26 July 2012

NERC awards £4m to the PURE Programme to set up a new consortium on risk in the environment.

Oxford has been announced as a partner in a new consortium on risk in the environment (CREDIBLE).

Across four universities, the CREDIBLE consortium will bring together scientific and industrial expertise in both natural hazards and uncertainty assessment. The new consortium aims to establish a coherent treatment of risk and uncertainty, spanning all aspects of risk management across the whole range of natural hazards, including among others: volcanoes, landslides, critical infrastructure, flooding and hydro-meteorology.

Natural hazards claim thousands of lives each year and incur financial losses amounting to billions of dollars. Growing population and infrastructure increase the exposure to natural disasters, while climate change increases the uncertainty about the frequency of future events. Increasing the resilience of affected populations is therefore required if the economic and social losses are not to rise. CREDIBLE will work to establish a common set of approaches for risk and uncertainty which can be used to inform and aid risk management choices.

CREDIBLE forms one of two consortiums managing the £4million awarded to the PURE (Probability, Uncertainty and Risk in the Environment) programme in July 2012. PURE is a knowledge exchange network bringing together researchers, industrialists and policy-makers in uncertainty and risk for natural hazards, through collaborative working, knowledge exchange and the development of best practice. More information about the programme is available on the PURE website.

ECI Director, Professor Jim Hall, is one of the work package leaders within the consortium. He will be developing methods to support hazard management decisions under conditions of uncertainty. He will also supervise a PhD student on the topic of risks and water shortages.