ARCC news for November 2014

ARCC network news & events

The ARCC network has recently held two events in our programme of support for early career researchers.

The second webinar for ECRs, looking at the best ways to engage with the policymaking community, took place in September. Top tips discussed by our presenter – Tom Sutton from the Cabinet Office – are now available on the ARCC blog.

Three of the ARCC team, twenty ECRs and two distinguished speakers from across the UK travelled to York in October for the second workshop. We spent 24 hours discussing, sharing and learning about how to engage stakeholders. Outputs from the day (presentations, tweets, images and a commentary) have been added to the ARCC website.

Project news & events

The iBUILD project (Infrastructure Business models, valuation and innovation for local delivery) has just launched a new report, Economic evaluation of systems of infrastructure provision: concepts, approaches, methods (pdf, 3.8 MB) which is available to download from their website. Additionally, the iBUILD project blog has been recently updated to include a couple of contributions on transport infrastructure.

ICIF use video to share their story

The ICIF (International Centre for Infrastructure Futures) project website features a useful introductory video. In four and a half minutes of interviews with a handful of ICIF academics, viewers get an excellent  insight into the project’s context, vision and rationale.

Other news & events

Difficult decisions for future flood defence spending

The National Audit Office (NAO) has published its 2014 report on flood defence spending in England, highlighting a fall in underlying spend, efficiency improvements by the Environment Agency (EA) and rising flood risk for some less-populated areas. The NAO says that EA will have to make difficult decisions to on whether to maintain existing flood defences, or to let some of them lapse. An interesting blog from the Adaptation Sub-Committee explores some of the issues in more depth.

• National Audit Office: Strategic flood risk management
• Adaptation Sub-Committee: National Audit Office finds evidence of under-investment in flood risk management
• BBC: Flood defending ‘insufficient’, NAO warns
• GOV.UK: Government response to National Audit Office report into Strategic Flood risk management

Taking evidence into policy-making – the view from a policy-maker

Head of the Evidence into Action team at the Department for International Development, Kirsty Newman, offers her perspective on the process of taking evidence into the policy-making world.  She makes the case for improving the demand for evidence (rather then the need to supply more of it).

Competition: Solving urban challenges with data

NERC, ESRC and Innovate UK are investing in business-led collaborative R&D projects that use environmental, economic and social data to address urban challenges or develop commercial solutions for future cities.

A series of UK-wide events will introduce the competition and offer an opportunity to network and develop partnerships. One-to-one discussions with Innovate UK and the Research Councils are also available on a first come, first served basis. For more information, see the Innovate UK website.

Call for papers: INOGOV (Innovations in climate governance) workshop

Helsinki, 12–13 March 2015

The INOGOV network has published a call for papers for a forthcoming workshop on what can be learned from experiments in the context of climate change governance. Presentations will be published as a Special Volume in an appropriate journal. Abstracts should be submitted by 30 November 2014.

Call for papers: Engineering Sustainability ‘Smart cities’ issue

Engineering Sustainability (pdf, 300 KB), one of the journals of the Institution of Civil Engineers, has launched a call for papers for a smart cities-themed issue in 2016. Suggested topics include: use of systems thinking to address complex problems, smart city strategy development, managing and promoting stakeholder participation. The issue will be guest edited by John Dora (of John Dora Consulting, and member of the ARCC Advisory Group). Abstracts should be submitted by 15 December 2014.

Guidance for transport planners

The EU project Management of Weather Events in the Transport System (MOWE-IT) has now concluded, and a number of resources have recently been added to the website. These include a series of guidebooks to help improve the resilience of different transport modes and policy guidelines around air/surface transport interactions.

The Next Generation of Flood Models, Richard Crowder (CH2M HILL)

FCERM.net webinar, 26 November 2014, 12.15-12.45pm