Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience Newsletter
Earthquake Preparedness and Geohazard Vulnerability in Chile Interview
Professor Nicholas Saul on the Role of Eco-Narratives in Understanding Environmental Disasters Volume 7, Number 2
www.dur.ac.uk/ihrr
Spring 2014
Contents From the Executive Director ...................................................................................... 3 Tipping Points ......................................................................................................... 4 Ensuring health services for older people during extreme weather .................................. 6 SESAME ................................................................................................................. 7 Glacier-rock avalanche interactions - reinterpreting glacial chronologies. ........................ 8 Earthquake preparedness and geohazard vulnerability in Chile ...................................... 9 The Role of Eco-Narratives in Understanding Environmental Disasters: Interview with Professor Nicholas Saul, School of Modern Languages and Cultures .......... 13 Research funded through the IHRR Small Grants Scheme: The Effects of Climate Change on Slopes in Malaysia ................................................... 18 Latest from IHRR Blog ........................................................................................... 19 Green Social Work Practice in Curaรงao ....................................................................... 20 IHRR in the Media .................................................................................................. 21 Publications ........................................................................................................... 21 Hospital design makes a difference to well-being of patients and carers .......................... 22 Tipping Points Annual Report 2013-14 ...................................................................... 22 IHRR Postgraduate Forum: Resilience, Recovery, Psychology ......................................... 23 IHRR Presents ........................................................................................................ 24 American Geophysical Union 2013 ........................................................................... 25 Grants ................................................................................................................... 25 EPSRC Award for Ground and Structural Engineering Project ........................................ 25 Recent Donations to the Institute .............................................................................. 26 Visit from Christopher Moyes Memorial Foundation ...................................................... 26 Upcoming Events .................................................................................................... 27
Front cover image: Ground crack induced by fault reactivation during the 2010 earthquake near Santiago, Chile. Sergio Sepulveda Back cover image: EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Want to submit news about your research in hazard, risk or resilience at Durham University? Contact: brett.cherry@durham.ac.uk
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IHRR Newsletter
From the Executive Director
In this edition of the newsletter we are pleased to present a diverse range of points of view from researchers on hazard, risk and resilience. Following the serious flooding we saw in England this winter, many readers will be interested to see the items about research at Durham that aims to help communities and small and medium enterprises become more resilient to flooding and other extreme weather events. Also very topical in view of the recent earthquake in Chile is the report on research by a visiting researcher, Dr Sergio Sepulveda, who is investigating how to build earthquake resilience in that country.
Reported below are also updates on Durham University research being conducted in sites around the globe, variously working to explore the effects of climate change on slopes in Malaysia, encourage the application of Green Social Work in Curaรงao, and examine how individuals and families in the UK build their resilience to stressful and traumatic experiences such as domestic abuse and family breakdown or traumatic events associated with terrorist acts. In addition, this Newsletter includes a roundup of news on recent and upcoming events. I hope that all our readers will enjoy this overview of fascinating work from across the disciplines. Professor Sarah Curtis Executive Director of IHRR
We often can learn from past events about current environmental hazards. Dr Natalya Reznichenko is conducting work that aims to improve the ways we can interpret the geological record in order to trace past patterns of climate change. Professor Nicholas Saul also explores the importance of religious and literary narratives, ranging from the Bible to contemporary novels, as a means to convey key messages to individuals in society about response to environmental hazards and risks. Spring 2014
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Tipping Points Spread of smoking behaviour in populations through multiple peer influence Modelling smoking in populations reveals how small changes can lead to sudden shifts in behaviour. Researchers from the Tipping Points project have developed a new modelling approach for understanding the spread of unhealthy behaviours through multiple peer influence, such as people’s tendency to follow social norms by imitating their peers or in response to peer pressure, using smoking as a case study. Peer influence is the effect on an individual’s behaviour through people they have social contact with, such as a friend or relative. The model is based on populations in North East England and shows that competing behaviours lead to discontinuous transitions in the overall number of smokers in a population. The study, led by Dr John Bissell, Dr Camila Caiado and Professor Brian Straughan from Tipping Points, is of relevance to health practitioner communities and policy makers because it demonstrates how small changes in a
population can lead to sudden shifts in behaviour that could continue in the long-term. According to the research, multiple peer influence has the greatest impact on whether people decide to take up smoking or not. Researchers found that potential smokers who had contact with current smokers were likely to increase the population of smokers overall. The model designed by researchers also accounts for former smokers who may have a potential relapse when coming into contact with current smokers. Key Finding: In modelling smoking behaviour, former smokers are most affected over time by peers who quit around them, but potential smokers respond mostly to contact with current smokers, which leads them to copy their behaviour. Publication: Compartmental modelling of social dynamics with generalised peer incidence. Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci. 24, 719 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/ S0218202513500656
Potential smokers are more likely to smoke because of peer influence.
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IHRR Newsletter
Short-term cultural memory and affinity pave the way for innovation Recent research from the Tipping Points project led by Professor Alex Bentley, Dr Camila Caiado and Dr Paul Ormerod reveals the importance of cultural memory to the spread of innovation. For the study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, the team investigated the role of memory in small and large populations using a neutral agent-based model that simulates human interactions. They found that long-term cultural memory tends to reject rather than preserve local unique inventions, and that an increase in memory is the equivalent of increasing the affinity or relationship between agents in the model, which blocks influences from outside the group. Agents’ affinity refers to not only how far apart physically they are, but could also refer to the relational distance between two family members, for example, or degree of friendship in a social network. According to the study, increasing cultural memory reduces the size of the ‘invention pool’ and the few alternatives that do exist are not taken up quickly enough to have much of an impact, if at all.
an innovation, because of the wide number of choices cultural memory makes available to the agents. But in the case where agents have shorter memory innovation has a much greater impact, and researchers note that affinity is key to whether that innovation will be widely adopted or not through the agent’s social network. The findings could be applied to a large variety of different innovations from political or scientific ideas to mobile phones or media formats. Further research could include the influence of bias on the spread of innovation, and compare the model to actual scenarios such as the London elections. Key Finding: Ideally, for innovation to spread widely the agents would need to have little to no cultural memory and be highly interconnected. Starting with a small group of agents an innovation could make its mark on the population early on, but over time as the group’s memory increases it would lower the level of impact that innovation would have. Paper: Bentley, R.A., Caiado, C.C.S., Ormerod, P. (2014) Effects of memory on spatial heterogeneity in neutrally transmitted culture. Evolution and Human Behavior. (in press)
The research team conclude that increasing memory may actually decrease the visibility of
People queueing to purchase the latest iPhone. Spring 2014
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Ensuring health services for older people during extreme weather A new policy note on maintaining resilience for older people’s care from the BIOPICCC project was published. ‘During extreme weather events such as severe floods, snow or very hot weather, it is vital to ensure that frail older people continue to receive the health and social care they need’, says Professor Sarah Curtis, Executive Director of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience.
published through the national Living with Environmental Change Partnership. The briefing is publicly available on the partnership’s website: http://www.lwec.org.uk/publications/. Sarah Curtis, Professor of Health and Risk, and Director of the Institute of Hazard Risk and Resilience at Durham University, said: ‘Our research highlights how, in the future, certain localities around the country are likely to experience more frequent extreme weather events. The recent flooding in parts of England shows that we all need to take action to protect services for older people who need health and social care. Our research produced the BIOPICC toolkit (http://bit.ly/1hoCMgG) referred to in the briefing from LWEC. ‘It suggests ways for different local partners to join together to make joined-up plans to make health and social care systems more resilient. Both ‘built infrastructures’ like buildings, roads, and power and water services need to be considered, as well as coordination of health and social care services and local voluntary groups. Policy Note: http://www.lwec.org.uk/ publications/ensuring-resilience-care-olderpeople
Research at Durham and Heriot-Watt Universities, concerned with action to ensure resilience in care for older people during extreme weather events, is the focus of a briefing just
‘Our study also shows that individual people were making plans to help protect their health and wellbeing during extreme weather.’ Professor Sarah Curtis
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IHRR Newsletter
SESAME businesses are vulnerable to flooding and those that are unaffected. Modelling how flooding develops and evolves over time will allow them to identify which businesses are directly affected, at what time and in which order. This is especially important because how businesses are impacted by flooding will largely determine how they react and respond.
The SESAME project aims to understand and model the effects of flooding on the UK’s small/ medium businesses, to research the impacts flooding has on the wider economy, and to find ways for businesses to better respond to and prepare for flood events. IHRR’s Dr Graham Coates from the School of Engineering and Computer Sciences, with colleagues on the project from Leeds, Sheffield, Kingston and West England universities, are currently exploring the interdependencies between Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and how they are affected by flooding such that agentbased models can be developed and simulations performed. Working with hydrologists from Leeds, Graham is mapping flood data onto ordnance and topographic survey data, along with transport network data. Combining these different sets of data together in the agent-based model, that simulates the actions and interactions of businesses during a flood, will reveal which
Using qualitative data from interviews with managers, staff and proprietors of SMEs carried out by colleagues at Sheffield University, Kingston University and the University of West England, Graham is defining the attributes and behaviours of the agents in the model. This data will enable simulations to be performed to explore the ways businesses respond to flooding and how they are affected. Common knowledge about SMEs says that they typically do not follow a standard procedure for business continuity during a flood emergency and tend to do things ‘on-the-fly’. Once the model is developed it will be able to run simulations of SMEs that do not follow standard procedures during a flood event and those that do, in order to see whether these differences in behaviour affect the impacts of flooding for SMEs. SESAME website: http://sesame.uk.com/
‘Our research aims to investigate if and how mutual aid between businesses may improve the way in which they respond to flooding.’ Dr Graham Coates
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Glacier-rock avalanche interactions - reinterpreting glacial chronologies Dr Natalya Reznichenko Department of Geography
I started my Cofund Junior R e s e a r c h Fellowship at Geography and IHRR on an interdisciplinary project on the recognition of glacial deposits caused by climate fluctuations, distinguishing them from those that may be formed from rock avalanches, enabling better understanding of global climate patterns. While glaciers have been used as an early indicator of the extent and rate of global warming, there has been some debate over how much of the mountain glacier record represents climate change, and how much relates to changes in glaciers resulting from rock avalanches onto the glaciers. Glacial deposits are more complex than originally thought and some deposits that were previously identified as being of climatic origin are in fact the products of re-advances triggered by the deposition of rock avalanche debris on glaciers.
able to determine whether a glacial advance is caused by a rock avalanche or by purely climatic factors, enables us to ensure the climatic record from glacial deposits is accurate allowing for more accurate data to inform climate models. Using this information we will be able to better understand our changing climate and how it relates to the behaviour of glaciers and to landslide activity. Figure 1
During my PhD a new diagnostic tool has been developed to identify these effects from rock avalanches by identifying the rock avalanche sediment in deposits at a micro-scale. Examined under Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) (See Figure 1) the rock avalanche sediment is characterised by the presence of finite agglomerates of smaller (submicron) size particles, which can be formed only during catastrophic fragmentation under high energy levels during a rock avalanche fall. This project will involve the development and testing of the proposed technique on glacial and rock avalanche deposits in European Alps, and apply it to the deposits of questionable origin in poorlystudied Alai Valley of the Northern Pamir. Being
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IHRR Newsletter
Earthquake preparedness and geohazard vulnerability in Chile Dr Sergio Sepulveda from the University of Chile visited Durham University as a Cofund Senior Research Fellow through the Institute of Advanced Study, to work with the International Landslide Centre at IHRR that is led by Professor Dave Petley and Dr Nick Rosser from the Department of Geography. Sepulveda is from Chile, one of the most seismically active parts of the world that regularly experiences earthquakes, landslides, debris flows, volcanic eruptions and other geohazards.
Dr Sergio Sepulveda from the University of Chile. Sepulveda is a leading researcher on landslides in South America and is well-known in the field. A large proportion of the fatalities caused by natural hazards in South America are from earthquakes, floods and landslides that affect both urban and rural communities. Sepulveda is working closely with colleagues in IHRR to identify the vulnerability of populations in Latin America and the Caribbean to landslides, in order to support development of improved measures to help reduce fatalities. He tested a number of volcanic soils from Chile to understand the role they play in landslides and other hazards. Research at Durham Working with Professor Dave Petley, Sepulveda is studying records of fatal landslides that have occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean using the Durham Fatal Landslide Database, a global record of landslide-induced Spring 2014
fatalities from the past 10 years. The database is a useful tool for identifying vulnerability to landslide hazards, ‘…there is a very strong correlation between population density and fatal landslides, and most of them are induced by heavy rainfall’, said Sepulveda. Along with this research Sepulveda is also studying the geomechanics of landslides themselves with Professor Dave Petley and Dr Matthew Brain. The researchers are investigating the properties of volcanic soils from central Chile that have demonstrated some special behaviours during recent earthquakes, such as amplifying the seismic signals from the earthquake that can cause structural damage, landslides and soil liquefaction. ‘The aim is to have a closer look at how these soils behave during an earthquake. What changes do the seismic waves of the earthquake have on the strength of the soils? Prior to an earthquake they tend to be robust, but apparently during or after an earthquake their behaviour changes’, said Sepulveda. This will be the first time volcanic soils from Chile have been tested using the International Landslide Centre’s dynamic back-pressured shear box, a unique, geotechnical lab facility located in the Geography Department, that runs a series of dynamic tests to simulate saturated conditions and earthquake shaking, testing the strength of the soils. Properties of the soils may amplify the signals, causing stronger shaking around slopes that could collapse, and creating landslides due to the higher accelerations through the slope. Sepulveda thinks more attention should be paid to the physics of the landslide itself, particularly the different kinds of seismic waves that move through the soil causing slopes to collapse. ‘Depending on the geometry of the slope and the properties of the soil you can get higher shaking
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Liquefaction-induced ground cracks from 2010 earthquake in southern Chile. and accelerations in some parts, which are more likely to trigger a landslide’, he said. Identifying geohazard vulnerability in Chile While cities in Chile are resilient to the direct shaking on the ground from earthquakes, secondary earthquake hazards pose a difficult challenge. ‘In Chile you don’t have many casualties relative to the size of the earthquake, but the country is less prepared in terms of landslides, soil liquefaction and tsunamis’, said Sepulveda. On 27 February 2010 an 8.8 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami led to severe damage and loss of life along the coast of south central Chile. According to Sepulveda, damage to buildings in many areas was mainly caused by soil liquefaction rather than the direct shaking from the earthquake, a severe secondary hazard that was ‘re-discovered’ during that time. Strict building codes in Chile account for the shaking
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from earthquakes, but not liquefaction. Also, in the case of the tsunami, ‘people were not wellprepared’. The 2010 tsunami caught communities living along the coast by surprise. While a tsunami warning system was in place at the time, authorities hesitated to sound the alarm, but since then Sepulveda says that there has been much more effort dedicated to tsunami preparation and evacuation. This has proven to be the case after the recent April 2014 8.2 magnitude earthquake that also caused a tsunami. Chile’s capital city, Santiago, lies in a large valley at the foot of the Andes Mountains. The landslides and debris flows that are most likely to affect the city first take place high up in the mountains. During heavy rain fall, the soil, rock and other material is transported through gullies and ends up at the edge of the city.
IHRR Newsletter
plans for the subsequent tsunami, and the risk to the populations vulnerable to the hazards are significantly reduced.
Sergio standing next to a giant-size boulder from a prehistoric mega landslide. Sepulveda has done research for the government of Chile to map landslide and debris flow hazards that are caused by rainfall and earthquakes, but says there is still much work to be done because ‘there is not much data to work with’ and ‘no historical records’. Setting up rainfall gauge stations in the mountains is one way researchers could create historic records and find a threshold for rainfall that causes landslide hazards. Building codes and preparedness save lives Geoscientists and others who work to prevent fatalities caused by earthquakes usually always stress that earthquakes don’t kill people, but poorly constructed buildings do. Chile is a prime example of how better building practices can save lives. It has building codes in place that are comparable to many developed countries that experience seismic hazards.
‘The recent earthquake in northern Chile confirmed the strength of our building code, with limited damage mainly in old adobe houses and very few casualties. Although the tsunami was small, people evacuated quite swiftly even though it was during the night, showing that preparation from several drills in recent years worked well. A large earthquake, actually bigger than this, has been expected in this region for several years, and the lessons from the failed evacuation in 2010 seemed to be learned. Let’s hope that they are not forgotten with time, as usually happens with natural disasters’. Mega landslides During his time in IHRR Sepulveda gave a wellattended seminar on landslides induced by mega thrust and shallow earthquakes in the Chilean Andes. This includes unique geographic locations such as the Atacama Desert and Patagonia, where evidence has been found of prehistoric, giant size landslides in the Andes uplands. Sepulveda hypothesises that the cause of these landslides is due to seismically active regional faults and if this is found to be the case the faults could pose a significant hazard to rural communities who live near them.
Chile has been seen as an exemplar for earthquake safe building that has been highlighted by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). The World Risk Index issued by the UN in 2011 reported that Chile had ‘continuously established and enforced better building regulations’.
While earthquakes in Chile happen frequently near tectonic plates along the coast the opposite case applies for the Andes, where the faults tend to move very slowly. Large shallow earthquakes in the Andes tend to be rare events with return periods measured in thousands of years, compared with events every hundred years or so in more seismically active regions along the subduction plate boundary.
This is likely why the 8.2 magnitude earthquake that struck northern Chile earlier this month has only led to six recorded deaths, three of which were from heart attacks and one by an accident during the tsunami evacuation. Combine this with well-planned warning and evacuation
In order to discover whether prehistoric mega landslides were caused by the movement of regional faults, you have to first find evidence of the earthquakes. Researchers in Chile have mapped a fault near the edge of Santiago where debris flows regularly occur, and in the
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past two years Sepulveda and colleagues at the University of Chile have dated past activity of the fault, which is still active and could trigger an earthquake in the future.
‘One of the great things about IHRR is that it is mixing people from different backgrounds and disciplines to study the different aspects of hazard and risk in an integrated way’, said Sepulveda.
If the landslides were caused by movements of local faults, Sepulveda says they would need to be very close to them, within up to 20-50 km. Yet finding the clues needed for developing an accurate portrayal of what actually happened so long ago is no easy task: ‘You have to study each landslide in order to hypothesise whether it was triggered by an earthquake, then study the faults that are close to it and the fault itself to see if you can find any geological record of the past that can be linked to that landslide’, said Sepulveda.
Dynamic back pressured shear box for testing strength of soils involved in landslides.
These kinds of complex problems require researchers from multiple disciplines including geologists, geophysicists and engineers. Bringing together researchers from different areas is often valuable in better understanding hazards at almost any scale.
Further Reading: Deckart, K, Pinochet, K, Sepulveda, S, et al. (2014) New insights on the origin of the Meson Alto deposit, Yeso Valley, central Chile: A composite deposit of glacial and landslide processes? Andean Geology, 41, 1:248-258
An earthquake-induced rockslide in Aysen fjord, Patagonia, triggered by 2007 shallow earthquake.
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IHRR Newsletter
The Role of Eco-Narratives in Understanding Environmental Disasters: Interview with Professor Nicholas Saul, School of Modern Languages and Cultures A narrative is a story, a sequence of written or spoken words. It is in many ways the foundation that all literature stands upon, that makes language intelligible and shares understanding, whether it is a fictional or factual event. Thus if narratives of various kinds structure the imagined world, they also structure reality, our social world. Humans recount experiences through storytelling and create fictions with words because narratives can explain what could happen, allowing forms of agency that otherwise would not exist. In the ancient world myths – themselves transported in narrative form – reduced the alien and threatening complexity of experience to an intelligible meaning shared within a particular community. In our modern world novels can be argued to perform an analogous function. As aesthetic discourse, in the form of fictional and imaginary accounts , novels are able to assimilate into their imagined world other discourses – about religion, war, science, art, technology, even the emergence of human consciousness itself – and so to reflect at a higher level upon those discourses, and novels may ultimately (or possibly) reduce these other discourses to a single intelligible world-view. But literary narrative is not only a way of imagining and explaining the world, it also has the power to intervene, to prompt agency. In the times we live in this could not be more true in regards to how people live with constitutional uncertainty in their daily lives, and must cope with a ‘risk society’ that is as disorientating and perilous as it seems to be exciting. Nicholas Saul, professor of German literature and intellectual history at Durham’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures, is currently researching eco-narratives in German novels, exploring the relationships between understandings of environmental catastrophes in literature within the much wider framework of evolutionary theory and literary evolution, especially the influence of Darwinism. Spring 2014
Saul gave a seminar in IHRR on ‘Making Evolution Visible: Volcanoes and Other Tipping Points in Franz Hohler’s Apocalyptic EcoNarratives’, that focused on the work of SwissGerman author and cabarettist Franz Hohler, and included views from the German sociologist Ulrich Beck, acclaimed author of World at Risk, and Niklas Luhmann, another renowned German sociologist and founder of sociological systems theory.
Narrative of the Apocalypse In the eco-narratives of Hohler Saul finds a not unfamiliar narrative that has pervaded human culture at least since the Bible – the narrative of the apocalypse. The use of an apocalyptic narrative about environmental catastrophes like climate change, he notes, is widespread. Yet this turn to the religious or devotional is odd in modern culture, which many people criticise for its unremitting materialism. Ecological theories today are surely by definition scientific and systematic, that is, post-theological and probably materialistic in their assumptions. Thus the narratives of eco-apocalypse, in which a jealous, righteous and vengeful creator God punishes his
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sinful creatures with the near-extinction of the Great Flood or, ultimately, as in St John, the end of the world, unwittingly carry with them some theological – and mythical – baggage that usually goes unrecognised in popular culture. ‘The apocalypse is a pre-modern form of narrative informed by theological categories that inform the shape of the narrative and its content. It’s interesting the way it is mapped onto a phenomenon, [such as climate change], that has been only understood in modern, scientific terms very recently’. Ecological entanglement While people today live in a far more secular society than, say, the Middle Ages, contemporary society has not been able to dispense completely with the mythical narratives that were once used to make higher forces comprehensible and meaningful. Today our relationship with the environment is thought of in terms of complex systems. Society is ecologically entangled with the natural environment, in a single macrosystem, unable to step outside of it. Systems tend to reproduce themselves, heedless of individuals.
Social systems also share so many different relations with the ‘natural’ environment that it is difficult to find where the two separate. Yet the totality of those complex and systematic relationships is not, as Luhmann would say, intelligible to any single observer. As a result individuals seem at once both to understand that they are complicit in the production of incipient eco-disaster and to feel totally divorced from its causes. Those causes lie in someone else’s nuclear (or coal-fired) power station, beyond our understanding or beyond our control. The same applies to the symptoms, which affect someone else’s seashore or the survival chances of the generation after next, but not us (even though we think we know that we ourselves, in our generation, contribute to the causes and feel the effects). In short: we as individuals feel we are exposed to risk developments over which we have no control, even if we end up in some obscure way responsible – just like antique heroes in a mythical tragedy of fate, toyed with for the sport of the gods. We are disconnected from reality in our minds to that extent. In his work on Hohler, Saul refers to the writer’s strategy in fiction to reconnect the individual with the environment of which s/he is a part. Hohler writes not just about things, but about people (often writers) observing things which they should, but do not question. Thus his focus is not only on the environmental happenings but also on the response of the individual. Hence Saul sees Hohler as a writer ‘who is developing a narrative which brings the events from outside in the world to the inside of the writer’s mind’.
Forest impacted by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine.
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‘Eco-catastrophe happens over hundreds or thousands of years. It’s a development which is simply too big and too hard to encompass in a single conventional explicatory narrative. But Hohler also portrays punctuated equilibrium – sudden revolutionary shifts in the stable balance of the eco-system – not across the abyss of deep Darwinian time, but over the course of a few years. It’s the figure of the apocalypse, of sudden unforeseen collapse, which humanity has IHRR Newsletter
somehow caused and is punished for, which maps onto that swift collapse of the ecosystem’. So what the apocalyptic narrative does according to Saul is make the real, yet normally invisible threat of ecological catastrophe ‘visible to the imagination‘.
Painting of St John receiving an apocalyptic vision. ‘In this kind of literary form you can after all show the subject and the system as connected. The two fit together and make sense. ‘If you can do that, you can make individuals re-enact agency in their imagination, and enact agency in their own reality. Hohler’s fiction can be seen as a kind of tipping point experience for the reader – just as St John’s biblical Apocalypse was meant to change the mind of its original reader’. The fact that people became more aware of the complexities of living in the world is also evidenced in literary history, at least if we think of it as a process of cultural evolution, which is also structured by critical tipping points. Saul says literary history is usually (and rightly) divided up into epochs, similar to natural history. In fact, like the history of the natural world, it does not change smoothly and gradually. Often changes in literary history happen suddenly and without previous indication. It is therefore plausible to argue that literature responds to Spring 2014
society in crisis as a system responds to its ecoenvironment in crisis, by adapting in radical and often unpredictable, non-linear ways. This can help to explain some very sudden shifts in literary epoch, such as that at the turn of the nineteenth century from realism (think Dickens) to modernism (think Joyce) over a few short years. In writing literary history, it is hard to see a linear – narrative – development from Dickens’s traditional narrative to Joyce’s reduction of time to space in his ‘stream of consciousness’ narrative. But one can see the shift as an emergent response of literature to grasp the growing complexity of mass urban society and a culture saturated in technology and complex science. And here again Joyce deploys myth; Ulysses, of course. Saul, together with many other scholars today, finds that there are profound, deep-structural interactions between the literary world and society that is evolutionary. According to Luhmann, you could say that the system of literary production is exposed to perturbations from the social world ‘outside’ of it. In responding to those perturbations the literary system is itself destabilised, and ‘in order for it to continue to perform its role in representing and criticising that world outside it’, it must change. ‘A tipping point is when a new aesthetic emerges. So you can actually begin to develop a new, literary-historical toolbox for re-writing how literature changes in evolutionary ways’. Moving on to still another level, we could argue that in the pre-modern world the Bible functioned not only as a myth in the sense defined above, but also as the myth, what we call a master narrative, which governs most of our world view and actions. In modernity of course the need for such a myth still obtains, irrespective of complexity and science. Where are we to find a replacement myth, if our adherence to the world of the Bible has been eroded? It could be that Darwin’s theory – a narrative of course – is the answer. ‘... Whereby the previous foundational narrative
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of Occidental culture – The Bible – and all of its associated discourses [...] has been eroded and displaced by the process of secularisation, by a critique of revealed truths through human reason. The agent that makes that happen is Darwin – still today the scientific orthodoxy. Darwin penned the tale of the master narrative that today everyone subscribes to’. From Darwin to post-human Contemporary German writers such as the Berlin publicist and novelist Dietmar Dath are often ‘confessing Darwinists’ and extrapolate the evolutionary narrative to its maximum. Thus they write about the post-human, or what it means, or will quickly mean, to live with the capability of genetically engineering our own bodies. This is explored in Dath’s futuristic novel The Abolition of Species, a provocative spin on the title of Charles Darwin’s opus On the Origin of Species. ‘What does it mean asks Dath that we can play with our bodies as with toys, that there’s no difference between experimenting with ourselves as with animals. There may be a tipping point in cultural history there’. And Dath sees his owns books as helping us to negotiate that move to the ‘post-human human’. Saul himself is now working on an evolutionary cultural history of German literature, ‘not only the history of Darwinism in German literature, but also, ultimately seeing literature itself as an agent in evolutionary change’. This means among other things asking what is the evolutionary function of literature? The question may seem at first overly reductionist and materialistic, but actually understands that literature and the rest of the arts have acquired and perform a distinct function in German author Dietmar Dath.
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On the Origin of Species published in 1859. humanity’s cultural evolution. ‘Like language clearly it’s a kind of evolutionary adaptation. Much better: an ‘exaptation’, a behavioural capacity of pleasing representational communication in this case, which has evolved not necessarily for a use, but for which a use has been found by humans’. So will literature ever move out of neo-apocalyptic mode? ‘There does seem to be a time lag between the development of scientific knowledge and literary forms which make sense of all that. One of the interesting things about eco-literature, up till now, is that it talks about modern crises in old fashioned ways. Somehow it has to have recourse to the theological language and the theoretical narrative of apocalypse. It’s as if somehow our literary language lags behind, in the cultural world, what we know to be the case in science. We need a language of agency and change, otherwise we’re not going to change, and the old myth of the apocalypse, updated to offer us to the possibility of action, seems to be the best myth available’. IHRR Newsletter
So art, including literature, has a direct role to play in how scientific stories of eco-crisis are taken up by society and spread through popular culture. It could be argued that this is why film also has been so effective at raising awareness about climate change. Narratives that begin with literature often translate well to cinema, and other technologies such as web or mobile interfaces may be bringing these narratives closer to people’s lives. Saul argues that the arts are precisely those ‘instruments of social action’ that Beck calls for in response to the risk society.
Charles Darwin 1868. This was also discussed at an event organised through the Tipping Points project that screened the independent short film Beyond the Tipping Point? (see review on Tipping Points website for more details: http://bit.ly/1jCxNVW). Participants and researchers from the project talked about how in the case of climate change people retreat to notions of the apocalypse in order to engage with its impacts on society and the wider environment. While scientific narratives from research in complex systems may be of greater assistance in really tackling the environmental problems that climate change represents, the event also demonstrated that environmental catastrophes like climate change also are brought into greater perspective when the sciences and arts and humanities are in dialogue.
‘Humans discovered you could do stuff with art as a kind of technology. You get this recursive circulation between the world of technology and the human; we produce art as an evolutionary technology and that technology in an inevitable, recursive way produces us. In that sense modern evolutionary thinkers would think of humans as in fact always already having been cyborgs. Humans exist with technology, that’s what humans are, homo technologicus’. Professor Saul
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Tipping
Points and Fragility’ sub-theme led by the Tipping Points project. A podcast of his seminar in IHRR is
Saul says: ‘the modus operandi of science and the humanities are not so terribly different at least at some levels. Even science cannot in many ways operate without a narrative. How else could Darwin have formulated his theory, if not using this aesthetic form? That’s what the humanities do, we give people narratives, and we know how narratives work. We are the authorities on this for the time being’.
Spring 2014
available online: http://bit.ly/1m9FQRa Further Reading: Saul, S and James, S.J. (eds.) (2011) The Evolution of Literature: Legacies of Darwin in European Cultures . Rodopi.
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Research funded through the IHRR Small Grants Scheme: The Effects of Climate Change on Slopes in Malaysia PhD student Mr Mohd Syazwan Md-Rahim from the School of Engineering and Computer Sciences, received an IHRR grant to visit a research slope located in Putrajaya, Malaysia to obtain soil samples required to undertake advanced unsaturated soil laboratory testing to investigate the hydrological and the mechanical behaviour of the soils.
patterns are expected to produce impacts of deteriorating stability of many natural and engineered slopes, leading to landslides. Rainfall is recognised as the main triggering factor for slope instability, specifically in tropical regions. This study is investigating the impacts of climate change and identifying adaptation strategies for engineered slopes to prevent slope failures. Numerical modelling will be used to predict the impacts of expected future climate events, but the models need to be validated for current climate conditions, where we know the soil responses. Collaboration was established with the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and a company (IKRAM) that can provide field monitoring data from research slopes in Malaysia. This field data is essential for the validation phase of the numerical modelling. However, UKM does not
Figure 1: Front view of the slope where landslide occurred in 2007.
Figure 3: Soil sampling process using a Mazier sampler (Foam Drilling Method).
Figure 2: View from the crest of the slope. In recent decades, the world has experienced more extreme fluctuations in weather events and further climate changes are predicted for the future. Malaysia, as a tropical equatorial country, has high volumes of rainfall occurring in monsoonal sequences and changes to these
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Figure 4: The process of pushing out the PVC sample tube from the Mazier sampler. IHRR Newsletter
have the facilities to undertake the advanced soil testing that is needed for our computer models. Therefore, it was necessary to obtain undisturbed soil samples from the research slope in Malaysia and ship them back to the Unsaturated Soils Laboratory at Durham University. This will allow the use of our state-of-the-art testing facilities to investigate the hydrological and the mechanical behaviour of the soils and provide the input parameters for the numerical models. The research slope is an area of Putrajaya where a landslide occurred in 2007 (Figures 1 and 2). The National University of Malaysia (UKM) and IKRAM have installed field monitoring equipment in the slope.
Latest from IHRR Blog Resilience: From Research to Emergency Planning and Aid http://wp.me/pSWpn-1pD Insights into Natural Hazards at AGU Meeting 2013 http://wp.me/pSWpn-1pz Remarkable coastal change from the recent UK storms http://wp.me/pSWpn-1qe The Cold after the Summer of Snowden (Tipping Points) http://wp.me/pSWpn-1qk Severe heatwaves in Australia http://wp.me/pSWpn-1qA Port Hills, Christchurch: Demolishing the Rockfall Threatened Houses (The Landslide Blog) http://wp.me/pSWpn-1r8 A season of ‘Iblis’ on Nain Island http://wp.me/pSWpn-1rl
Sampling was carried out in May 2013 using foam flush drilling methods to avoid causing changes in water content of the soils. A triple tube Mazier sampling method was used to obtain high quality undisturbed samples (Figures 3 and 4).
Southern England: the potential for movement in deepseated landslides (The Landslide Blog) http://wp.me/pSWpn-1rR
As a result of Mr Md-Rahim’s visit to Malaysia, IKRAM agreed to undertake a borehole to obtain soil samples specifically for the use of the research team at Durham University. At one point, this additional work was in doubt and it was only the presence of Mr Md-Rahim in Malaysia that ensured the work was able to proceed. Mr Md-Rahim was present during the drilling of the borehole and ensured the works were carried out to a high quality. He was also able to undertake the shipping preparation of the retrieved soil samples that were needed to prevent these samples from being damaged during the shipping process.
The Untherapeutic Effects of Brownfield Land on Human Health http://wp.me/pSWpn-1sN
The financial support provided by IHRR significantly contributed to the soil sample acquisition stage of this research project. Without the visit of Mr Md-Rahim to Malaysia, this collaborative research work would not have been able to proceed.
Spring 2014
Extreme Flooding in South West England http://wp.me/pSWpn-1s6 Spreading risk: A look at risk compensation http://wp.me/pSWpn-1sp
Keep the light on: Using night lights to identify flood vulnerability http://wp.me/pSWpn-1t3 Fracking in the US: Local Responses to Complex Risks http://wp.me/pSWpn-1tv The Oso (Steelhead) landslide: mechanisms of movement and the challenges of recovering the victims (The Landslide Blog) http://wp.me/pSWpn-1tN ‘A season of flags’ on Nain Island: Bajo culture meets politics http://wp.me/pSWpn-1u7 Landslide losses – raising the profile in the USA (The Landslide Blog) http://wp.me/pSWpn-1uZ A Season of Multiplicity: Circulation as the key for Bajo social cohesion http://wp.me/pSWpn-1vd Rescuing our brownfield spaces debate http://wp.me/pSWpn-1vJ Rethinking climate change-induced migration and displacement http://wp.me/pSWpn-1vU
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Green Social Work Practice in Curaçao Professor Lena Dominelli School of Applied Social Sciences (Co-Director of IHRR)
Greening social work entered the lexicon of academia in the Dutch Caribbean during the 11th Biennial Caribbean and International Conference on Social Work and Social Development which ran from 8-12 July 2013 when I gave a talk by this title. In my presentation, I described what green social work was and its relevance for Curaçao, a tropical island situated in the Caribbean, 50 miles from the shores of Venezuela in Latin America. The conference was hosted by the Association of Caribbean Social Work Educators (ACSWE) including the University of Curaçao at the World Trade Centre in Willemstad, the capital. Curaçao, part of the Dutch Caribbean, is sometimes affected by hurricanes, such as Omar in 2008 and Tomas in 2010, high winds and flooding. It is increasingly feeling the impact of climate change and its weather has become less predictable in recent years.
The Rector of the University of Curacao (UOC), formerly known as the University of the Netherlands Antilles (UNA) and Dr Odette van Brummen-Girigori, Dean Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, were in the audience and later requested a meeting with me to discuss how green social work might be practised on Curaçao. Dr van Brummen-Girigori and I continued working together to get the social work students to become green social workers. Green social work is a locality specific and culturally relevant multidisciplinary approach to solving socio-environmental issues sustainably, and so Dr van Brummen-Girigori is in charge of local operations and developments on the ground with me offering backup support. Green
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social work focuses on preventative strategies as well as developing plans for immediate relief, recovery and post-disaster reconstruction should a disaster strike. It starts off by collecting data on what problems local residents experience and ascertains their views on both the problems and potential solutions. Local residents are considered experts of their own lives, while social and physical scientists offer expert knowledge from their respective disciplines as appropriate.
Dr van Brummen-Girigori has linked up with other members of the University and the Meteorological Department of Curaçao (MDC) to ensure that the students had the best information possible for use in their work. They undertook a survey of 1000 residents of the Island to determine what they saw as the risks and hazards they had to address. The survey data are currently being analysed, and preliminary findings show that flooding, air and soil pollution have been coming up as key concerns. The link between poor air quality and health problems has arisen as an issue alongside how housing can become better adapted to changing weather conditions. Once the data have been fully analysed, university staff, social work/social development practitioners, especially community workers, the students will engage with respondents at the level of the community to develop plans that will enhance their resilience to disasters. Green issues, especially those linked to climate change, dwindling biodiversity, renewable energy, dealing with waste, housing development and air pollution have been taken up the Amigu di Terra, a local organisation concerned with sustainable development and which is linked to the Friends of the Earth International Movement. IHRR Newsletter
IHRR in the Media Professor Sarah Curtis, Dr Sim Reaney and Dr Nick Odoni were interviewed by Sky News about the extreme weather and flooding in
Professor Dave Petley was interviewed by Nature about the Badakhshan landslide in Afghanistan. See “Afghan landslide was ‘an
England over the winter. Dr Nick Odoni was also interviewed by the Sunday Times and wrote an editorial for the Northern Echo about the floods.
accident waiting to happen’”: http://bit.ly/1l8mMyo
Dr Karen Johnson was interviewed by the Journal, Real Radio and BBC Radio Tees about a recent study on brownfield and health for the ROBUST project. Dr Steve Robertson was also interviewed by the Journal. The study, also led by Professor Clare Bambra, was featured in the Northern Echo.
Publications Bissell, J. J., Caiado, C. C. S., Goldstein, M. and Straughan, B. (2014) ‘Compartmental Modelling of Social Dynamics with Generalised Peer Incidence’. Mathematical Models and Methods in Applied Sciences, 24(4):719–750 Coolen-Maturi, T. and Coolen, F.P.A. (2014) Nonparametric predictive inference for combined competing risks Data. Reliability Engineering & System Safety. Dominelli, L. ‘One Profession, one vision’. (2014) Professional Social Work. British Association of Social Workers. Snell, M. A., Barker, P. A., Surridge, B., Large, A. R. G., Jonczyk, J., C. McW. H. Benskin, S. Reaney, et al. (2014) High frequency variability of environmental drivers determining benthic community dynamics in headwater streams. Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts. DOI: 10.1039/C3EM00680H
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Li, G., West, A. J., Densmore, A. L., Jin, Z., Parker, R. N. & Hilton, R. G. (2014) Seismic mountain building: Landslides associated with the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in the context of a generalized model for earthquake volume balance. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. DOI: 10.1002/2013GC005067 West, A. J., Hetzel, R., Li, G., Jin, Z., Zhang, F., Hilton, R. G. & Densmore, A. L. (2014) Dilution of 10Be in detrital quartz by earthquakeinduced landslides: Implications for determining denudation rates and potential to provide insights into landslide sediment dynamics. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. (in press) Bellringer, C. and Michie, R. Big Bang in the City of London: an intentional revolution or an accident? Financial History Review (in press)
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Hospital design makes a difference to well-being of patients and carers A report on work from the ADVANCE project at Durham University, which evaluated design of a new mental health care inpatient facility, is now exhibited online by the BRE Trust, the largest UK charity dedicated specifically to research and education in the built environment.
Buildings Wiki: Wood, V.J., Curtis, S.E., Gesler, W., Spencer, I.H., Close, H.J., Mason, J., Reilly, J.G. (2014) ‘The impact of the design of the Psychiatric inpatient facility on perceptions of Carer wellbeing’. http://bit.ly/1lpm683 Other published research papers from this project include: Wood, V.J., Curtis, S.E., et al. (2013) ‘Creating ‘therapeutic landscapes’ for mental health carers in inpatient settings: A dynamic perspective on permeability and inclusivity’. Social Science & Medicine 91 122-129. Available via Durham Research Online: http://dro.dur.ac.uk/10450/
This paper underlines the importance of ‘informal carers’ (family and friends) who support people with mental health problems and help them be resilient to the challenges they face. It emphasises that hospital buildings should be designed in a way that includes consideration of these informal carers’ needs, as well as needs of patients and staff working at the hospital. The paper is accessible online via Designing
Curtis, S.E., Gesler, W., Wood, V.J., et al. (2013) ‘Compassionate containment? Balancing technical safety and therapy in the design of psychiatric wards’. Social Science and Medicine, 97, 201 – 109. Available via Durham Research Online: http://dro.dur.ac.uk/11210/ Wood, V.J., Curtis, S.E., et al. (2013) ‘Spaces for smoking in a Psychiatric Hospital: Social Capital, resistance to control and significance for ‘therapeutic landscapes’. Social Science and Medicine, 97, 104 – 111. Available via Durham Research Online: http://dro.dur.ac.uk/12145/
Tipping Points Annual Report 2013-14 Announcing the fourth annual report from the Tipping Points project. This reports features updates from the project including the following research topics: • • • • •
Tipping points in British banking Climate research in the North Atlantic Modelling complex systems Diffusion of ideas Critical transitions in art and literature
The report also includes a comprehensive bibliography of the latest publications from the project. Read the report online: http://bit.ly/1m9Kyye
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IHRR Newsletter
IHRR Postgraduate Forum: Resilience, Recovery, Psychology The IHRR Postgraduate Forum took place on 5th February 2014. It included postgraduate students from across the university including the School of Applied Social Sciences, School of Government and International Affairs, Geography, Law, Psychology, Modern Languages, Earth Sciences and Economics. The aim of the forum was to consider the psychological dimensions of risk, resilience and recovery in an interdisciplinary context. The forum was facilitated by IHRR Co-Director Dr Andrew Baldwin. Rebecca Gomm from the School of Applied Social Sciences gave her presentation ‘Cognitive transformation and recovery’. In her PhD research one of Rebecca’s main questions is what gets women who are in the criminal justice system through to the other side? Her work is concerned with how women adapt to traumatising experiences and asks what is the role of social services in helping them bounce back? Motivation, self-efficacy and building goals are most important to helping women have a sense of control over their environment as well as sense of self-ownership. Rebecca explained how some women have experienced abuse for as long as 21 years, yet somehow manage to still continue on. Self-efficacy -- one’s own ability to complete tasks and research goals -- is particularly important in the case of women who have been victims of abuse. Some of the best levels of support in encouraging self-efficacy are given through women’s centres where they receive the best levels of support. In her research, Rebecca is seeking to operationalise layers of recovery for women who have been through the criminal justice system. Importantly, for those who ‘make it through to the other side’, they tend to go on to help others that have been through similar experiences. Sarah Greenhow also from the School of Applied Social Sciences presented ‘Adoptive parent-child relationships: Exploring MindMindedness’, focusing on the use of emerging social networking technologies like Facebook, that adopted children sometimes use to remain in
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contact with their birth relatives. Many children are in public care because they were subject to abuse. When they are adopted by a foster family they are able to remain in contact with their birth relatives through social media. There is potentially a huge risk in this practice as it sidesteps support networks and potentially places the child in danger as the birth relatives may still have disorderly lives, something children cannot deal with emotionally on their own. In her research she is also looking at how ‘mind-mindedness’ – ‘parents’ ability or willingness to interpret their child’s behaviour according to their mental states or thoughts 1 – can be used to interpret their child’s behaviour and build mental resilience. She is researching whether there are higher or lower levels of mind-mindedness for parent and child who make virtual contact online, such as through video interfaces. Nick Torbet from the School of Government and International Affairs presented ‘How to Defuse a Bomb in 10 Minutes: High-risk Situations and Coping Strategies’ about British military groups that specialise in dealing with improvised explosive devices (IEDs). People working in this field often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and are exposed to extremely high levels of risk, especially for those whose job it is to find and identify IDEs. Nick asks, how do IED teams cope with these situations? Nick said it was rare for ‘people to go to pieces’ and that the Army teaches you to cope with stressful situations where the motto is ‘carry on and move on with whatever is thrown at you’. Nick, who has worked in the Army defusing IDEs, is looking specifically at how the informal structure is useful for coping with stressful situations that IDE teams experience. He said that resilience comes from being part of a collective, sharing experience seems important, what he called ‘relational resilience’. Is there an optimal degree of connection between peers that generates resilience? See Fernyhough, C. Reading the baby’s mind http://www.psycholog ytoday.com/blog/dad-theobserver/201005/reading-the-babys-mind 1
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IHRR Presents Professor Dave Petley gave the Geological Engineering Distinguished Lecture at the University of British Columbia, ‘Earthquake‐ Induced Landslides‐Lessons from Taiwan, Pakistan, China and New Zealand’. Slides from this lecture are available on his blog: http:// blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2014/03/10/ubclecture/ Dr Karen Johnson and Dr Steve Robertson led the ROBUST Steering Group meeting that reported on some of the findings from the project.
Dr Graham Coates presented SESAME, a project on flood risk adaptation, at the inaugural workshop of the EPSRC Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) Network in Birmingham. Dr Karen Johnson presented at a public debate on brownfield land entitled: ‘Rescuing Our Brownfield Spaces’. The event took place in Newcastle and was facilitated by Dr Caspar Hewett and his colleague Phil Hartley. The event was organised by The Great Debate
Professor John Gatehouse, Dr Susana Carro-Ripalda and Dr Philip Garnett led the
Professor John Gatehouse (left) and Dr Philip Garnett at the Star and Shadow event. panel discussion after a film screening event at the Star and Shadow Cinema on GM foods. The discussion was chaired by Professor Sarah Curtis. There was a full house for the event and the discussion brought forward some interesting points about the GM science controversy in the EU and throughout the world. Topics of discussion included the need to understand the effects of GM foods as a complex issue; how governance of GM needs to be democratic and transparent; why some less developed countries, such as Mexico, are sceptical of GM technology; how current EU regulation prevents publicly funded research on GM crops; and the ecological impacts of GM on agriculture.
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Dr Karen Johnson at the Great Debate event. in partnership with Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience and Great North Festival as part of the ROBUST and ETUDE projects. It was funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering. The dialogue event was successful in bringing together a dedicated group of people to discuss how brownfield land can be reused and restored. A video of the discussion is available online: http://vimeo.com/92922701 Dr Claire Horwell and Professor Alex Densmore represented Durham at a NERC/ ESRC/DfID Science for Humanitarian Emergencies and Risk (SHEAR) Programme Workshop.
IHRR Newsletter
American Geophysical Union 2013 Dr Sim Reaney convened a series of presentation and poster sessions on water resources and water quality at the last AGU Fall Meeting. Dr Nick Rosser presented his team’s invited session on ‘Insights into rock slope failure from a decade of high-resolution monitoring of actively failing coastal cliffs’. He also presented a poster: ‘The record of iceberg roll generated waves from sediments and seismics’. Dr Emma Norman presented ‘Seismic signatures of iceberg failure, collapse and rolls’.
Professor Dave Petley was a convenor on the Landslide Triggering and Runout Mechanics: Physical, Hydrological, and Geotechnical Approaches I session. Dave was also a convenor for the poster session on the same topics and gave two invited talks: ‘Risks from earthquake-induced landslides in the Himalayan Arc’ and ‘The use of remote sensing for rapid post-disaster assessment – an example from Kedarnath, Uttarakhand, north India’. Dr David Milledge presented ‘Making Mountains out of Molehills: Sediment Transport by the European Mole (Talpa europaea)’.
Dr Matthew Brain presented ‘The effects of wave phasing on coseismic landslide displacement’.
Grants Dr Nick Rosser (Geography) (PI) and Professor Dave Petley (Geography) (Co-I) have received a major grant from Cleveland Potash (CPL) for the COastal Behaviour and Rates of Activity (COBRA) project that includes Dr Matthew Brain, Dr Emma Norman (PDRA) and Dr Sam Waugh (project technician), along with four fully-funded PhD students. This major grant through the Department of Geography is an extension of previous research funded by CPL since 2002. Visit the project’s website for further details: http://www.dogweb.dur.ac.uk/cobra/. This research has been featured in the Summer 2014 issue of IHRR’s magazine Hazard Risk Resilience for its special issue ‘Living with Risk’.
Dr Claire Horwell (Earth Sciences) has received funding from the British Council for three months field research in Hawaii from January 2015, for looking at respiratory protection interventions and health messaging downwind of Kilauea volcano, where locals are frequently exposed to volcanic smog. Dr David Milledge (Geography) received £52K from the Peak District National Park Authority for ‘Using flowmap to model impacts of restoration on flood events’.
Recent Donations to the Institute An anonymous gift to the University of £50K was received to support studentships for the MSc/MA Programmes in Risk in 2015.
IHRR is very grateful to all the donors who so generously support work at Durham University on hazard, risk and resilience.
An anonymous gift of £3K will be used by IHRR to help facilitate links with emergency responders in the Philippines. Spring 2014
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EPSRC Award for Ground and Structural Engineering Project Durham University is a member of the consortium awarded £1.67M by EPSRC to fund the iSmart (Infrastructure slopes: Sustainable Management And Resilience Assessment) project. The other consortium members are Newcastle University, Loughborough University, Queen’s University Belfast, Southampton University and the British Geological Survey. Professor David Toll of the School of Engineering & Computing Sciences will lead the project at Durham. iSmart will study the impacts of climatic events on embankments and cuttings that form a significant part of the UK’S transport infrastructure, one of the most heavily used in the world. Many of the existing slopes are old and suffer high incidents of instability, as is evident in recent events where severe disruption to the rail network has been caused by extreme weather events.
The iSmart project will create a visualised model of transient water movement in infrastructure slopes under a range of environmental scenarios. Findings will be used to create a more reliable, cost-effective, safe and sustainable transport system. The impact of the improved slope management will be highly significant in both direct economic and indirect social and economic terms. The academic partners will work in collaboration with key stakeholder partners: • Atkins UK • CIRIA • Department for Regional Development NI • Geotechnics Ltd • Golder Associates • Highways Agency • Mott Macdonald UK Ltd • Network Rail Ltd, Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) • Translink
Visit from Christopher Moyes Memorial Foundation IHRR was very pleased to welcome Mrs Jan Moyes and Professor Graham King who visited IHRR from the Christopher Moyes Memorial Foundation, which is funding postgraduate researchers in hazard, risk and resilience at Durham University.
From left: Prof Sarah Curtis, Prof Graham King, Mrs Jan Moyes, Mrs Nahid Rezwana, Mr Muhammad Jahedul Huq
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IHRR Newsletter
Upcoming Events PSRC/BSSRC First Grant & Early Career Fellowships Workshop 10th June 2014 Venue TBC 12.30pm – 1.30pm There will be a recent grant holders workshop about the PSRC/BSSRC application process, managing the grant once awarded, and talks about how holding an EPSRC First Grant or BBSRC New Investigator grant has boosted their careers. There will also be a representative from the Research Office to talk about the application process at Durham. The session is aimed at potential applicants from Durham, potential mentors of applicants and research support staff. Contact research.grants@durham.ac.uk for further info and to book a place.
Financial Crime, Corruption and the Global Financial Crisis: What is the role of regulation? 18th June 2014 Birley Room, Hatfield College, Durham University 6.00pm – 8.30pm Corruption perpetrated by bankers and other financial players has been argued to lie at the root of the global financial crisis. But to what extent should behaviours and practices that have potentially disastrous consequences for the global economy be defined and treated as criminal? After the 2007-08 banking crash no one was found guilty of criminal activity, bringing into question how ‘financial crime’ should be defined and monitored in order to prevent future crises. At present there is little if any accountability within banks and other financial companies to provide sufficient oversight from government regulators. If financial crime is itself a symptom of corruption within the financial sector, are new forms of regulation needed in order to develop an adequate response to damaging activities in finance? If so, how should they proceed? Spring 2014
Join us for a round table discussion with researchers from Durham University who specialise in law, history, government and complexity, to identify and better understand how, if at all, financial crime and corruption can be mitigated through regulation. Presenters: Dr Vincenzo Bavoso (Law), Professor Ranald Michie (History), Dr Matthew Hollow (History), Dr Or Raviv (SGIA), Professor David Wall (SASS) and Dr Philip Garnett (Anthropology) Facilitators: Professor Tim Clark (Durham Business School and IHRR) and Dr Eva-Maria Nag (SGIA and Global Policy) Food and drinks will be provided. The event is free to attend and open to all, but as seating is limited you must register in advance. To register please send an email to ihrr.admin@durham.ac.uk with your name and affiliation. This event is organised by IHRR’s Tipping Points project and the Global Policy journal based at Durham University.
Why Do We Eat What We Eat? 19th June 2014 Durham University Business School 10.00am – 4.00pm Food plays an important role in our lives, but understanding why people choose what to eat can be deceptively complex. In addition to concerns about diet and nutrition, sociological, cultural, economic, political and geographic factors all contribute to deciding what foods to consume. In this multidisciplinary workshop, we will explore a variety of factors that address contemporary food consumption patterns and trends. Topics that will be addressed include: how organisational studies can help us to understand food choice;
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the relative success and problems faced by the UK’s game-to-eat food initiative; understanding the contributing effect of cookbooks in regard to declining food literacy; a comparison of practices of food culture in Tamang village in the Himalayas and another Todmorden in the south Pennines; the cognitive underpinnings of judgments and decisions about food, in particular with reference to domestic food waste; and the impact of school meals on food choice.
Speakers include: Dr Gillian Hopkinson (Lancaster University), Dr Sam Hillyard (School of Applied Social Sciences), Dr Nicola Bown (Leeds University), Dr Ben Campbell (Anthropology), Suzanne Speak (Newcastle University), Victoria McGowan (Anthropology) and Dr Ilan Baron (SGIA). Lunch will be provided. Please send an email to ilan.baron@durham.ac.uk to reserve a place.
Items for the Next Issue IHRR Newsletter only publishes what it knows about. If you have items for the next issue, please e-mail them by 14 August 2014 to: brett.cherry@durham.ac.uk.
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IHRR Newsletter
Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience, Durham University, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK www.dur.ac.uk/ihrr The Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience (IHRR) supports the capacity of researchers from across Durham University to make a difference to how we live with emerging hazards and risks. IHRR is a nerve centre for innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to hazard and risk research in the UK and throughout the world. We are championing key research programmes in hazards, vulnerability and resilience. The Institute operates through a growing array of research projects and fellowships with significant external funding from UK Research Councils and other major grant awards and donations. It is involved in policy engagement in risk and hazard debates across much of the, globe, strategy development with industry and wider stakeholders and
also research consultancy. Our research aims to improve human resilience to geohazards such as volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides and floods as well as those associated with climate change, terrorism, financial crises and use of modern technologies. It focuses particularly on the nature of hazard, risk and vulnerability in the developing world as well as developed regions. The Institute aims to develop radical new insight with regard to hazard and risk. By adopting an approach which directly engages policymakers, local communities and other stakeholders in the co-production of knowledge, the Institute aims to develop innovative policy and to increase social capacity for reducing vulnerability and harm.
Focus The Institute is developing three areas of activity through interdisciplinary research, allowing problems to be framed in different ways and new theoretical approaches and understandings to be developed in relation to existing problems. Hazards: how hazards are produced, particularly environmental hazards and notably landslides, floods, droughts, volcanoes, sea level rise and earthquakes; but also hazards that emerge in surprising ways, such as socio-technological and financial hazards.
Vulnerabilities and Resilience: the vulnerabilities and resilience of communities that have to live with hazards, notably those communities whose vulnerabilities arise from poverty, changes in life course and social isolation, and where these in isolation and combination reduce resilience. Frontier Knowledge: innovative and creative ways of learning to live with the pervasive nature of hazard and risk, through new ways of risk learning, new forms of risk sharing and new ways of risk forecasting.
Examples of Current Research Activities Landslides: exploring both the spatial and temporal distribution of landslides, and the impacts that they cause (Figure 1). Secondary Hazards: examining the controls on secondary earthquake phenomena, particularly landslides and river basin changes, in space and time, while collaborating with social scientists to explore ways these hazards affect communities in developing countries, in order to build resilience. Climate Adaptation: understanding the diverse array of influences climate change has on species including humans, especially in the preparation of infrastructure needed for vulnerable groups, such as older people. Tipping Points: researching the physical and social complexity of so-called ‘tipping points’ in past climate systems, historical and contemporary banking crises, knowledge diffusion and mathematics. Resilience: developing innovative ways to build resilience in communities to the hazards that they face, ranging from threats from natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes in the Himalayas) through to, acute social impacts.
Spring 2014
Figure 1
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Part of the Badakhshan landslide in Afghanistan that occurred in May 2014.
Contact Details: Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience Durham University Lower Mountjoy Durham DH1 3LE, UK Tel: +44 (0)191 3342257 Fax: +44 (0)191 3341801
Director of IHRR: Professor Sarah Curtis Editor: Brett Cherry Design: Cartographic Unit, Department of Geography