Centre in Understanding and Managing Natural & Environmental Risks

What is the Risk Centre?

Risks, and the way we deal with them, are a vital aspect of Living with Environmental Change.

The Collaborative Centre of Excellence in Understanding and Managing Natural and Environmental Risks (the Risk Centre) is a specialist centre for research, education and consultancy in strategic environmental risk appraisal.

See story on LWEC website.

What does the Risk Centre do?

The Risk Centre enables improved management of risk through  better understanding of the public responses to perceived risks - in areas such as natural and man-made hazards, extreme events, and new and emerging diseases. Activities include

Strategic risk appraisal and risk visualisation

Many strategic risk appraisal methods fail to meet the needs of the boardroom due to misalignment with business objectives, over complexity, and poor communication of results. The Risk Centre has developed a new approach for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs management board and researchers are working with 13 policy areas to produce a strategic assessment of national environmental risk.

Adaptation to Climate Change

The government, via the Climate Change Act 2008, has requested that organisations such as water, electricity and rail companies report the risks that climate change poses to them, and also their proposals for adaptation. Risk Centre researchers provide expert evaluation of submitted reports to the Adapting to Climate Change group within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
 
Guidelines for Environmental Risk Assessment and Management

The Risk Centre has been responsible for revising guidelines on environmental risk assessment and management. This revision updates risk science and provides good practice case studies, reformed frameworks and updated approaches.
 
Exotic disease consequence and risk assessment

This research aims to understand how exotic animal diseases move through UK systems to cause a disease outbreak. This will identify key barriers in the system that could cause a series of low likelihood events to align and cause a high-consequence outbreak.

What tools will be available?

• Strategic risk appraisal and visualisation: collaboration with Cranfield’s 3-dimensional designers is helping to create novel strategies and visualisations to facilitate communication of risk. 
• New guidance (expected spring 2011) will be provided to risk specialists throughout the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and its agencies in order to aid policy requirements and elevate organisation-wide knowledge on recommended risk practice.
• Consequence assessment framework for exotic finfish disease, developed with Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science, to measure both environmental and economic impacts.
• A multitude of tools such as the generation of a risk network, workshops, information repositories, e-newsletters, annual reporting and close research collaborations have lead to enhanced knowledge sharing on risk and delivered practical policy benefit to central and local government and to industry.

Who will benefit?

Policy

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, executive agencies and institutions will benefit by taking risk into account as a key component of the policy cycle, improved risk governance and improved risk management.

Other government departments will benefit as expertise is transferred to enhance departments' change and implementation programmes on risk, with clearer visualisation of risk and weight of eveidence asessments for policy priorities.

Society

Society will benefit from clearer explanations of government's motives and actions on risk management, clearer links evident between evidence and policy making, better environment and helath protection, leading to overall improved resilience of society in a changing environment.

Industry

Industrial sectors such as food, farming, chemicals & waste will have improved confidence in the rationale of department's actions and policies in relation to risk.

PROGRAMME FACTS AND FIGURES

Start and end dates: 01/11/2008 to 31/10/2011

Website: http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/sas/risk