Introducing #CabotNext10

Bristol Harbourside

This week, here at Cabot Institute we will be re-introducing ourselves!

You may be asking yourself “Why? I already know and love them!”

Well, it’s because this year the Cabot Institute is celebrating its 10^th anniversary! And what better way to do it than to look to the future to see what the next 10 years have in store and to introduce the team that makes it all happen.

As part of this, we want to highlight the aims and research from each theme here at Cabot Institute, and to show how being part of this wider university (and often beyond) network is aiding in achieving interdisciplinarity, global challenges.

Over the next week, you can expect to hear from theme leads and researches from each of our six themes: Water, Low Carbon Energy, City Futures, Natural Hazards and Disaster Risk, Food Security and Environmental Change. As well as insights into the day-to-day Cabot Institute operations, how Cabot Institute came to be, why it is important, and what to look out for over the next 10 years, in a blog mini-series, from the small but perfectly formed team that is the Cabot Institute.

This year, we are calling for the need for heightened interdisciplinarity to solve complex global challenges.

Over the past 10 years a lot has been achieved. Here at Cabot Institute, we plan on going from strength to strength – so come and join us!

This campaign was created and delivered by Olivia Reddy, Cabot Campaigns Assistant and PhD Researcher in the Department of Civil Engineering.

You can follow Olivia on Twitter @OliviaReddy_ and find out more about her background on LinkedIn.

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 exa...

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 ...

Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

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