Cabot office weekly roundup – 7 December 2012

This week has seen a glut of news come from the Cabot Institute.

1. £2M for risk management of natural hazards
Natural hazards such as earthquakes, ash clouds, floods, droughts and storms can have a catastrophic impact on lives and economies around the world resulting in billions of dollars in financial losses. A new £2 million project, led by Cabot Institute researchers at the University of Bristol, aims to better assess uncertainty and risk of natural hazards.

2. Accurate flood forecasting gets closer
Heavy rainfall and the problems of flooding in towns have never been far from peoples' minds or the news headlines over the past few weeks. New research by Professor Paul Bates will help to accurately pinpoint which individual streets are most at risk from flooding during severe rainstorms.

3. Government investment announced for National Composites Centre
Chancellor George Osborne today announced an investment of £28m to enhance the capabilities and capacity of the National Composites Centre which has world-class expertise and industrial-scale facilities that are being used to develop the technologies which will result in more fuel efficient land, sea and air vehicles as well as, for example, the next generation of wind and marine renewable energy devices.

4. British team embark on ambitious Antarctic challenge
In December 2012 a team of British scientists, engineers and support staff, led by Professor Martin Siegert of the University of Bristol, will drill through 3km of solid ice into subglacial Lake Ellsworth in Antarctica. Their mission – to search for life forms in the water and clues to past climate in the lake-bed sediments – is one of the most exciting and ambitious explorations of our time.

5. Health services need to become more sustainable say researchers
Health services need to do more to tackle climate change and resource depletion if they are to cope with the soaring prevalence of chronic illness say the authors of a new book.

I’m going to leave you with the girls (and guys) in Psychology at the University of Bristol who have done a remake of the famous “Science: it’s a girl thing” video originally made by the European Union. This light hearted remake features some very lovely ladies doing what they do best...science and being real!

We have our Science Grrl calendar which we helped sponsor in order to help promote real women in science. Looking forward to putting it up in the new year. Get yours now!

Converting probabilities between time-intervals

This is the first in an irregular sequence of snippets about some of the slightly more technical aspects of uncertainty and risk assessment. If you have a slightly more technical question, then please email me and I will try to answer it with a snippet. Suppose that an event has a probability of 0.015 (or 1.5%) of happening at least once in the next five years. Then the probability of the event happening at least once in the next year is 0.015 / 5 = 0.003 (or 0.3%), and the probability of it happening at least once in the next 20 years is 0.015 * 4 = 0.06 (or 6%). Here is the rule for scaling probabilities to different time intervals: if both probabilities (the original one and the new one) are no larger than 0.1 (or 10%), then simply multiply the original probability by the ratio of the new time-interval to the original time-interval, to find the new probability. This rule is an approximation which breaks down if either of the probabilities is greater than 0.1. For example

1-in-200 year events

You often read or hear references to the ‘1-in-200 year event’, or ‘200-year event’, or ‘event with a return period of 200 years’. Other popular horizons are 1-in-30 years and 1-in-10,000 years. This term applies to hazards which can occur over a range of magnitudes, like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, space weather, and various hydro-meteorological hazards like floods, storms, hot or cold spells, and droughts. ‘1-in-200 years’ refers to a particular magnitude. In floods this might be represented as a contour on a map, showing an area that is inundated. If this contour is labelled as ‘1-in-200 years’ this means that the current rate of floods at least as large as this is 1/200 /yr, or 0.005 /yr. So if your house is inside the contour, there is currently a 0.005 (0.5%) chance of being flooded in the next year, and a 0.025 (2.5%) chance of being flooded in the next five years. The general definition is this: ‘1-in-200 year magnitude is x’ = ‘the current rate for eve

Coconuts and climate change

Before pursuing an MSc in Climate Change Science and Policy at the University of Bristol, I completed my undergraduate studies in Environmental Science at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. During my final year I carried out a research project that explored the impact of extreme weather events on coconut productivity across the three climatic zones of Sri Lanka. A few months ago, I managed to get a paper published and I thought it would be a good idea to share my findings on this platform. Climate change and crop productivity There has been a growing concern about the impact of extreme weather events on crop production across the globe, Sri Lanka being no exception. Coconut is becoming a rare commodity in the country, due to several reasons including the changing climate. The price hike in coconuts over the last few years is a good indication of how climate change is affecting coconut productivity across the country. Most coconut trees are no longer bearing fruits and thos

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