to make them available, and developed web tools to allow users to explore them.

The new datasets have also allowed novel analyses that have allowed us to better characterise UK droughts back to the late 19th century. We have examined the frequency and severity of past hydrological drought episodes and quantified changes over time. We have also examined the spatial coherence of drought, nationally, and explored the spatial and temporal evolution of major past drought episodes. We have also improved understanding of drought processes, especially the atmospheric/oceanic drivers of droughts in the UK.

The hydrometeorological analysis allows us to characterise drought as a natural hazard over the last 120 years. But from a societal or environmental perspective, it is drought impacts that are the most important aspect, and in addition, the human management responses that have been taken to mitigate these impacts. We have built up a range of datasets illustrating these aspects from various sectoral perspectives. As this has used a a range of disparate source datasets and methodological approaches across several disciplines, a key aspect of this has been a standardized approach to collecting information, including a consistent approach to capturing when and where the relevant impact/action occurred.

From an environmental perspective, CEH's focus has been on quantifying drought impacts on freshwater ecosystems using an environmental monitoring dataset collated by the Environment Agency from the early 1990s. As the impact datasets is limited in time and space, we have developed statistical models to allow us to reconstruct the impacts of past drought episodes on river ecosystems more fully. This has demonstrated how the resilience of river ecosystems to drought varies around the country, and in particular how more heavily modified rivers are more vulnerable to drought impacts.

From a water supply perspective, HR Wallingford have delivered a dataset of reservoir development in the UK from the late 19th century onwards, illustrating how reservoir storage capacity has changed in this time. This has allowed us to develop timelines of past water supply which we can then compare with timelines of demand, assembled from proxies (e.g. population). These supply/demand balances tell us much about changing water availability, which has a bearing on how droughts unfold and how they are managed. We have also cross-reference this with a database of water supply impacts and drought management measures (drought orders, permits etc) which we constructed using various water company reports and other sources.

From an agricultural perspective, Cranfield University developed an 'agricultural drought inventory of past drivers, impacts and responses to drought, gathered using the agricultural media (e.g. Farmers Weekly) back to 1976. We have used this to demonstrate improvements in agricultural resilience over time - how farmers in eastern England have moderated the impacts of droughts over this timeframe through improved planning and communication with regulatory bodies.

From a legal/regulation perspective, the University of Oxford-led database was developed using Hansard, to characterise the legal/policy and regulatory perspectives of drought since the early 1970s. We have used this to demonstrate the changing governance backcloth to drought and water resources management in the UK, and how this has had an influence on the management of drought episodes, via the regulatory tools available and their relative efficacy.

From a social and cultural perspective, two contrasting approaches were taken. One approach, led by Exeter University, has been through Oral Histories (see page xx) where we gathered over 100 Oral Histories from people who have lived through drought episodes from the 1960s onwards. These tell us something very different from all of the rainfall and water supply focused analysis, something that has been missing from the picture - how drought is understood by communities, people's (diverse) lived experiences in drought episodes and how impacts have been felt and responded to. What is interesting is how this sometimes diverges drastically from the way that drought is communicated in a statutory sense by official bodies.

A second approach, led by Lancaster University, has been to capture how drought is represented in the media. This has been done through a 'corpus linguistics' approach which uses computerised methods to objectively extract information from published newspaper archives back to the early 1800s. Not only does this provide a useful archive of coverage of drought over nearly 200 years - it also allows us to capture how the discourse around drought has changed over time. In the 19th century, for example, the word 'drought' was rarely used in connection with the many episodes of water shortage that occurred, whereas in recent years, 'hosepipe bans' have been a staple of the (often somewhat combative) narrative.

Bring it all together - the Drought Inventory and Narratives

The various sectoral datasets have been combined into the UK drought inventory. All of the sectoral datasets are available to download. CEH had a key role to play in curating these dataests, providing long-term acceess and developing tools to explore them. (https://historicdroughts.ceh.ac.uk/content/datasets).
The hydrometeorological datasets can also be explored in the CEH Drought Portal and various web applications. For the social and economic datasets based on text entries, we have developed a UK drought Inventory Explorer to allow users to search for data spatially, in time, or using keywords.

Some further specific key findings from the CEH part of this award:

- A new understanding of the complexities of 'drought termination', i.e. how droughts end (sometimes dramatically), arising from the first systematic account of drought termination for the UK, based on an inventory of 467 drought termination events from historic records.

- New understanding of drought persistence and the likelihood of experiencing long droughts based on statistical analysis of long rainfall and river flow records, following a collaboration with University of Loughborough.

- Through collaboration with the UK Met Office, newly rescued and recovered rainfall datasets for the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, released as a gridded rainfall dataset through the National Climate Information Centre (HadUK) which was launched alongside the UKCP projections in 2018

- The longest available archive of drought indicators for the UK - a national scale dataset of the Standardized Precipitation Index extending back to the 1860s

- The first very long-term, high resolution gridded dataset of historic Potential Evapotranspiration for the UK extending back to the 1890s, published on the EIDC. This is based on estimation from temperature, and new work has revealed the most robust ways of estimating PE from temperature in the UK. This has been made available as an open dataset.

- a novel ensemble modelling framework methodology for reconstructing streamflows and a dataset of >300 reconstructed flow times series extending back to 1890, which has been released on the EIDC. We have also released web applications to allow users to explore and visualise this wealth of data.

- an analysis of the relative severity, duration and other characteristics of past hydrological droughts for the UK as a whole, using the above dataset, illustrating how the 'drought of record' varies significantly around the country, and depending on what aspect of drought severity is being indexed (duration, intensity, etc).

- a national scale assessment of regional differences in meteorological droughts and their spatial coherence - demonstrating for the first time fundamental differences in drought frequency, duration and spatial extent in differing regions of the UK

- an assessment of the large-scale atmospheric and oceanic drivers of UK drought, shedding light for the first time on the complex relationship between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in driving seasonal streamflows and droughts

- The UK Drought Inventory: a database of socio-economic and cultural information about past drought drivers, impacts and respponses. This brings together the vast wealth of datasets that have been published as part of the project and which are all openly available (https://historicdroughts.ceh.ac.uk/content/datasets). A prototype explorer tool has been developed for the inventory, but not yet fully published. An accessible and pictorial narrative website of past droughts is also in development.

- method for estmating ecological drought impacts from hydrological data, and long-term datasets of estimated ecological impacts of past droughrts


A second major component of this grant is the ENDOWS follow-on funding. The ENDOWS activity is largely elaborated on under the 'impacts' section.
Exploitation Route The Historic Droughts data that has been delivered will be of interest to a very wide user community of researchers and practitioners.

Crucially, the datasets and outputs are now being used across the whole ENDOWS project - this is discussed in more detail in the 'narrative impact' and throughout the submission.
Sectors Agriculture, Food and Drink,Education,Energy,Environment,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Government, Democracy and Justice,Transport
URL https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/62902622/about-drought-handbook-outputs-impacts
 
Description The findings, datasets and tools from Historic Droughts and the subsequent ENDOWS work funded within this grant are increasingly finding application by stakeholders involved in drought management. The first impacts were really in 2017, and were references to the the standardized indicator datasets and the Drought Portal developed through Historic Droughts (and the DrIVER project). Initially, impacts included references to these datasets in policy documents (e.g. UKWIR guidance, NRW drought planning guidance). Since then a number of other impacts have materialised, principally because the Drought Portal is now updated monthly and so has been used extensively as a tool for tracking drought status among a very wide user community - notably during the 2018 drought (and on into 2019). We are aware of many organisations who have indicated they have found the portal very useful during the drought (e.g. Environment Agency at various levels, NRW, water companies (e.g. Yorkshire, Severn Trent), the Canal and Rivers Trust). We are also aware that the portal has been used as information during internal briefings (e.g. by NRW) and in communication between organisations (Yorkshire Water, the EA). Another key strand of impact is beginning to emerge through the ENDOWS funding. In particular, this has led to big advances in UK monitoring and early warning, above and beyond the Drought Portal. In early 2019, we released a new water resource portal demonstrator, co-developed in collaboration with SouthWest Water and the EA. We have used this as a mechanism for refining the portal, and in mid-2019 releaseed a national 'UK Water Resources Portal' as a demonstrator, due for operational release in early 2020. This will be taken forwards after the lifetime of Historic Droughts/ENDOWS. Other monitoring and early warning advances include the incorporation of programme outputs into the operational UK hydrological Outlook (a new model for ESP prediction and new 'dryness maps' and regional estimates of rainfall needed to end the drought). The 2018/2019 dry weather has also provided a mechanism for engagement with a very wide range of stakeholders around forecasting. The most substantial impact has been the provision of ENDOWS outputs to the Environment Agency to help them assess the likely future evolution of drought conditions using their 'Reasonable Worst Case' forecasts. These have been provided for England and Wales monthly since August 2018. They have been used in key reports (Drought Prospects report) and meetings of the National Drought Group, and shared with many stakeholders. As such, they have become key information to help decision-makers during the drought. We have also been providing forecasts to stakeholders individually for their appraisal, and feedback - particularly fruittul engagement has been had with some water companies and they have been taking the forecasts on board for their own modelling, and have liaised with us to help make the forecasts more user friendly. For example, we provided bespoke forecasts to Yorkshire Water and SEPA and received excellent feedback. Another strand on the monitoring side has been the provision of drought tracking information for Chalk streams, which has helped the EA manage the ongoing drought in the Chalk catchments of the Chilterns, which have been heavily affected and experiencing low or zero flows, prompting concern among the public and interest groups. In terms of long-term water resources planning, the biggest impact within this award has been the launch of the Drought Libraries as tools for exploring and accessing the Historic Droughts and MaRIUS data. We have also been very active in promoting these datasets within the water industry and regulatory sector, at many events. This culminated in us providing expert input to a working group on developing climate and hydrological datasets for the next round of water resource management plans by the water company Regional Groups. There has been widespread interest in building on this and exploiting the datsets for planning, and this has also led to follow on funding through the Strategic Prirorities Fund: https://www.ukclimateresilience.org/projects/climate-service-pilots/. Another huge part of CEH's role within ENDOWS has been on data. CEH has played a key role in bringing datasets together and ensuring long-term stewardsip on the EIDC. This is not just for historic Droughts but for data across the whole programme. As a result of this curation, CEH has led the delivery of 27 significant datasets with DOIs within data centres like the EIDC and UK Data Archive, from across the five projects. CEH has been instrumental in delivering tools and web services to allow these datasets to be explored, e.g. the Drought Portal, Water Resources Portal, Drought Libraries, Inventory Explorer and Drought Data Hub. More generally in relation to ENDOWS, which CEH has been coordinating - as well as leading sigificant parts of the engagement activity on, including the final event - we have received excellent feedback from across our very wide mobilised stakeholder community. Stakeholders widely report we have cultivated a community of practice and they are very keen for this to be taken forwards. "'About Drought has brought policy-makers, scientists and academics together and that is becoming more important because the complexities and uncertainties in the science are fundamental to making the best policy decisionsAt least once a year we should bring this community we have formed together againbecause that link needs to be rock solid." Trevor Bishop, Director, Water Resources South East Sir Mark Walport said: "This is what a UKRI programme should be like: it's an exemplar, a response to our changing world, absolutely interdisciplinary and providing a holistic view. The outcomes are good research that has influenced policy-making, for example the Environmental Framework, the Environment Agency and water companies. The public engagement is particularly impressive because one of the big challenges is how to communicate the risk to people who are thinking only about the last emergency. We all need to be better at communicating outcomes and impacts because if we are persuading Government to provide the money to support first-class research and innovation, we need to be much better at telling them what we do with that money - and this programme does that very well" Further feedback can be seen in the report from our successful final event at the Royal Society: https://aboutdrought.info/examplar-research/ And much more information on impact can be found in the AboutDrought Handbook. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/62902622/about-drought-handbook-outputs-impacts
First Year Of Impact 2019
Sector Agriculture, Food and Drink,Communities and Social Services/Policy,Energy,Environment,Government, Democracy and Justice
Impact Types Cultural,Societal,Economic,Policy & public services
 
Description Advice to the agricultural sector on irrigation prospects
Geographic Reach Local/Municipal/Regional 
Policy Influence Type Membership of a guideline committee
Impact Building on the engagement between the agricultural sector and ENDOWS, we provided guidance to farmers and growers on the evolving drought situation in 2019 into 2020. We attended two 'irrigation surgeries' at NFU Newmarket, with groups of around 20 - 30 farmers. In May 2019, we presented on all of the ENDOWS outputs and how they could be used for agricultural water status tracking in the drought. We presented a range of information to tell farmers about prospects for irrigation (and wider drought impacts) in the summer of 2019, which was particularly important in the very dry spring conditions and after another dry winter. In Feb 2020 we did a similar presentation at a second workshop in Newmarket. While the wet winter meant prospects were good, so there was less to say about future risks in 2020 (other than that the situation was generally healthy) it provided an opportunity to further showcase the ENDOWS monitoring and early warning tools. "The challenge for us all is that water availability is so localised - but it is also a great opportunity for people to understand that the power of some of About Drought's research outputs is such that it can go down to a reasonably local level and that's exactly where we need to get." (Paul Hammett, NFU National Water Resources Specialist)
 
Description Attendance at National Drought Group
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Membership of a guideline committee
 
Description Bespoke forecasts provided to Yorkshire Water and SEPA
Geographic Reach Local/Municipal/Regional 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
Impact In late 2018, as Yorkshire Water (YW) continued to experience concerns over drought, we continued providing monthly ESP forecasts for key sites (as with the EA - see seperate entry). As an engagement exercise, in early 2019 we worked with YW to develop a more bespoke forecast visualisation which projected the risk of reaching Hands-Off flows over the next 1 - 12 month in key rivers with abstraction points on. We then provided this to them regularly, and they reported back that they found it another really useful (and simple) way of showing them the potential risk of reaching HOFs. Miranda Foster, Senior Hydrologist said: "the bespoke river flow forecasts presenting data with a red, amber and green alert format, as opposed to tables and percentages, has been very good and I have been able to feed the information to those who need it". From March 2019 we also did the same for SEPA, looking at the risk of protracted Q95 flows (an indicator of interest to them). We discussed this at the workshop we held with SEPA in May 2019 and had good feedback - we continued to provide these on request, even though lingering drought conditions ceased in Scotland.
URL https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/62902622/about-drought-handbook-outputs-impacts
 
Description CEH Drought Portal recommended in UKWIR Water Resources Planning Guidance
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Citation in other policy documents
URL https://www.ukwir.org/146387?object=151120
 
Description CEH Drought Portal used in Drought Permit deliberations and application by Yorkshire Water
Geographic Reach Local/Municipal/Regional 
Policy Influence Type Citation in other policy documents
Impact Yorkshire Water used the Drought Portal to track the status of the 2018 drought in Yorkshire. They referred to the Portal in a presentation on lessons learned from the drought. They also used Portal outputs in their Drought Permit applications to the EA.
 
Description CEH drought portal used during the 2018 drought by Natural Resources Wales
Geographic Reach Local/Municipal/Regional 
Policy Influence Type Citation in other policy documents
Impact NRW Used the Drought Portal in their briefing meetings to assess the severity of the 2018 summer drought in Wales. They took images from the Portal to illustrate the evolution of the drought for their internal communications, and presented these externally. They indicated that the Portal added significant value in displaying rainfall deficits over and above their current approaches.
 
Description Citation of publication (van Loon, 2016, "Drought in the Anthropocene") in EA state of environment report
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Citation in other policy documents
URL https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/7099...
 
Description ENDOWS intermittent streams work used in tracking 2018 /2019 drought
Geographic Reach Local/Municipal/Regional 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
Impact Novel charts showing showing the proportions of flow, ponded and dry hydrological states along intermittent rivers in the East Chilterns have been used by the Environment Agency for monthly drought tracking during the 2018 - 2019 drought. This is based on work conduted in WS3 of ENDOWS, alongside separate funding from the EA.
 
Description Historic Droughts/DrIVER work on indicators featured in Natural Resources Wales Drought Planning Guidelines
Geographic Reach Local/Municipal/Regional 
Policy Influence Type Citation in other policy documents
Impact CEH's work on standardised drought indicators was cited in a document prepared by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) providing guidelines for drought planning in Wales, effectively recommending CEH's Drought Portal and Indicators as a data source for use in Drought Planning.
URL https://naturalresources.wales/media/682496/wc-dpg-2017-consultation.pdf
 
Description Intermittent stream tracking in 2019
Geographic Reach Local/Municipal/Regional 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
Impact We previously reported how drought tracking was provided for the EA in 2018/early 2019. This was continued and accelerated in 2019/2020. It also became particularly important given the ongoing low flows and dry river beds in the Chilterns - which caused significant tensions, with many members of the public and community groups raising concerns over the state of chalk rivers. Regular updates to drought tracking charts were provided to the Environment Agency showing the proportion of the East Chilterns rivers that were in dry, ponded and flowing state. These used Springs and Sources Survey data provided by the water resource hydrologists of the EA's Herts and North London Area. The drought tracking charts were used in drought management meetings at both Area and National level. Herts and North London Area declared environmental drought on 1 October 2019 (the only Area to do so). Their blog on the gov.uk website cited dry river beds as one of the issues: "Dry river beds are not the only danger to fish". https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2019/10/01/environmental-drought-in-hertfordshire-and-north-london/ The drought tracking charts provided by UKCEH using Environment Agency observations of hydrological state on the East Chilterns chalk streams were evidence used in the communication and management of a live drought incident.
 
Description New dryness maps used by the Environment Agency and SEPA
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
Impact Model outputs: Operational production of the current dryness/wetness and rainfall required to overcome the dry conditions maps from model simulations, and estimates of the rainfall required to overcome the dry conditions. The new relative dryness map and estimates of return periods and amount of additional rainfall required to overcome the dry conditions have been used by the EA for monitoring current conditions. The new products add to the information available to regulators and other stakeholders during a dry (or wet) period. In September 2018 the maps were used in a presentation to the National Drought Group. The EA has been very complimentary about these products and has shared them internally and tweeted about them in Summer 2018. The tools were used by SEPA (following a direct request from them) in summer 2019 to explore whether the drought situation in Scotland was recovering (or not) as part of SEPA's water situation reporting.
 
Description Ongoing provision of forecast information to the Environment Agency during the 2018 - 2019 drought
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
Impact In 2018, we began providing information to the Environment Agency on the evolving drought (see seperate entry). We continued providing this information on 'Reasonable Worse Case Scenarios' through 2019 and into early 2020 on a monthly basis. In addition, from early 2019 onwards we produce catchment based 'Ensemble Streamflow Prediction' forecasts to the EA on a monthly basis, for all catchments in England that we produce forecasts for (some 150+ rivers). We set up a process to provide these every month, and we developed a Guidance note specifically for the EA. They recieved these and disseminate them to Area hydrologists to provide context for decision making. We also attended the EA's Hydrology Forum, to famiiarise practitioners with the toolkit. Richard Davis from the EA said "The Ensemble Streamflow Prediction outputs are used to look at the future projections of river flows across England - to supplement the assessment of a range of possible future outcomes. In the future, a portal where the ESP datasets are assessible would be great. Richard Davis, Senor Advisor, National Water Hydrology Team, Environment Agency We are now (early 2020) developing a portal which could allow the EA or any other user to access these forecasts in future.
 
Description Participation in EA workshops on a roadmap for WRMP2024
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to a national consultation/review
Impact Jamie Hannaford from the Historic Droughts/ENDOWS projects participated in a Defra/EA led national consultation on water resources management planning - contributing to a RoadMap for the next round of WRMPs (WRMP2024). Jamie attended a workshop in London in November 2017, and another in March 2018 aimed at setting out the Roadmap for more effective regional- to national- planning.
 
Description Provision of drought scenarios to the EA for operational purposes during the 2018 - 2019 dry weather situation
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Citation in other policy documents
Impact Use of forecasts during 2018/2019 drought. CEH have worked closely with the EA to provide bespoke scenario forecasts based on the EA's 'Reasonable Worst Case' scenarios. In summer 2018 the EA approached Droughts Programme Researchers and asked for assistance in projecting these scenarios on a national scale, to assess the likely impacts of ongoing dry weather following the exceptional dry weather. CEH researchers provided this within the ENDOWS project, using the models and data setup during the Historic Droughts and IMPETUS projects. This was first done on request in Aug 2018 and has been done monthly since (we are still providing this monthly in March 2019). The EA have been using the RWC projections in their internal drought management briefings. They also featured the maps in their 'Drought Prospects' report (January 2019) shared with a wide range of stakeholders, and the maps have been shown at the National Drought Group. They have thus been a key source of information for the EA and other stakeholders in appraising likely evolution of the drought in coming months.
 
Description Supporting the Water Company regional groups and the EA's National Framework
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Participation in a guidance/advisory committee
Impact CEH, representing WS1 of ENDOWS, participated in the EA water resources National Framework modelling group's 'climate data' sub commmittee. We attended several meetings in spring and summer 2019. The committee was aiming to develop guidance on using standardised national/regional datasets for water resources planning within the EA national framework and the Regional Groups (Water Resources South East, Water Resources East, and so on). We advised on how the Droughts Programme datasets from MaRIUS and Historic Droughts could be used in this initiative. In autumn 2019, this culminated in a formal invitation to tender for the development of climate datasets to meet the industry's and regulators needs. It included specific references to MaRIUS and Historic Droughts outputs.
 
Description Uptake of Droughts Programme outputs by Anglian Water in producing their Drought Plan.
Geographic Reach Local/Municipal/Regional 
Policy Influence Type Citation in other policy documents
Impact We engaged with Anglian Water to evaluate ways they could better incorporate improved drought monitoring indicators into their Drought Plan. We worked with them to evaluate the use of the Standardized Streamflow Index for use in drought early warning, and this has been cited as a key information source in their (draft) Drought Plan.
URL https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/_assets/media/aw-drought-plan-2019.pdf
 
Description Use of UK Drought Portal in operational monitoring of the 2018 - 2019 drought
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
Impact Following initial uptake of the Drought Portal during the summer of 2018 to support decision making in the water companies (Yorkshire Water) and regulators (NRW) - see seperate entries - we became aware of routine use by a number of agencies during the drought, including the Environment Agency, Canal and Rivers Trust and a range of water companies. These agencies used the portal to understand current drought status compared to past events, to help provide context for decisions. Some selected quotes gathered as part of our impact reporting: "I found the tool both easy to use and understand. I thought it was an ideal tool (that was very timely too for the 2018 dry weather) that presented the data clearly in a pictorial way. This was very useful in showing the stark differences between the 2018 event and the benchmark 1976 drought once this information had been gathered". Tony Brown, Hydrologist, Natural Resources Wales. "The SPI drought portal was largely used across the business (mainly by hydrology) to look at SPI compared to historical time periods.  We are actively promoting the use of this tool via our drought teams and its referenced in our NRW drought plan as a source for looking (at the) water situation" Tracey Dunford, Natural Resources Wales "We use the portal, mostly (perhaps obviously) when water resources are tight. We manage a network of 2,000 miles of waterway, so in a drought event we need to balance resource use very carefully across multiple sources on each canal system. In a more severe event we manage increasing restrictions and then the closure of canals, and justifying that to internal and external stakeholders is often backed up by summary stats from the portal. Just knowing the severity of an event is really useful for placing our own datasets in the correct context, for example when comparing against other drought years. Knowing the data are robust and reliable is really important and helpful." David Mould, Principal Hydrologist, Canal & Rivers Trust. "I used the drought portal during the 2018 drought to illustrate aspects of the unfolding hydrological situation. The drought portal was useful in showing how serious the situation was compared to other time periods and highlighting the spatial extent of the drought. Data from the drought portal was used alongside other evidence on a drought permit applications to the Environmental Agency in the winter of 2018/2019". Miranda Foster, Senior Hydrologist, Yorkshire Water
 
Description A Review of Approaches to Communicating Drought Status and Risk
Amount £100,000 (GBP)
Organisation Department For Environment, Food And Rural Affairs (DEFRA) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2020 
End 04/2020
 
Description Met Office Strategic Priorities Fund - Climate Resilience. Climate Service prototype development: enhancing the resilience of the water sector to drought events
Amount £300,000 (GBP)
Funding ID DN420192 - CR19-4 SPF 
Organisation Meteorological Office UK 
Sector Academic/University
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2020 
End 07/2021
 
Description NERC Droughts and Water Scarcity Programme
Amount £2,000,000 (GBP)
Funding ID NE/L01016X/1 
Organisation Natural Environment Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 04/2017 
End 03/2019
 
Description Strengthening Thailand's Agricultural drought Resilience
Amount £435,081 (GBP)
Funding ID NE/S003223/1 
Organisation Natural Environment Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 09/2018 
End 09/2021
 
Title Historic Gridded Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) based on temperature-based equation McGuinness-Bordne calibrated for the UK (1891-2015) 
Description Monthly and daily 5km gridded Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) data for the UK. PET was derived using temperature-based equation from McGuinness-Bordne. The units are mm/day for daily PET and mm/month for monthly PET. The dataset covers the period from 1891-2015. For both subsets (daily and monthly), a set of performance metrics were calculated, which are provided together with the PET grids. The list of metrics provided is: Mean Absolute Percent Error (MAPE), Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE), Kling-Gupta Efficiency (KGE), Correlation Coefficient, Variability Ratio (VR), Bias Ratio and monthly MAPE. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2017 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact This dataset was used to underpin hydrological modelling, in production of scientific and data outputs, by a number of organisations, within the NERC Drought and Water Scarcity programme. 
URL https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/17b9c4f7-1c30-4b6f-b2fe-f7780159939c
 
Title Historic Gridded Standardised Precipitation Index for the United Kingdom 1862-2015 (generated using gamma distribution with standard period 1961-2010) v4 
Description 5km gridded Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) data for Great Britain, which is a drought index based on the probability of precipitation for a given accumulation period as defined by McKee et al [1]. There are seven accumulation periods: 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24 months and for each period SPI is calculated for each of the twelve calendar months. Note that values in monthly (and for longer accumulation periods also annual) time series of the data therefore are likely to be autocorrelated. The standard period which was used to fit the gamma distribution is 1961-2010. The dataset covers the period from 1862 to 2015. This version supersedes previous versions (version 2 and 3) of the same dataset due to minor errors in the data files. NOTE: the difference between this dataset with the previously published dataset "Gridded Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) using gamma distribution with standard period 1961-2010 for Great Britain [SPIgamma61-10]" (Tanguy et al., 2015; https://doi.org/10.5285/94c9eaa3-a178-4de4-8905-dbfab03b69a0) , apart from the temporal and spatial extent, is the underlying rainfall data from which SPI was calculated. In the previously published dataset, CEH-GEAR (Tanguy et al., 2014; https://doi.org/10.5285/5dc179dc-f692-49ba-9326-a6893a503f6e) was used, whereas in this new version, Met Office 5km rainfall grids were used (see supporting information for more details). The methodology to calculate SPI is the same in the two datasets. [1] McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J., Kleist, J. (1993). The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, 17-22 January 1993, Anaheim, California. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2017 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact This dataset forms part of the UK Drought Portal (https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/droughts) which has been widely used by researchers, regulators and industry for visualising drought at different timescales, including the recent developing dry weather situation affecting South-East England in particular. 
URL https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/233090b2-1d14-4eb9-9f9c-3923ea2350ff
 
Title Historic Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Groups (1862-2015) v2 
Description Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) data for Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) groups (Kral et al. [1]). SPI is a drought index based on the probability of precipitation for a given accumulation period as defined by McKee et al. [2]. SPI is calculated for different accumulation periods: 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24 months. Each of these is in turn calculated for each of the twelve calendar months. Note that values in monthly (and for longer accumulation periods also annual) time series of the data therefore are likely to be autocorrelated. The standard period which was used to fit the gamma distribution is 1961-2010. The dataset covers the period from 1862 to 2015. NOTE: the difference between this dataset with the previously published dataset 'Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Groups (1961-2012) [SPI_IHU_groups]' (Tanguy et al., 2015 [3]), apart from the temporal extent, is the underlying rainfall data from which SPI was calculated. In the previously published dataset, CEH-GEAR (Keller et al., 2015 [4], Tanguy et al., 2014 [5]) was used, whereas in this new version, Met Office 5km rainfall grids were used (see supporting information for more details). Within Historic Droughts project (grant number: NE/L01016X/1), the Met Office has digitised historic rainfall and temperature data to produce high quality historic rainfall and temperature grids, which motivated the change in the underlying data to calculate SPI. The methodology to calculate SPI is the same in the two datasets. This release supersedes the previous version, doi:10.5285/047d914f-2a65-4e9c-b191-09abf57423db, as it addresses localised issues with the source data (Met Office monthly rainfall grids) for the period 1960 to 2000. [1] Kral, F., Fry, M., Dixon, H. (2015). Integrated Hydrological Units of the United Kingdom: Groups. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre doi:10.5285/f1cd5e33-2633-4304-bbc2-b8d34711d902 [2] McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J., Kleist, J. (1993). The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, 17-22 January 1993, Anaheim, California. [3] Tanguy, M.; Kral., F.; Fry, M.; Svensson, C.; Hannaford, J. (2015). Standardised Precipitation Index time series for Integrated Hydrological Units Groups (1961-2012). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/dfd59438-2170-4472-b810-bab33a83d09f [4] Keller, V. D. J., Tanguy, M., Prosdocimi, I., Terry, J. A., Hitt, O., Cole, S. J., Fry, M., Morris, D. G., and Dixon, H.: CEH-GEAR: 1 km resolution daily and monthly areal rainfall estimates for the UK for hydrological use, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., 8, 83-112, doi:10.5194/essdd-8-83-2015, 2015. [5] Tanguy, M.; Dixon, H.; Prosdocimi, I.; Morris, D. G.; Keller, V. D. J. (2014). Gridded estimates of daily and monthly areal rainfall for the United Kingdom (1890-2012) [CEH-GEAR]. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/5dc179dc-f692-49ba-9326-a6893a503f6e 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2017 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact This dataset forms part of the UK Drought Portal (https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/droughts) which has been widely used by researchers, regulators and industry for visualising drought at different timescales, including the recent developing dry weather situation affecting South-East England in particular. 
URL https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/a01e09b6-4b40-497b-a139-9369858101b3
 
Title Historic Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Hydrometric Areas (1862-2015) v2 
Description Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) data for Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) Hydrometric Areas (Kral et al. [1]). SPI is a drought index based on the probability of precipitation for a given accumulation period as defined by McKee et al. [2]. SPI is calculated for different accumulation periods: 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24 months. Each of these is in turn calculated for each of the twelve calendar months. Note that values in monthly (and for longer accumulation periods also annual) time series of the data therefore are likely to be autocorrelated. The standard period which was used to fit the gamma distribution is 1961-2010. The dataset covers the period from 1862 to 2015. NOTE: the difference between this dataset with the previously published dataset 'Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU hydrometric areas (1961-2012)' [SPI_IHU_HA] (Tanguy et al., 2015 [3]), apart from the temporal extent, is the underlying rainfall data from which SPI was calculated. In the previously published dataset, CEH-GEAR (Keller et al., 2015 [4], Tanguy et al., 2014 [5]) was used, whereas in this new version, Met Office 5km rainfall grids were used (see supporting documentation for more details). Within Historic Droughts project (grant number: NE/L01016X/1), the Met Office has digitised historic rainfall and temperature data to produce high quality historic rainfall and temperature grids, which motivated the change in the underlying data to calculate SPI. The methodology to calculate SPI is the same in the two datasets. This release supersedes the previous version, doi:10.5285/d8655cc9-b275-4e77-9e6c-1b16eee5c7d5, as it addresses localised issues with the source data (Met Office monthly rainfall grids) for the period 1960 to 2000. [1] Kral, F., Fry, M., Dixon, H. (2015). Integrated Hydrological Units of the United Kingdom: Hydrometric Areas without Coastline. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre doi:10.5285/3a4e94fc-4c68-47eb-a217-adee2a6b02b3 [2] McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J., Kleist, J. (1993). The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, 17-22 January 1993, Anaheim, California. [3] Tanguy, M.; Kral., F.; Fry, M.; Svensson, C.; Hannaford, J. (2015). Standardised Precipitation Index time series for Integrated Hydrological Units Hydrometric Areas (1961-2012). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1 [4] Keller, V. D. J., Tanguy, M., Prosdocimi, I., Terry, J. A., Hitt, O., Cole, S. J., Fry, M., Morris, D. G., and Dixon, H.: CEH-GEAR: 1 km resolution daily and monthly areal rainfall estimates for the UK for hydrological use, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., 8, 83-112, doi:10.5194/essdd-8-83-2015, 2015. [5] Tanguy, M.; Dixon, H.; Prosdocimi, I.; Morris, D. G.; Keller, V. D. J. (2014). Gridded estimates of daily and monthly areal rainfall for the United Kingdom (1890-2012) [CEH-GEAR]. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/5dc179dc-f692-49ba-9326-a6893a503f6e 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2017 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact This dataset forms part of the UK Drought Portal (https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/droughts) which has been widely used by researchers, regulators and industry for visualising drought at different timescales, including the recent developing dry weather situation affecting South-East England in particular. 
URL https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/a754cae2-d6a4-456e-b367-e99891d7920f
 
Title Historic Standardised Streamflow Index (SSI) using Tweedie distribution with standard period 1961-2010 for 303 UK catchments (1891-2015) 
Description This dataset contains the Standardised Streamflow Index (SSI) data for 303 catchments across the United Kingdom from 1891 to 2015. The SSI is a drought index based on the cumulative probability of a given monthly mean streamflow occurring for a given catchment. Here, the SSI is calculated for the following accumulation periods: 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 18 and 24 months. Each accumulation period is calculated for calendar end-months. The standard period used to fit the Tweedie distribution is 1961-2010. The SSI was produced by the RCUK-funded Historic Droughts project in order to characterise and explore hydrological drought severity over the period 1891-2015. This dataset is an outcome of the Historic Droughts Project (grant number: NE/L01016X/1). 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2018 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact None yet 
URL https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/58ef13a9-539f-46e5-88ad-c89274191ff9
 
Title Historic reconstructions of daily river flow for 303 UK catchments (1891-2015) 
Description This dataset is model output from the GR4J lumped catchment hydrology model. It provides 500 model realisations of daily river flow, in cubic metres per second (cumecs, m3/s), for 303 UK catchments for the period between 1891-2015. The modelled catchments are part of the National River Flow Archive (NRFA) (https://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/) and provide good spatial coverage across the UK. These flow reconstructions were produced as part of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) funded Historic Droughts and IMPETUS projects, to provide consistent modelled daily flow data across the UK from 1891-2015, with estimates of uncertainty. This dataset is an outcome of the Historic Droughts Project (grant number: NE/L01016X/1). The data are provided in two formats to help the user account for uncertainty: (1) a 500-member ensemble of daily river flow time series for each catchment, with their corresponding model parameters and evaluation metric scores of model performance. (2) a single river flow time series (one corresponding to the top run of the 500), with the maximum and minimum daily limits of the 500 ensemble members. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2018 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact None yet 
URL https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/f710bed1-e564-47bf-b82c-4c2a2fe2810e
 
Title Rescued and recovered rainfall incorporated into national climate product (HadUK) 
Description HadUK-Grid is a new collection of gridded climate variables derived from the network of UK land surface observations. The data have been interpolated from meteorological station data onto a uniform grid to provide complete and consistent coverage across the UK. The data sets cover the UK up to 1km x 1km resolution and a range of other resolutions to allow for comparison to data from climate projections and across a country, administrative regions and river basins. The dataset spans the period from 1862 to present. The datasets have been created by the Met Office with financial support from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). The data recovery activity was also funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC grant ref: NE/L01016X/1) project "Analysis of historic drought and water scarcity in the UK". The dataset is provided under Open Government Licence. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2018 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact The Historic Drought rescue and recovery has digitised a wealth of climate datasets from the early 19thC and 20th C. These have now been incorporated into the authoritative, national UK meteorological data centre, the National Climate Information Centre, and included in a range of products. Cruially, they have been incorporated into the new HadUK gridded dataset, which provides an observational baseline of past climatic variability against which future changes are projected. The primary purpose of these data are to facilitate monitoring of UK climate and research into climate change, impacts and adaptation. This a very significant impact - the HadUK data was launched in December 2018, alongside the latest round of climate projections (UKCP18). The data are fully accessible at CEDA. 
URL https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/data/haduk-grid/haduk-grid
 
Title Simulated monthly biological indicators for England and Wales 1964-2012 
Description "Monthly time series of simulated de-trended/de-seasonalised biological indicators at 86 bio-monitoring sites in England and Wales based on the modelled response of these indicators to discharge (represented by a standardised streamflow index, SSI) at 76 paired gauging stations. The biological indicators include: (i) Average Score per Taxon (ASPT) (ii) Lotic-invertebrate Index for Flow Evaluation (LIFE) calculated at family-level (LIFE Family) (iii) LIFE calculated at species-level (LIFE Species). The simulation spans the period 1964-2012." 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2018 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Not yet aware of impacts. 
URL https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/2ad542be-e883-4c6e-b198-7d49da62208c
 
Description Participation in UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund Climate Resilience project as a project partner 
Organisation University of Liverpool
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Jamie Hannaford was a project partner in this project: BUILDING UK CLIMATE RESILIENCE THROUGH BRIDGING THE QUALITATIVE-QUANTITATIVE DATA DIVIDE
Collaborator Contribution CEH provided a letter of Support for this successful proposal and attended several workshops, providing input on historical quantitative and qualitative hydroclimate data from the perspective of the Historic Droughts project.
Impact Workshop reports, protocols for future analysis.
Start Year 2019
 
Description Stakeholder Advisory Panel for Historic Droughts 
Organisation Agricultural and Horticulture Development Board
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution We have convened a stakeholder advisory panel for Historic Droughts, and held a stakeholder meeting in March 2015.
Collaborator Contribution Advice on research direction and engagement strategy. Data contributions. Commitment to interviews
Impact Stakeholder advisory meeting, March 2015.
Start Year 2015
 
Description Stakeholder Advisory Panel for Historic Droughts 
Organisation Anglian Water Services
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution We have convened a stakeholder advisory panel for Historic Droughts, and held a stakeholder meeting in March 2015.
Collaborator Contribution Advice on research direction and engagement strategy. Data contributions. Commitment to interviews
Impact Stakeholder advisory meeting, March 2015.
Start Year 2015
 
Description Stakeholder Advisory Panel for Historic Droughts 
Organisation Environment Agency
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution We have convened a stakeholder advisory panel for Historic Droughts, and held a stakeholder meeting in March 2015.
Collaborator Contribution Advice on research direction and engagement strategy. Data contributions. Commitment to interviews
Impact Stakeholder advisory meeting, March 2015.
Start Year 2015
 
Description Stakeholder Advisory Panel for Historic Droughts 
Organisation Hydro Logic Ltd
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution We have convened a stakeholder advisory panel for Historic Droughts, and held a stakeholder meeting in March 2015.
Collaborator Contribution Advice on research direction and engagement strategy. Data contributions. Commitment to interviews
Impact Stakeholder advisory meeting, March 2015.
Start Year 2015
 
Description Stakeholder Advisory Panel for Historic Droughts 
Organisation National Farmers Union
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution We have convened a stakeholder advisory panel for Historic Droughts, and held a stakeholder meeting in March 2015.
Collaborator Contribution Advice on research direction and engagement strategy. Data contributions. Commitment to interviews
Impact Stakeholder advisory meeting, March 2015.
Start Year 2015
 
Description Stakeholder Advisory Panel for Historic Droughts 
Organisation Natural Resources Wales
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution We have convened a stakeholder advisory panel for Historic Droughts, and held a stakeholder meeting in March 2015.
Collaborator Contribution Advice on research direction and engagement strategy. Data contributions. Commitment to interviews
Impact Stakeholder advisory meeting, March 2015.
Start Year 2015
 
Description Stakeholder Advisory Panel for Historic Droughts 
Organisation Scottish Environment Protection Agency
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution We have convened a stakeholder advisory panel for Historic Droughts, and held a stakeholder meeting in March 2015.
Collaborator Contribution Advice on research direction and engagement strategy. Data contributions. Commitment to interviews
Impact Stakeholder advisory meeting, March 2015.
Start Year 2015
 
Description Stakeholder Advisory Panel for Historic Droughts 
Organisation Thames Water Utilities Limited
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution We have convened a stakeholder advisory panel for Historic Droughts, and held a stakeholder meeting in March 2015.
Collaborator Contribution Advice on research direction and engagement strategy. Data contributions. Commitment to interviews
Impact Stakeholder advisory meeting, March 2015.
Start Year 2015
 
Description Stakeholder Advisory Panel for Historic Droughts 
Organisation World Wide Fund for Nature
Country Switzerland 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution We have convened a stakeholder advisory panel for Historic Droughts, and held a stakeholder meeting in March 2015.
Collaborator Contribution Advice on research direction and engagement strategy. Data contributions. Commitment to interviews
Impact Stakeholder advisory meeting, March 2015.
Start Year 2015
 
Title CEH Drought Libraries 
Description The Drought Libraries allow users to explore historical (HadUK) and future (MaRIUS) rainfall datasets, and visualise and extract drought events in a form that can be used for water resources planning. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact Recently released (Dec 2019) so impacts info to follow. 
 
Title CEH Drought Portal 
Description The UK drought portal is a tool to help understand the severity and magnitude of drought at different spatial scales across the UK over the past half century. Droughts can be visualised and explored through interactive maps and graphs The current version shows the relative magnitude of drought events within river basins and individual catchments based on rainfall deficits over durations ranging from 1 to 24 months. In future this could be extended to include the impact of varying evaporation rates, drought metrics based on river flow and groundwater conditions, or even to display current drought status from real-time drought information. The Drought Portal is based on underlying SPI and SPEI datasets delivered by the DrIVER project. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2015 
Impact The Drought Portal is now going to be released (March 2017) as a real-time monitoring tool, to allow users to visualise the current water situation in a historical context using datasets available on the portal. Further information will be added in mid-2017. 
URL https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/droughts
 
Title New modelling tools for the UK Hydrological Outlook 
Description Modelling undertaken within the Historic Droughts and IMPETUS projects using the GR4J model has been implemented through the ENDOWS funding as an operational service in the UK Hydrological Outlook, replacing the previous modelling system. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2018 
Impact Previously, the 'Ensemble Streamflow Prediction' system component of the Outlook used disparate models for a limited range (<50) of catchments for England and Wales only. From October 2018, the new GR4J approach has been operationalised as a monthly service, meaning the approach is now fully automated and uses only one model, for many more catchments (>300) and including Scotland and Northern Ireland. This model has also been used for stakeholder engagement during ENDOWS and in providing Reasonable WOrst Case Scenarios to the EA (see 'influence on policy and practice'). 
URL https://www.hydoutuk.net/
 
Title New products for the UK Hydrological Outlook: dryness maps and rainfall required to overcome drought conditions 
Description Two new products were implemented operationally in the UK Hydrological Outlook, using ENDOWS resource and following stakeholder engagement. The outputs are based on the G2G/water balance modelling used in the Outlook, but new customised outputs for drought monitoring and early warning: - Gridded Dryness maps, showing relative dryness of the subsurface for the UK at 1km scale - % of rainfall and rarity of rainfall required to overcome the drought. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2018 
Impact These were added to the Outlook as an operational product in summer 2018, and have been produced monthly since. These are significant upgrades to the UK Outlook operational service. The outputs have been used by stakeholders (see 'influence on policy'), including the EA and SEPA. 
URL https://www.hydoutuk.net/
 
Title Real-time Drought Monitoring via the UK Drought Portal 
Description The UK Drought Portal was released in 2015, but in 2017 we upgraded the functionality and processes such that the portal is updated every month. We receive gridded rainfall data from the UK met Office and transform this into the drought indicator (SPI) and upload it every month, in the first few days of the month.In this way the Portal has become a near real-time drought monitoring tool that can be used to map, track and plot current rainfall drought status. Further major upgrades are planned in 2018 (adding river flows and groundwater). 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2017 
Impact At this stage, it is relatively early days for the drought portal as an operational tool. However, it has become reasonably well know as a tool for indexing drought status - the EA, Canal and Rivers Trust and others have indicated in was useful in the 2016-2017 dry weather situatiuon. 
URL https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/droughts
 
Title Reconstructed Flow Data Explorer 
Description The Reconstructed Flow Data explorer was released in March 2018. The application allows users to explore the historic flow reconstructions released for the Historic Droughts project. An interactive time series plot allows users to visualise the data in detail without the need to download it first. The page also provides details on the performance of the model in each catchment and the model parameters used to generate the reconstructions. The page was developed using the R software program's Shiny package, and is hosted on a CEH server. Further upgrades are planned as part of the ENDOWS and Historic Droughts projects following feedback from the About Drought Symposium. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2018 
Impact It is expected that the reconstructed flow data will be used both by academics and water resource practitioners. This app will provide users with a better understanding of the data and its limitations in order to encourage appropriate use of the dataset. 
URL https://shiny-apps.ceh.ac.uk/reconstruction_explorer
 
Title The UK Water Resources Portal - Demonstrator 
Description The UK Water Resources Portal is a tool to monitor the UK hydrological situation in (near) real-time, showcasing the use of live river flow data from the Environment Agency. The UK Water Resources Portal has been developed as a demonstrator to showcase the use of multiple variables: rainfall, river flow, groundwater and soil moisture from COSMOS-UK, in the raw data format as well as standardised indices, to view various plotting styles and view data for multiple sites. It is a development of the UK Drought Portal which has been updated each month since June 2017. The UK Drought Portal however, showed only a commonly used drought indicator - the Standardised Precipitation Index. Within ENDOWS we worked with South West Water and the Environment Agency in Devon and Cornwall to develop a prototype portal for the south west of England to work out how these different datasets can be brought together and how data can be presented to work alongside existing monitoring tools such as Environment Agency Water Situation Reports. The portal provides access to the following datasets; Rainfall from the Met Office (gridded, and over gauged catchments and hydrometric areas) River flows from the National River Flow Archive (for historical data) and Environment Agency (for real-time data) Soil moisture (from CEH's COSMOS-UK network) The portal allows users to explore these datasets spatially, using a map interface, and then to plot graphs showing time series data of these variables for their selected locations. There are a number of ways these datasets can be visualised. For rainfall, river flows and soil moisture, the raw data can be plotted. In this mode, for river flows, the map shows colours displaying the current daily/monthly flow in the context of the historical record using coloured 'bands' (exceptionally high, notably high, and so on to notably low and exceptionally low). When users click on the points, hydrographs are shown of the recent flows against these same bandings - as used in the Water Situation Reports produced by the Enivronment Agency. We adopted this visualisation approach following feedback from users in the water industry, as these are widely used for communication. Users can also choose to show the current flows against maximum and minimum flows, and against historical drought years. This is very useful for practitioners wishing to assess how the current river flow situation compares with known, major historical droughts, for example. For COSMOS-UK, the soil moisture data records only date back up to five years so the time periods are too short to use bandings, and the sites are not coloured on the map. Users can still plot time series of soil moisture against the historical maximums and minimums. Importantly, users can plot both soil moisture and river flow graphs next to one another to compare these variables. The river flows and rainfall data can also be presented as 'standardised indicators' as used on the UK Drought Portal. Once again, the current values of the indicators are shown as colours on the map, and when locations are clicked, time series plots of the indicators can be shown. These standardised indicators essentially show the anomalies from the long-term average, with negative values indicating that it was drier than normal or flows were lower than normal, and positive values that it was wetter than normal or flows were higher than normal. The way these indicators are calculated means that you can compare values across time and space making them useful to monitor the hydrological situation. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact The new portal is aimed at anyone with an interest in current water resources situation or drought conditions. We envisage this would include a wide range of people involved in water management, e.g. water supply companies, policymakers, regulators, consultants, academics, farmers and growers, businesses (particularly those which are heavily dependent on water abstractions) and power companies. Given the interactive nature of the portal and the capacity to explore data on a localised scale, we also hope it provides a useful dataset for the media and the wider public. The primary focus of the portal is for water resources and drought applications, but it can also be useful for tracking river flows and soil moisture in real time in order to provide an indication about high flows, as well as low flows. Other real-time services exist for real-time flood level monitoring, and these are the primary outlets that should be consulted from a flood warning perspective. The portal offers a way of exploring the full range of river flow variability, including comparing current conditions to those in the past, from droughts to floods and all points in between. The portal is a relatively new development - further information will be added on impacts in future. 
URL http://eip.ceh.ac.uk/hydrology/water-resources/index.html
 
Title UK Hydrological Drought Explorer 
Description The UK Hydrological Drought Explorer was released in March 2018. The application allows users to explore the historic hydrological droughts derived and extracted for the Historic Droughts project. A series of interactive maps and graphs allow users to visualise and understand historic hydrological roughts in the UK using the Standardised Streamflow Index (SSI) without having to download and analyse the data themselves. The page was developed using the R software program's Shiny package, and is hosted on a CEH server. Further upgrades are planned as part of the ENDOWS and Historic Droughts projects following feedback from the About Drought Symposium (14th March 2018). 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2018 
Impact It is expected that the reconstructed SSI data will be used both by academics and water resource practitioners. This app will enable users to explore the data before downloading it from the EIDC. It will also help users better understand the data and its limitations in order to encourage appropriate use of the dataset and the historic daily flow reconstructions. 
URL https://shiny-apps.ceh.ac.uk/hydro_drought_explorer/
 
Title UK Water Resources Portal 
Description A unique, interactive web portal developed by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) brings together a wealth of information on the latest hydrological situation across the UK. The UK Water Resources Portal provides the most up-to-date available data on river flows, rainfall, soil moisture and groundwater levels from a local to a national scale, with users able to view measurements in any part of the country by clicking on an interactive map. In addition to providing a possible indication of imminent floods and droughts, it also has historical records that enable comparisons to be made with previous significant events from the past 50 years and long-term averages. The portal collates data from a variety of sources, including the national measuring authorities for river flows and groundwater levels: the Environment Agency (for England), the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Natural Resources Wales and the Department for Infrastructure - Rivers in Northern Ireland. It also includes Met Office rainfall and the UKCEH COSMOS-UK Soil Moisture Observatory. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2020 
Impact The Portal has been well received by a broad user community. The Portal received >10,000 visits between launch in March and December 2020. The Portal has been highlighted in communications and linked as a resource to user communities by the Rivers Trusts, National Farmers Union, UK Irrigation Association among others. E.g. https://www.nfuonline.com/cross-sector/environment/water/irrigation-and-water-resources/new-web-portal-tracks-water-availability-in-near-real-time/ https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/uk-centre-ecology-hydrology/track-latest-hydrological-situation-across-uk-our-new-portal 
URL https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/hydrology/water-resources/
 
Title Water Resource Portal demonstrator for South West England 
Description The water resources SW portal is a stakeholder co-designed demonstrator to showcase the next generation of interactive, dynamic drought monitoring tools for the UK, to build on the Drought Portal described elsewhere in this award. The SW portal showcases a range of innovations, building on the original Portal architecture first developed in the DrIVER and Historic Droughts projects and later extended into the SW portal under the ENDOWS project: - WIde range of datasets including river flow, groundwater and soil moisture - access to raw data as well as standardized indicators - real-time daily updated flow data using the Environment Agency's new API - wide range of mapping and visualisation techniques including use of Return Period bandings on hydrographs, overlay comparisons of past droughts, etc. The product is being further developed in ENDOWS and will eventually be rolled into the national UK drought Portal. The key stakeholders were Southwest Water and the Environment Agency. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact Too early for impact yet - but the software tool is very well received by regulators, water companies, etc and we are working on further developments which will lead to impacts in future years once established. 
URL http://eip.ceh.ac.uk/hydrology/south-west/
 
Description About Drought Showcase 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The About Drought showcase was held on 14th March 2018, as a major showcase for the work of the Droughts and Water Scarcity Programme. The event was organised by a core team from the Programme Co-ordination Team and Endows Delivery Team. Jamie Hannaford oversaw the organisation, while Steve Turner, Lucy ball and Nick Jackson from the EDT planned the event with colleagues from other institutions on the PCT/EDT. The event involved a plenary session featuring overviews of DWS programme projects and external stakeholders. A series of interactive sessions on ENDOWS themes was then held, before the day rounded off with a panel discussion. There were stands during the breaks and lunch and at a reception afterwards, allowing users to engage with programme outputs, ENDOWS staff from CEH led or contributed to the organisation and content of many sessions, and several of the stands. Jamie led the hosting and organised the plenary speakers. The event was attended by over 120 organisations from across a very broad cross-section of the user community. The event was very successful with lots of positive feedback on the Droughts Programme and its outputs, including very positive feedback from Defra, the EA, the funders (NERC). Further information and write-ups/links will be added in future updates.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL http://aboutdrought.info/drought-and-water-scarcity-programme-showcase-event/
 
Description AboutDrought Showcase 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The About Drought Showcase presents a major opportunity to discover more about the outputs emerging from the £12 million five-year research council-funded UK Droughts & Water Scarcity programme. The programme is aimed at supporting improved decision-making and communication in relation to droughts and water scarcity for a range of sectors, including: water suppliers, energy suppliers and regulators; agricultural sector; environmental policymakers, stakeholders and regulators; UK businesses, ranging from high volume industrial water users to local small and medium-sized enterprises; community planning organisations, communities, and not-for-profit special interest groups. As well as hands-on interaction with key project datasets, you will be able to ask the experts about on-going developments and give feedback on how best they can be tailored to support your area of interest. The showcase will give the opportunity to participants to interact with other stakeholders and researchers. Steve Turner, Jamie Hannaford and Matt Fry were amongst the key organisers. Jamie Hannaford and Matt Fry led sessions on Monitoring & Early Warning and Data, respectively. Jamie Hannaford, Matt Fry, Simon Parry, Katie Smith and Lucy Barker made presentations in the Water Supply, Data, and Monitoring & Early Warning sessions. Maliko Tanguy coordinated the interactive question and answer sessions for the Plenary and Monitoring & Early Warning sessions. Katie Smith, Maliko Tanguy and Lucy Barker managed stands demonstrating key Historic Droughts outputs.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Adaptation and Resilience to droughts: historical perspectives in Europe and beyond 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford presented an overview of the Historic Droughts project.There was significant interest from many other international initiatives working on past droughts, from Germany and France in particular.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
URL https://live.unistra.fr/en/evenements/conferences/adaptation-et-resilience-aux-secheresses-perspecti...
 
Description Advancing drought monitoring and early warning in the UK. Oral presentation at "Experiences and lessons in drought characterisation, monitoring and management in the UK" seminar, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Shared research outputs from ENDOWS, including the UK Water Resources Portal, with Thai students and academics.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2017 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The AGU Fall Meeting is the world's largest earth science conference, and in 2017 was hosted in New Orleans, USA. It is a gathering of the best and brightest minds from around the globe in the pursuit of high quality science, knowledge, and a more sustainable future. It is an opportunity to share science, and gain visibility and recognition for your own scientific efforts alongside the world's leading scientific minds. This was an opportunity to disseminate key findings and outputs from the Historic Droughts project to a new transatlantic audience. Simon Parry convened the main drought session. Jamie Hannaford (presented by Katie Smith) and Simon Parry made oral presentations in the main drought session, and Simon Parry and Katie Smith made poster presentations, all of which comprised work undertaken within the Historic Droughts project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Anglian Water workshop on estimation of extreme droughts, Rutland Water, Sep 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Anglian Water (and Water Resources East) hosted a workshop to examine potential approaches for estimation of extreme (i.e. 1/500 year) drought events. This is a very challenging area of science and Anglian water were keen to understand state-of-the art approaches. Jamie Hannaford contributed views from ENDOWS on the new droughts data and projections, new Return Period approaches and outputs like the 'Drought Libraries'. A report and joint peer-reviewed paper were planned as follow-up.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Aquator Users Group Meeting 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford was invited keynote speaker at the Aquator Users Group annual conference, comprising professionals from across the water industry and regulators. The group meets annually to discuss water resources and drought planning in the context of the Aquator software.

The presentation was entitled: "Improving information for drought planning and decision-making" and included outputs from two NERC projects, Historic Droughts and DrIVER.

The event was held at Worcester College, Oxford, 12th October 2016.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
 
Description BHS meeting - agricultural and environmental impacts 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A meeting of the British Hydrological Society South East Section on 'ABOUT DROUGHT: AGRICULTURE AND ECOLOGICAL IMPACTS' in London. Francois Edwards gave an oral presentation on 'The ecology of drought in rivers' featuring work conducted within the Historic Droughts project. Ian Holman reviewed some of the impacts experienced by the agricultural sector last year and consider how lessons from last year can be taken forward to inform increased drought resilience in the sector. good interactive discussion at the end
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Blog Post - Hydrological Status Update 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Blog post July 2018 - update on the Hydrological Situation following the exceptionally dry and hot June. Brought together information from Drought Portal (including screenshots) alongside several other monitoring tools.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/uk-hydrological-status-update-early-july-2018
 
Description Blog Post - Hydrological Status Update - August 2018 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Blog post on hydrological situation in summer 2018 following exceptional conditions. Blog featured the drought portal as well as material gleaned from the Historic Droughts project. Also referred to ENDOWS ongoing engagement.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/uk-hydrological-status-update-early-august-2018
 
Description Blog Post about drought prospects 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Blog Post about drought situation in spring 2017.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
URL https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/hydrological-status-update
 
Description Blog Post about the Drought Portal 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Blog post about the Drought Portal.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
URL https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/uk-drought-portal-near-real-time-updates
 
Description Blog Post about the Drought Portal - December 2018 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Hydrological Status update in series, reflecting on long-term rainfall deficits leading to ongoing drought impacts. Blog featured the Drought Portal as well as drought indicators for river flow. Also referred to ongoing ENDOWS monitoring and forecasting work (including screenshot of new SW water resources portal).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/uk-hydrological-status-update-december-2018
 
Description Blog Post on the Hydrological Situation - July 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Hydrological Status Update on the ongoing drought situation in summer 2019. Over 1300 engagements (as of Feb 2020).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/uk-hydrological-status-update-july-2019
 
Description Blog post on the UK Water Resources Portal 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Blog post describing the release of the new UK Water Resources Portal.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/new-web-portal-tracks-uk-hydrological-situation-it-happen...
 
Description British Hydrological Society Conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation to the BHS International Conference at Cranfield, September 2016. Cedric Laize presented work carried out on 'Drought Impacts on River Ecology', carried out in the Historic Droughts and DriVER projects.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
URL http://www.hydrology.org.uk/assets/Cranfield%20Programme.rev.pdf
 
Description British Hydrological Society Peter Wolf Symposium 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact An annual symposium of the British Hydrological Society over two days of oral and poster presentations, allowing early career hydrologists the opportunity to present their research, often for the first time, in a supportive environment of their colleagues. Keynote speakers included Anne Van Loon and Rob Wilby, and Alan Jenkins and Peter Ede welcomed participants and highlighted the importance of the event. Lucy Barker had a key role in organising the event, hosted at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and Lucy and Katie Smith also presented posters on their work within the Historic Droughts project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description British Hydrological Society South East Meeting: Low Flows and Abstraction Management 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A meeting of the British Hydrological Society South East Section on 'Low Flows and Abstraction Management' in London. Cedric Laize made an oral presentation on 'River wetted habitat under low flows' featuring work conducted within the Historic Droughts project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description CEH Youtube promo about UK Water Resources Portal 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Youtube video promoting the UK water resources Portal, to coincide with it's launch in March 2020.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLGdM9A7yMU
 
Description CEH news story about the UK Water Resources Portal 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact News story on the UKCEH Website to announce the release of the UK Water Resources Portal, March 2020.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/news/track-latest-hydrological-situation-across-uk-our-new-port...
 
Description CIWEM National Water Resources Panel 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford was invited speaker at the CIWEM national water resources panel.

Title of presentation: Improving drought information for decision making. The presentation covered two NERC projects, DrIVER and Historic Droughts, and considered how the outputs are potentially useful for the water industry in two contexts: 1) long-term strategic planning and 2) early warning to support decision-making in a drought.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
 
Description Canal and Rivers trust - staff exchanges 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The Canal and Rivers Trust visited CEH in February 2019 for two days as part of a staff exchange.

One day was devoted to the droughts programme and ENDOWS. ENDOWS team members engaged CRT staff with current outputs (Drought Libraries, model intercomparison, monitoring portals and forecasts) with interactive demonstrations, and discussed how such outputs could be embedded into operational decision making and long-term planning by the CRT. A follow up visit by ENDOWS researchers to the CRT is planned.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Defra Workshop on Drought Research 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Defra hosted a one-day workshop to discuss the variety of NERC funded drought research underway at present, primarily in the Drought and Water Scarcity Programme.

Jamie Hannaford presented the outcomes and plans of the following projects.
- DrIVER
- Historic Droughts
- HydEOmex
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
 
Description Dialogue with Energy industry on drought monitoring and early warning needs 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Dialogue with EnergyUK and RWE Npower on potential for using ENDOWS early warning and forecasting products for energy industry applications.

Small group dialogue led to follow up engagement with wider network, canvassing other energy companies for interest in ongoing case study work,
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Drought & Water Scarcity Programme Environment workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A workshop organised by the Drought & Water Scarcity Programme, bringing together key stakeholders from the environment sector to co-develop plans to bring together outputs from the four projects, including Historic Droughts. Lucy Barker presented on monitoring and early warning in relation to the environment sectors, and Lucy and Jamie Hannaford participated in productive discussions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Drought & Water Scarcity Programme Public Water Supply workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A workshop organised by the Drought & Water Scarcity Programme, bringing together key stakeholders from the public water supply sector to co-develop plans to bring together outputs from the four projects, including Historic Droughts. Jamie Hannaford had a key organisational role, introduced the workshop and Historic Droughts project, and presented on plans for the Monitoring & Early Warning task. Simon Parry presented on plans for the Water Supply Stress Testing, including capitalising on the data outputs of the Historic Droughts project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Drought Workshop (Beijing) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact International workshop on drought science, aimed at early career researchers.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
 
Description Drought and Water Scarcity HackWeek (funded by NERC and Unilever): 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Approximately 20 scientists were invited to participate in a "HackWeek" along with "HackMasters" to tackle the issue of drought and water scarcity. The scientists ranged from postgraduate students to university lecturers, with expertise ranging from environmental science to social science. The scientists were broken into three groups to tackle:
- Using media (newspaper and twitter) data to understand drought events - tying social responses to drought events
- Using remotely sensed spatial data to develop a website for drought information
- Using social media to encourage social response to droughts - through twitter campaigns
The outcomes of these investigations and draft application development were presented to government policymakers, stakeholders and industry representatives with much positive feedback.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
 
Description Drought and Water Scarcity Programme - Agriculture Workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The first researcher-stakeholder event under the DWS Programme 'DROUGHT exchanges' banner, took place in Peterborough on 2nd December 2016. It was attended by researchers from all four projects, regulators, colleagues from the National Farmers Union, the UK Irrigation Association, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board and the Horticultural Traders Association. We were especially pleased that is was also supported by a number of farmers and farm enterprises. The morning started with an overview of research progress from each of the four drought projects, followed by a 'quick-fire' round where, in 5 minute slots, 9 stakeholders gave their perspective on the key data, decision-making, and research needs or priorities in relation to droughts and water scarcity in the agriculture, and food production and supply sector. With these challenges in mind, the afternoon session comprised work in three groups aimed at identifying how the DWS Programme might respond to some of these challenges.

The event was organised by the Programme Co-ordination Team, which includes researchers from Historic Droughts. IN addition, the Historic Droughts PI, Jamie Hannaford, presented an overview of the Historic Droughts Project on the day as input to the discussions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
 
Description Drought and Water Scarcity Programme - First Annual Conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact The First Annual Conference of the RCUK Droughts & Water Scarcity (DWS) Programme was held 27-28 June 2016 at St Anne's College, Oxford. The conference was the first opportunity for researchers working across the four projects in the DWS programme to meet and learn about each other's work. The two days of conference included presentations from researchers, a breakout session along disciplinary/research focus lines, and interactive sessions.

The event was organised by the Programme Co-ordination Team (PCT), including members of Historic Droughts; this is part-funded by the top-up grant to the Historic Droughts project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
 
Description Droughts and Water Scarcity Conference, Oxford, March 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Drought and Water Scarcity: addressing current and future challenges, International Conference

This international event was held at Pembroke College, University of Oxford over 20-21 March 2019, organised by the RCUK Drought and Water Scarcity Programme.

Speakers from around the world gathered to present and discuss their research on drought and water scarcity. There was an impressive range of data, topics, in-depth knowledge and communication insights which demonstrated the breadth and interdisciplinary nature of research into drought and water scarcity.

Delegates heard that drought and water scarcity are expected to become more severe due to the influence of climate change and pressure on water resources from economic and demographic changes. The impacts of this affects hydrology, agriculture and farming, industry and communities. Water and the lack of water effects every aspects of society and the environment, and the lack of water has profound consequences.

CEH were co-organisers of the event, with responsibility for the programme. Jamie Hannaford opened the event and there were six CEH presentations and two posters at the event.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://aboutdrought.info/report-back-from-drought-water-scarcity-conference/
 
Description ENDOWS Water Supply Workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Major workshop to showcase outputs from ENDOWS water supply workstream (Drought Libraries, modelling, monitoring and early warning, governance, etc). The event was very well attended with numerous water companies, the EA, NRW, Consultancies, Energy UK, Canal and Rivers Trust, etc. CEH staff led interactive sessions to demonstrate programme outputs (e.g. prototype Portal, draft Drought Libraries, new forecasting tools). Good uptake and feedback on Programme progress and outputs
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description ENDOWS Water Supply Workshop #2, Oxford, July 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact The ENDOWS project held a workshop focused on the water supply sector. The workshop was a mix of presentations from ENDOWS researchers alongside key water company/regulatory stakeholders, and roundtable hands-on interactive sessions exploring ENDOWS outputs and tools, specifically, attendees were invited to:

1) View 'drought libraries' that integrate new historical and future hydroclimatic datasets, for stress-testing water supply systems
2) Find out about the hydrological modelling undertaken in the Drought and Water Scarcity programme, and datasets arising, free to use
3) Hear about the latest developments in national-scale risk-based water supply modelling
4) Interact with new prototype real-time drought monitoring and early warning systems
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://aboutdrought.info/drought-and-public-water-supply/
 
Description ENDOWS Webinar 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Webinar introducing the ENDOWS project to the Drought and Water Scarcity Programme Community.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description ENDOWS Workshop with SEPA/Scottish Water, May 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The ENDOWS project organised a workshop with SEPA and Scottish Water to improve their awareness and uptake of outputs from the Drought and Water Scarcity Programme. Both organisations were very keen to use these outputs, including the water resources portal and forecasting tools, in future drought management. There was also interest in outcomes from the Agriculture and Environmemt workstreams. Follow up activites were organised.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2014,2019
 
Description ENDOWS business sector workshop - Reading Climate Action Network, Feb 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact This ENDOWS Business workstream was organised with the Reading Climate Action network, bringing together businesses and organisations across Reading and the wider Thames valley.

Jamie Hannaford have a talk on: Tools for drought and flood management in a warming world
Planning for hydrological extremes from next month, to next season, to the 2080s

Businesses were not aware of the amount of information and data on drought and were keen to find out how they could be used in future.

ore.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description ENDOWS co-sponsorship of a Seasonal Forecasting Conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact The event was a two-day conference on seasonal forecasting, organised by Loughborough university but co-sponsored by ENDOWS (as well as Reading University and the British Hydrological Society). Jamie Hannaford and Nevil Quinn (UWE) from ENDOWS chaired sessions. There were also presentations from ENDOWS/IMPETUS, including from Maliko Tanguy from CEH. There was significant interest in Droughts Programme research and interest in following up the work in ENDOWS (1.4, 1.5) on monitoring and forecasting. Plans were made for follow-up reporting and a paper, as well as further events.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description ENDOWS engagement with the Environment Agency 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact A high-level meeting between the Droughts Programme Co-ordination Team/ENDOWS delivery team to present on the progress across the Programme and to plan collaboration within ENDOWS. Jamie Hannaford chaired the meeting and presented on ENDOWS, and Matt Fry presented the Data Workstream. Plans were made for joint engagement.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description ENDOWS engagement with the National Farmers Union and Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford from ENDOWS met with the AHDB and NFU to present the outcomes of the DWS programme work on monitoring and forecasting, and to make plans for joint work in ENDOWS 1.4/1.5 to work on case studies to demonstrate the value of monitoring and forecasting products to the agricultural sector.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description ENDOWS presentation at the EA's National Hydrology Forum, Birmingham, July 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The Environment Agency's National Hydrology Forum is a regular meeting of operational hydrologists from across the various Areas of the EA. The ENDOWS project was invited to present on the legacy of the Droughts Programme for future day-to-day hydrology activities in the EA. Jamie Hannaford presented on: ENDOWS overview; live data, portals and monitoring; forecasting products; drought Return Period advances; datasets for long-term planning. There was significant interest in how these products and services could be employed in future. The EA were very keen to follow this up and further meetings were planned to see how these outputs could be embedded in future.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description ENDOWS presented at CIWEM national water resources planning event, London, Feb 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Simon Parry represented ENDOWS in an expert panel discussion at this national CIWEM event, "Water resources planning: crisis or opportunity?", presenting on drought datasets, tools and methods and portals/applications.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://stories.ciwem.org/water-resources-planning-crisis-or-opportunity-/index.html
 
Description ENDOWS science presented to National Drought Group meeting, London, October 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact CEH were invited to attend the National Drought Group meeting (chaired by Sir James Bevan) to provide expert input from view of Drought and Water Scarcity Programme
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description ENDOWS stand at IRRIGEX/FLOODEX 2018/2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact We hosted a stand at the major industry event 'IRRIGEX/FLOODEX' organised by the UKIA and ADB, held at the east of England showground, Peterborough, Feb 2019. We set up a stand to showcase the ENDOWS workstream 2 work on agriculture, as well as a host of agriculture related activities across the DWS programme.

CEH staff organised the stand and attended both days, alongside colleagues from Cranfield, UWE and Harper Adams. We also presented posters and materials on monitoring and early warning, including demonstrating portals and web apps and a rolling presentation on the 2018 drought. The stand was visited by many interested parties who were keen to find out more about how they could use the products in their day-to-day decision-making.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.irrigex.com/
 
Description ENDOWS workshop with South West Water and the Environment Agency 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact ENDOWS researchers (Jamie Hannaford, Matt Fry) visited the offices of southwest water, along with the Environment Agency staff, to present progress on monitoring and early warning in the DWS programme, and to make plans for a demonstration activity collaborating with SWW and the EA and involving a prototype portal using live API data for the southwest.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description ENDOWS workshop with Anglian Water 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact ENDOWS researchers from CEH (Jamie Hannaford, Lucy Barker, Maliko Tanguy and Shaun Harrigan) presented the outcomes of the Droughts Programme around monitoring and forecasting, and made specific plans to collaborate with Anglian Water on case studies and demonstration activities within ENDOWS.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description ENDOWS workshop with Thames Water 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Researchers from the ENDOWS project presented the progress of the Droughts Programme (Historic Droughts and IMPETUS, as well as DrIVER) and the plans for the ENDOWS 1.4/1.5 activities on monitoring and forecasting to Thames Water. Thames water are keen to engage in collaborative work on monitoring and forecasting in the ENDOWS project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Engagement in National Framework and Regional Water Resources planning, 2019 - 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact CEH were invited to engagee in this EA National Framework/Regional Water Resources planning expert panel/working group on climate and hydology datasets to support regional- to national water resources planning, to promote the uptake of data outputs from the Drought and Water Scarcity Programme.

Jamie Hannaford and Matt Fry attended an initial event in April 2019 to scope out the potential for consistent national and regional datasets, with Jamie presenting on the datasets emerging from the programme and how they could be used. Simon Parry then contributed to a second meeting in August, to present results showing drought occurrence and severity in historical and future datasets from the programme. CEH researchers continued to engage remotely, encouraging the group to include Droughts Programme datasets in any initiative to define consistent regional datasets for use in planning by the regional groups. The eventual tender specification that was released to the community for the development of new datasets included multiple specific mentions of Droughts and Water Scarcity Programme datasets within its scope.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019,2020
 
Description Engagement with Affinity Water on uptake of Drought Libraries 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Bilateral discussions on potential for using drought libraries for WRMP process, with demonstration outputs used for engagement.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Engagement with Indian researchers on drought monitoring 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Barker, L.J. 2018. What is the state of the art in drought monitoring and forecasting in the UK? SUNRISE workshop: Improving flood and drought risk estimation and prediction in data sparse regions. India Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India.

Communicated outputs from the DrIVER project and UK Drought & Water Scarcity Programme on drought monitoring with Indian partners and stakeholders. Formed the basis with discussion with attendees on areas of joint work and collaboration for the future.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Engagement with researchers and practitioners in China 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact UK-China Workshop on drought monitoring, early warning and management. Organised with Institute of Water and Hydropower Research, Beijing. This was organised as part of CEH's NC-ODA SUNRISE Programme. However, the science drew heavily on DrIVER and Historic Droughts, especially presentations given:

Barker, L.J. 2018. Drought Monitoring Research and Practice: a UK & European perspective. SUNRISE workshop: From drought research to drought management: sharing experiences between Europe and China.

Hannaford, J. 2018. Drought Forecasting: a UK perspective.


Communicated outputs from the DrIVER project and UK Drought & Water Scarcity Programme on drought monitoring with Chinese partners and stakeholders. Formed the basis with discussion with attendees on areas of joint work and collaboration for the future.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description European Climate Change Adaptation Conference 2017 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Over 850 people were welcomed to the City of Glasgow to attend ECCA 2017, 'Our Climate Ready Future', in June 2017. Our vision was that this conference would inspire and enable people to work together to discover and deliver positive climate adaptation solutions that can strengthen society, revitalise local economies and enhance the environment. We were delighted to get a great response to our efforts to engage others outside the academic community, and the conference was able to bring together the people who will deliver action on the ground - from business, industry, NGOs, local government and communities - to share knowledge, ideas and experience with leading researchers and policymakers. The Drought & Water Scarcity Programme had a dedicated session, with presentations from each of the four projects. Simon Parry gave a presentation on the Historic Droughts project and sat on the panel for the subsequent discussion amongst delegates.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description FRIEND Low Flow and Droughts group meeting 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact The latest biannual meeting of the FRIEND Low Flow & Droughts group in Freiburg, Germany. There were presentations from each of the working groups, highlighting recent advances by group members, and poster sessions to communicate research findings within the network. Simon Parry, Katie Smith and Lucy Barker presented posters representing research undertaken within the Historic Droughts project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description HYPER Droughts Conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact The HYPER Droughts Conference was a major international conference on drought held in Prague, under the auspices of the EGU (the 6th EGU Leonardo Conference). Jamie Hannaford was on the organising committee and also guest edited a special issue of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences following the conference.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2014
 
Description Historic Droughts Symposium 2016 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact On 22nd March 2016, a public symposium was hosted by the Historic Droughts project at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Wallingford. The aim of the day was to foster discussion on current scientific and decision-maker perspectives on the use of historical drought information in contemporary drought management, under the broad theme "Understanding past droughts to inform decision-making in future". The event was very well attended, with over 100 delegates from a diversity of backgrounds, including academics, government and policymakers, regulators and consultants, a wide cross-section of the water industry and representatives from a range of economic sectors (agriculture, horticulture, power generation, etc.).

The first session invited research perspectives from the academics on the advisory panel of the Historic Droughts project. This included four international perspectives: a broad view of drought impacts and management across Europe (Henny van Lanen, Wageningen University); an overview of drought physical processes and management issues in Spain (Sergio Vicente-Serrano, Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología); an assessment of current practice in using historical drought information in the USA (Cody Knutson, National Drought Mitigation Center); and a case study of a reconstruction of past hydrometeorological droughts, extending back to 1871, from France (Eric Sauquet, IRSTEA). The final perspective came from the UK, and gave a very long-term view of drought and other weather extremes based on documentary evidence (Georgina Endfield, University of Nottingham).

The second session then invited perspectives from stakeholders involved in drought management, drawn from the project's stakeholder advisory panel, who presented views on UK drought impacts and management frameworks, and stakeholder needs for historical drought information. This included views from two environmental regulators responsible for drought management in England and Scotland (Pauline Smith from the EA and Richard Gosling from SEPA), a representative from the agricultural sector (Mike Storey from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board), a water company (Stamatia Evangelidou from Anglian Water) and a view from consultancy (Colin Fenn, Hydro-Logic).

The final session showcased the Historic Droughts project and presented early project achievements. Jamie Hannaford (CEH) gave an overview of the project, before three presentations reflecting the diversity of activities within the project: preliminary hydrogeological drought reconstructions (Ben Marchant, BGS), an overview of work examining impacts of past droughts on agriculture (Ian Holman, Cranfield University) and a survey of some of the main themes emerging from the project's work on recollections of past droughts through oral histories (Rebecca Pearce, University of Exeter).

Delegates at the Historic Droughts SymposiumDiscussions were held after each session and then at the end of the day. There was lively and stimulating discussion which provided thoughtful perspectives for the Historic Droughts project. A recurring theme was the challenges in actually using information from the past to inform management decisions: to what extent are past drought events useful given how much our socioeconomic situation, and drought management frameworks, have changed over time? And how much can we learn from past rainfall or river flow extremes in a non-stationary world? Valuable food for thought for researchers and practitioners engaged in this issue, and questions that are at the core of the work being undertaken by Historic Droughts.

A poster session was held, with posters on display during the coffee and lunch breaks, and in a drinks reception after the formal programme, where many attendees stayed on to continue discussions with the project team and visiting stakeholders. There were 20 Posters on a diversity of themes including: data, drought modelling/reconstruction, drought forecasting, drought identification, the impacts of drought and social narratives of drought. Half of the posters presented results from Historic Droughts, representing the wide range of disciplinary backgrounds within the project, including analyses of past droughts from hyrometeorological, agricultural, social and linguistic perspectives. There were also posters from the other projects in the Research Council's Droughts and Water Scarcity Programme, IMPETUS, MaRIUS and DRY.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
URL http://historicdroughts.ceh.ac.uk/content/historic-droughts-symposium-march-2016
 
Description Historic Droughts Website 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Launch of the Historic Droughts website as the primary mechanism for disseminating the project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
URL http://historicdroughts.ceh.ac.uk/
 
Description HydroEco 2017 Ecohydrology an the Edge: ecology-hydrology-human interactions in a changing world: 6th International Multidisciplinary Conference on Hydrology and Ecology 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The aim of this conference was: i) to present new concepts and theory on interactions between hydrology and ecology; ii) to discuss innovative experimental technologies and modelling approaches at the interface between hydrology and ecology; iii) to stimulate interdisciplinary interactions between hydrologists, ecologists, environmental scientists and practitioners; iv) to inform about emerging trends in ecohydrological practice, management and decision making. Cedric Laize made an oral presentation in the parallel session 'Dryland and drought ecohydrology' on work conducted within the Historic Droughts project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description IUKWC workshop on drought management and prediction 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Simon Parry attended the India-UK Water Centre Workshop on "Drought: advancing monitoring and prediction capabilities". Simon's presentation drew heavily on DWS Programme research (Historic Droughts/IMPETUS and ENDOWS) in summarising the state of the art in UK drought research and practice. There was significant interest in the tools and methodologies from several of the visiting Indian researchers, which has been followed up subsequently.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://iukwc.org/iukwc-workshop-advancing-drought-monitoring-prediction-and-management-capabilities
 
Description IWA Young Water Professionals Event 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Katie Smith presented work conducted within the Historic Droughts project: UK historic drought reconstructions: using the past to inform the future. The presentation was very well received and Katie won the Worshipful Company of Engineers' Young Water Engineer 2018 prize (see Awards section).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2012,2018
 
Description NRW Webinar on ENDOWS monitoring and early warning activities 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact September 2018 - webinar broadcast with a diverse range of Natural Resources Wales staff to present the monitoring and early warning work underway in ENDOWS, and discuss how the work could be used by NRW in drought management decisions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description NRW/Welsh Government ENDOWS Workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact ENDOWS hosted a showcase workshop with NRW and Welsh Government to present on the various workstreams of ENDOWS and how the outputs could be useful for decision-making in Wales. The event drew a very broad spectrum of staff from NRW and WG, and they reported considerable interest in using ENDOWS outputs. Various action plans were drawn up for joint work and case studies in each ENDOWS workstream.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description National Farmers Union Irrigation Surgery May 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact At this NFU organised 'irrigation surgery' with farmers and growers from across east Anglia, Jamie Hannaford gave a presentation on the DrIVER/ENDOWS monitoring and early warning tools (Water Resources Portal and new forecasts) and their potential for use by the agricultural sector, and how they could help in managing the ongoing 2019 drought situation.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Presentation at international meeting on droughts in the Meditteranean 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Invited presentation by Jamie Hannaford at MISTRALS expert meeting on Mediterranean droughts, to share experience from UK droughts work focused on decision making. Title: From drought indicators to impacts: Developing improved tools for Monitoring and Early Warning with the decision maker in mind
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Presentation at the British Hydrological Society National Conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Maliko Tanguy presented Historic Droughts work: "Regional differences in meteorological droughts in Great Britain" at the BHS conference in London, September 2018. There was lots of interest, and follow up from water companies interested in the significance of these outputs from a planning/transfers perspective.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL http://www.hydrology.org.uk/publications.php
 
Description Presentation on ENDOWS at the MaRIUS Live event 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford gave a presentation introducing the 'ENDOWS' follow-on project at the MaRIUS Live event in London, attending by over 100 people from a wide range of backgrounds. There was significant interest in ENDOWS and good feedback, with requests to be involved after the talk and during follow-up.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxHM-nzIQWk
 
Description Presentation on ENDOWS legacy at Water Resources South East meeting 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Interactive presentation/discussion on how the Water Resources South East (WRSE) regional grouping of water companies can use ENDOWS and droughts programme outputs, with a focus on (1) climate and hydrology datasets for long-term planning and (2) monitoring and forecasting. Specific follow-up activities planned including WRSE case study.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Presentation on ENDOWS to the National Drought Group 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford presented on the DWS programme and the ENDOWS activities to the National Drought Group in November 2018. The National Drought Group is a formal EA/Defra group chaired by Sir James Bevan (EA chief executive) with senior representation across the water companies, conservation groups, NFU, etc.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Presentation on Water Resources Portal and Outlooks to Agriculture and Horticultural Development Board (AHDB) 'Agronomy Week' conference Nov 2020. 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Invited keynote Presentation given at the AHDB's annual Agronomy Conference explaining how the UK Water Resources Portal can be used by farmers and growers. Also demonstrated use of new Hydrological Outlooks ESP seasonal forecasts, and how these were developed in ENDOWS to make them more user friendly for decision making, including by farmers and growers.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJH5mKMHrO4
 
Description Presentation on Water Resources Portal and Outlooks to Inst.Civil Engineers Meeting on precision Agriculture, Nov 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation at the Precision Agriculture event demonstrating how the UK Water Resources Portal and Hydrological Outlooks can support farmers and growers, especially for the irrigated sector.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.ice.org.uk/eventarchive/trends-in-land-water-management-session-1
 
Description Presentation on the UK Water Resources Portal at EGU 'ShareEGU' 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Lucy Barker presented on the UK Water Resources Portal (HD/ENDOWS output) to the European Geosciences Union meeting, held virtually 4 - 8 May 2020.

Abstract:
Understanding the current hydro-meteorological situation is critical to manage extreme events and water resources. The UK Water Resources Portal (UKWRP) has been developed to enable dynamic, interactive, real-time access to hydro-meteorological data, including catchment daily rainfall, real-time daily mean river flows, real-time soil moisture data from COSMOS-UK and standardised climate indices. Users can access and view data at the field, grid cell and catchment scale enabling holistic assessments of the hydro-meteorological status at a range of spatial scales. The portal offers a way of exploring the full range of river flow and rainfall variability, including comparing current conditions to those in the past, from droughts to floods. A variety of different plotting capabilities mean users can view and explore data in different ways depending on their requirements.

The UKWRP can be used alone or alongside other resources such as: the UK Hydrological Outlook seasonal forecasts, the Hydrological Summary for the UK and Environment Agency Water Situation Reports, to manage water resources, to plan and prepare for extreme events, and to understand and communicate their severity. The UKWRP enables all water users, from farmers, to water companies to members of the general public to view and explore the data used by regulators to manage water supplies. Equalising access to data can be extremely powerful; for example in the case of farmers, it means they can easily view real time river flows in relation to conditions on their licence using the same data used by regulators to impose abstraction restrictions during a drought.

Here we present the stakeholder engagement story of how and why the UKWRP was developed, demonstrate the capability of the UKWRP to monitor the hydrological situation in real time, and present plans for its future development, such as the addition of more indicators and indices.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL http://www.meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2020/EGU2020-10038.html
 
Description Presentation to British Hydrological Society. 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Online webinar organised by the British Hydrological Society Pennines Section
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf-a3qJdg38&list=PLfzIFXtpS_JBR_NMlir2SybxColfeeJF6&index=2
 
Description Presentation to CIWEM 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The CIWEM 2018 Conference addressed the question 'are we fit for 2050' in terms of water resources management in the UK. The agenda involved very high level presentations from Defra, the EA, water companies, consultancies, etc. Jamie Hannaford presented about how the ENDOWS project is helping water industry and regulatory stakeholders, along a whole host of others, make better decisions regarding long-term planning and operational drought management.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.ciwem.org/events/water-resources-are-we-fit-for-2050
 
Description Presentation to CIWEM Wales 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation on the UK drought and water scarcity programme at the Welsh Branch of CIWEM to a mixed audience of practitioners and researchers, December 2018.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Presentation to CSIC, Zaragoza 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford visited CSIC (Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología. Centro del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) in Zaragoza, Spain, In June 2018 to work on an international drought collaboration for western Europe. While there he gave an institutional seminar on UK droughts Research, featuring outputs from across the Drought and Water Scarcity Programme and DrIVER. There was interest in how such techniques could be applied in a Spanish context.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://divulgaipe.com/2018/06/06/charla-jamie-hannaford-from-drought-research-to-decision-making-ex...
 
Description Presentation to Deben Farm Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk, Jan 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford gave a presentation at the Deben Farm Club, a large group of farmers and growers from East Suffolk.
Agricultural resilience in a warmer, drier world: planning for drought from next week, to next season (and beyond!)

Farmers and growers were very interested in using the new portals and other products for awareness of the drought situation in east Anglia.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Presentation to Maynooth University 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford gave a seminar at the ICARUS unit at Maynooth university while on a visiting lecturing stay, which drew heavily on Drought Programme and DrIVER content. The talk was titled: from drought research to decision-making: experiences from the UK". https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/news-events/seminar-jamie-hannaford-20th-november-drought-research-decision-making-experiences-uk. Following the talk, there was interest in collaboration on both historical reconstruction and hydrological forecasting, which are both being taken forward in 2019.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/news-events/seminar-jamie-hannaford-20th-november-drought-research...
 
Description RMETS/NCAS Workshop on Drought Modelling and Management 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The aims of this workshop were (1) to present the scientific advances on drought modelling, as well as presenting social science research on drought
management and governance and (2) to invite the mixed audience of the session to respond to these advances through direct discussions with the
researchers.

The event was co-organised by the Historic Droughts project and the MaRIUS project
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
URL https://www.rmets.org/sites/default/files/R11%20-%20Drought%20modelling%20and%20management.pdf
 
Description Science Media Centre briefing 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact A press conference was held to discuss drought and water scarcity in the wake of the exceptionally hot and dry 2018 summer. The panel was made up of DWS programme staff (Jamie Hannaford, Jim Hall, Ian Holman). There was coverage following the event in various publications (Telegraph, Mail, the Sun).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL http://aboutdrought.info/drought-media-briefing-at-the-science-media-centre/
 
Description Talk at CIWEM central southern branch meeting - water resources challenges. Reading, July 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford gave a presentation on droughts programme work of relevance to the water sector. "Droughts - historical trends and future projections in the UK"
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.ciwem.org/assets/pdf/Branch%20Events/Central%20Southern/Central%20Southern%20Programme.p...
 
Description Talk at Institute of Physics meeting on 'Complexity in the 21st century' 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford gave a presentation at this interdisciplinary meeting. Title: What do we talk about when we talk about drought? And why should we care in a wet country?
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Talk at workshop on 'BUILDING UK CLIMATE RESILIENCE THROUGH BRIDGING THE QUALITATIVE-QUANTITATIVE DATA DIVIDE' 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation on UK historical floods and droughts data, including the Historic Droughts dataset, at the first meeting of the UKRI strategic Priorities Fund Climate Resilience project: BUILDING UK CLIMATE RESILIENCE THROUGH BRIDGING THE QUALITATIVE-QUANTITATIVE DATA DIVIDE: https://www.ukclimateresilience.org/projects/climate-change-test/
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Temporary rivers and streams workshop, Nottingham Trent University, June 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Cath Sefton presented ENDOWS WS3 Activities on intermittent chalk streams
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description The About Drought Download - final event at the Royal Society, London, Nov 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The UK's £12m Drought & Water Scarcity Programme, About Drought, has been praised as 'an exemplar' of interdisciplinary research by the head of UK Research & Innovation and 'revolutionary in the way it has been delivered' by a key stakeholder.

Sir Mark Walport, Chief Executive of UKRI, told a final meeting of policy-makers, water companies, regulators and researchers: "This is what a UKRI programme should be like: it's an exemplar, a response to our changing world, absolutely interdisciplinary and providing a holistic view.

Influence of About Drought research
"The outcomes are good research that has influenced policy-making, for example the Environmental Framework, the Environment Agency and water companies."

Drawing together the threats from increasing pressure on water supplies, demands for water, our changing climate and the increasing frequency of weather hazards including floods, Sir Mark said: "Drought is a significant challenge for the UK, equally challenging and as important as flooding. We are very good at managing the last emergency but tend to forget the next emergency. We need to reduce our exposure to flood and to drought."

The event - the About Drought Download - drew together more than five years of NERC-funded research from a wide collaboration at The Royal Society in London on November 7, in an innovative and interactive format. It ranged from science to cinema, forecasting games to a 'data bar', the launch of a primary school book and a drought walk in St James' Park, plus 'fringe' events such as the performance of a song written from community workshops, a photo booth and a 'silent disco' of podcasts.

Sir Mark highlighted the social science interventions and stakeholder engagement which stretched through the initial programme of four projects (Drought Risk & You, MaRIUS, IMPETUS and Historic Droughts) followed by a knowledge-sharing project, ENDOWS (known as About Drought) saying: "All this needs hydrologists, ecologists but social scientists as well.

Successful public engagement
"The public engagement is particularly impressive because one of the big challenges is how to communicate the risk to people who are thinking only about the last emergency.

"We all need to be better at communicating outcomes and impacts because if we are persuading Government to provide the money to support first-class research and innovation, we need to be much better at telling them what we do with that money - and this programme does that very well."

Organisations and regulators that are already using the wide range of datasets and tools to better inform decisions, strategic planning and real-time decisions around water supply and drought presented alongside the programme's key researchers.

Rob Lawson, chair of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) Water Resources panel and Director of Artesia Consulting, described the programme's outputs as 'the next paradigm shift' in the UK's understanding of drought, water resources and climate change.

He drew a dramatic analogy, saying: "If climate change is the shark then water scarcity and drought are the teeth. And this programme is one way to punch that shark in the teeth!

Changing drought strategies
"It has changed how we plan for drought, providing a ground-breaking cornucopia of drought information and access to data research tools, new techniques and new ways to plan for and to manage drought."

Rob, who has taken part in a series of stakeholder workshops throughout the projects, also praised the wide engagement, saying: "The way this programme has been delivered over the last five years has been revolutionary, creative and imaginative, [this event has been] better than a conference of academic papers and what can sometimes be death by PowerPoint."

He joined Sir Mark, policy-makers, regulators, water company executives and communities that have taken part in calling for continued engagement with the UK's leading drought and water scarcity researchers and experts, saying: "We need to build on this work, this is not the end, just the beginning. We need to continue to work with researchers and the other sectors that will benefit."

Meyrick Gough, Technical Planning Director of Water Resources South East (WRSE), thanked all the About Drought researchers for the difference their work has made to the UK's resilience to drought, saying: "You have given us really good tools that really help us to understand the magnitude and impacts of droughts, that have been adapted by the industry and are being used. We need evidence, understanding and insights from research such as this [to support] the choices and interventions we make."

Continuing the research & stakeholder community
Jamie Hannaford, Principal Investigator of About Drought and Principal Hydrologist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) described the whole programme as 'one hell of a journey'.

He said: "What we have seen over the last couple of years underscores our continuing vulnerability to drought; an increasing gap between supply and demand going into the future; issues around abstraction, protecting the environment, social and cultural issues.

"We are currently seeing the effects of a very long dry period that we can trace back to 2016 with a couple of very dry winters. That dry spell hasn't gone away, despite flood events.

"There are no international parallels to this research programme, the UK is the envy of many parts of the world in having this investment in drought research that is truly interdisciplinary.

"We will continue this community, we will look for opportunities to build even further on this work, this incredible momentum and engaged community. We have answered lots of questions but more have emerged along the way."

Read more from stakeholders, users and experts in the About Drought Handbook. It contains all the datasets and data tool outputs from the 5-year programme aimed at supporting decision-makers at every level, sector organisations, consultants as well as researchers, links to published papers, and resources such as Report Cards.

------------------------------------
CEH organised this event, with collaboration from the wider Programme co-ordination team.

Specific CEH contributions to the Programme included:
https://aboutdrought.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Programme_About-Drought_Sep2019_V1.pdf

Opening remarks by Jamie Hannaford
Data Clinics - hands-on interactive sessions on programme tools - by:
Katie Smith - forecasting tools
Matt Fry and Lucy Barker - data hub and portals
Simon Parry - Drought libraries

PICO pitches by:
Simon Parry on Chalk Streams research
Jamie Hannaford on forecasts for 2019/2020

Stands:
Monitoring and Forecasting (Katie Smith, Ali Rudd, Lucy Barker)
Historic Droughts (Jamie Hannaford and Lucy Barker)

Panel debate on abstraction and environmental flows organised by Mike Acreman and Francois Edwards
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://aboutdrought.info/examplar-research/
 
Description UK Hydrological Status Update - June 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A drought status update on the UK's water situation during the exceptional dry weather in spring 2020
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/uk-hydrological-status-update-june-2020
 
Description UK Hydrological Status Update - May 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A drought status update on the UK's water situation during the exceptional dry weather in spring 2020.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/uk-hydrological-status-update-may-2020
 
Description UKCEH youtube user guide on functionality of UK Water Resources Portal 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Youtube video user guide to the UK water resources Portal, including extra functionality added in a major update to data and capability of the tool added in August 2020.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYA1KBmXEk0
 
Description University of Birmingham LANS distinguished lecture, Nov 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford delivered the Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences distinguished lecture, talking about the interdisciplinary research in the Droughts and Water Scarcity Programme.
What do we talk about when we talk about drought? And why should we care in a wet country?
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Using R Shiny to visualise and share your data: A UK Story. Oral presentation for Using R in Hydrology EGU 2019 short course, Vienna, Austria. 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Demonstrated use of NRFA data to an international audience and advertised the UK Hydrological Drought Explorer and reconstructed river flow and SSI data from the Historic Droughts project.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Visit of UK Water Partnrship 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact We had a stand demonstrating drought products and services at the UK Water Partnership visit to CEH. This Informed key water industry stakeholders and partners about CEH drought and monitoring and early warning research, the UK Drought Portal and the 'UK Hydrological Drought Explorer'.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Visit of Welsh Water/Dwr Cymru 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact A number of technical staff from Welsh Water visited CEH in September 2018 to find out more about various CEH science activities. Jamie Hannaford presented the ENDOWS work,and how it can help long-term water resources plannning, drought planing and monitoring and forecasting. Welsh Water expressed a strong interest in using the outputs going forwards.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Visit to NCAR, Boulder, USA 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Simon Parry made a visit to the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Simon presented work conducted within the Historic Droughts project, applying a drought termination methodology to the newly derived river flow reconstructions. There was productive discussion on common interests and experiences of drought research.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Visit to NOAA, Boulder, USA 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Simon Parry made a visit to the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI), in collaboration with the Earth Sciences Research Laboratory (ESRL) and Physical Sciences Division (PSD), in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Simon presented work conducted within the Historic Droughts project, applying a drought termination methodology to the newly derived river flow reconstructions. The NOAA NCEI are leading international figures in reconstructed environmental data, and there was productive discussion on common interests and future collaboration.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Visit to USGS, Denver, USA 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Simon Parry made a visit to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Lakewood, Denver, Colorado, USA. Simon presented work conducted within the Historic Droughts project, applying a drought termination methodology to the newly derived river flow reconstructions. The audience at USGS are interested in novel methods to validate model outputs, and there was productive discussion on common interests and potential future collaboration.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Visiting Seminars in India, April 2018 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford visited India in April 2018 as part of CEH's SUNRISE-ODA programme, visiting IIT Gandinaghar, IIT Roorkee and the National Institute of Hydrology. At all three institutes, he gave a presentation on UK droughts research, based on DWS programme (Historic Droughts, ENDOWS) and DrIVER research outputs. Plans were made to collaborate in India in these science areas, under the auspices of the SUNRISE Programme.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Water Resources Management Planning - towards 2024 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Jamie Hannaford represented ENDOWS and Historic Droughts at an Environment Agency-led meeting aimed at setting the direction for Water Resources Management Plans 2024. The meeting comprised senior leaders from water companies, the EA, Defra, WaterUK, UKWIR and many others. Jamie promoted the ENDOWS project work on water supply.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Webinar about the UK Water Resources Portal at British Hydrological Society 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Lucy Barker presented about the UK Water Resources Portal to the British Hydrological Society on a regular webinar series.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/news/two-nrfa-talks-upcoming-bhs-webinar
 
Description Webinar on Water Resources Portal and Outlooks to Rivers Trusts/CaBA partnerships, April 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact UKCEH/RIvers Trusts co-hosted workshop. Jamie Hannaford presentation to national group from the Rivers Trusts and Catchment Based Approach partnerships, explaining how they can use the UK Water Resources Portal to support their decision-making. Other Rivers Trusts/CaBA presentations were made on complementary tools for catchment management.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Webinar with Severn-Trent Water 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact An ENDOWS webinar on new monitoring and early warning products and how they could be applied by Severn-Trent water. Plans to conduct some joint case study work after the webinar.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Webinar: Historic Droughts, using the past to inform the future 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Webinar from Wednesday 30th September 2020 given by Lucy Barker (UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) as part of the British Hydrological Society 'Future Hydrology in a Changing Environment' series.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkpwVcaCv8E&list=PLfzIFXtpS_JCFJ2zZqDe3s-FewsrqKs9n&index=2
 
Description Workshop on monitoring and forecasting for agriculture, NFU Newmarket, Nov 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact ENDOWS co-organised this event with NFU and AHDB, to raise awareness of ENDOWS tools of relevance to the agricultural sector. Talks were delivered by ENDOWS researchers (Jamie Hannaford, Lucy Barker, Jerry Knox (Cranfield) and Len Shaffrey (Reading), as well as NFU and AHDB. There were round-table activities focusing on ENDOWS outputs: the water resources portal; river flow forecasts; rainfall forecasts; the D-Risk drought planning application. Farmers and growers found the tools useful for understanding current water availability, and were very keen to see them developed into bespoke products for the sector (e.g. by blending with licensing information).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.nfuonline.com/cross-sector/environment/water/irrigation-and-water-resources/farmer-road-...
 
Description Youtube video on DWS Programme datasets 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Matt Fry from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology summarises the outputs and datasets generated by the Drought and Water Scarcity Programme, and what is in development.
All this new information and data are available for use.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00V_5CV7ths&list=PLut5R7ZMiKn38Y7wwyOOB7wdTm2WiXx-t&index=10
 
Description Youtube video on historic reconstructions 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact In this video Katie Smith from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology talks about the work that has been undertaken to rescue historic hydro meterological data back to the mid 1800s, which has then been used to hindcast river flows using the GR4J hydrological models.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LihayELEEXA&list=PLut5R7ZMiKn38Y7wwyOOB7wdTm2WiXx-t&index=11
 
Description Youtube video on the Hydrological Drought Explorer 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Lucy Barker of the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology talks about historic hydrological droughts (1891 to 2015), and the "Drought Explorer" tool. Historic droughts are useful as an understanding of their variability and impacts help us understand what may happen now and in the future, helping inform better planning and future resilience. The tool allows everyone to explore historic hydrological droughts in the UK for 303 modelled catchments.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6lGuNus5n8&list=PLut5R7ZMiKn38Y7wwyOOB7wdTm2WiXx-t&index=4&t=0s
 
Description Youtube video on the Hydrological Situation in summer 2018 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact In this video Jamie Hannaford from the Centre for Ecology and hydrology talks about the heatwave conditions experienced over the UK in summer of 2018, and examines available data to see the impact on river flow, groundwater, and other water resources.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsubSUcOAWo&list=PLut5R7ZMiKn38Y7wwyOOB7wdTm2WiXx-t&index=12
 
Description talk at CIWEM water resources specialist panel 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation at the CIWEM Water Resources Panel which includes representatives from the water companies, the EA, NFU, OFWAT, Canal and Rivers Trust and other water sector stakeholders. Presentations focused on the ENDOWS legacy, specifically on long-term planning and monitoring and early warning.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019